Aesthetic Cloud Walking - An Interview with Emma Tynan by Brittany DeBoer

     Emma Tynan is a Vancouver-based artist studying as a visual arts major at SFU and is currently applying for a minor in graphic design. Tynan is of Irish and Chinese descent and was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She works with photography, is a freelance graphic designer and teaches figure skating to kids. As a child, Tynan did not take much to art but enjoyed reading a lot. Being a shy kid, she never said much and instead began to express herself through drawing. In grade 9 her love of art began to flourish when she was a teaching assistant for an art class and that has led her on the path to where she is today.

Brittany DeBoer: Hi Emma, thanks for doing this interview with me today.

Emma Tynan: Of course! Thank you for having me.

BD: I figured I’d start this off with a couple easy questions to get to know you as a person a little bit more before we get into the deep questions if that’s alright with you?

ET: For sure.

BD: What superpower would you want and why?

ET: Oh I always change my mind every time this question comes up. Hmmmm… have you ever watched Avatar?

BD: Yeah I have

ET: My mind goes to like water bending and how cool it would be.

BD: Honestly, that would be pretty sick. You could walk around Vancouver and never need an umbrella.

ET: Exactly! I don’t know why but that’s where my brain goes. I like the fluid movements when Katara is water bending and I’m like “Yass!”

BD: Alright next question is a bit of a jump but what is the scariest thing you have experienced?

ET: Oh jeez, my scariest experience *laughs*

BD: It could be in your practice or in your personal life.

ET: Full disclosure, I am a huge scaredy cat. There are a lot of things that scare me. In terms of personal life, there was one experience. I don’t remember my exact age but I must have been young. I was away on vacation with my family and we were all walking around. At one point I suddenly looked around and realized no one was there. And I’m just thinking “Oh my God! I don’t know how to get anywhere, I don’t know anyone.” I sat on the curb for a good 10-15 mins freaking out until someone came back. Yeah that’s my scariest experience in my life.

BD: Wow yeah I’d be freaking out if that was me.

ET: Yeah. But in terms of my practice, I think one of the most scary experiences is anytime I have to put myself out there and let people criticize me or my work is downright terrifying.

BD: Yeah that’s always the hard part of being an artist. What about it is so terrifying to you?

ET: Well I know that you have to put your work and essentially yourself out there but I’m always worried that “Oh they’re going to hate it” or “that it won’t turn out well”.

BD: What do you like about your work? Also, what do you dislike about it?

ET: I like being able to create something that people can interpret anything they like. It’s giving people the freedom to perceive the meaning however they want. I, the creator, had a specific vision for the piece but if someone has a different take on it then I am happy regardless.

I dislike that everyone uses their own perception of an art piece to be judgmental as artists. You may not like what I do with my work and I might not like what you do with yours, but we can still respect each other as artists.

BD: What kind of art do you most identify with or enjoy doing? Because you mentioned doing graphic design and drawing.

ET: When you got to grade 10 at my school, they split the arts class. You’d spend half the term painting and drawing and the other half doing graphic design work where you’d learn how to make book covers and posters in photoshop. My teacher at the time encouraged me to continue to work at it and helped me a lot with art in general. That led me to doing freelance work. When I got into the program at SFU I ended up doing a lot of photography work as well as painting and graphics work on some of my projects and so it just kind of stuck, you know?

BD: Who or what has really influenced your work? An artist, family member or someone else? I know you said your art teacher facilitated the growth of your love of art, if you want to elaborate on that?

ET: Yeah he helped to set me up and gave me a foundation to work off of. But in terms of artists, there is no ‘one artist’ that I look up to. Honestly, I find a lot of artists to be too abstract. I know that sounds funny coming from an art major but I kind of take to art in a different way than abstract-ism or contemporary art.

BD: How would you say you take to art then?

ET: I prefer to be aesthetically pleasing before anything else. If something doesn’t look that great then I’m like what’s the point? You know?

BD: Yeah that makes sense. Sorry I cut you off in the last question. Did you have any other influences?

ET: No worries. Yeah there was this one artist that I liked when I saw his work in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His name is Tomás Saraceno and he had done this really abstract thing but at the same time it had clean lines and was very pleasing to the eye. His whole thing was atmospheric clouds and so he made all these shapes out of wires and mirrors too look like cloud formations that you could walk in amongst. His lines and simplicity really inspired me to make my own work. I did this work where everything was stuck to the wall with double-sided tape. Nothing was freestanding but nothing was fixed to anything either. They were all in this long, cloud-like formation to create this big dream cloud that you see in cartoons.

Another inspiring moment was when I went to the Picasso exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery and I just sat for hours watching him paint in this video because I was so mesmerized by it. I find certain video works like these inspirational.

BD: What is your dream project to work on?

ET: My dream goal in life is to travel the entire world and make a journal of my travels through of photography. I don’t want to take pictures that everyone takes when they

travel to that country. I want to take pictures of things that I find beautiful, even if others don’t agree. After I have all the pictures, I want to mix the photos in with some sort of spray paint mural to make one giant piece.

BD: That sounds amazing! I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for that in the future.