Interview with Seize Happywallmaker
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Seize Happywallmaker is self-taught painter living in a geometric and colorful world. His experience and inspiration come from urban arts, where he began. He developed a very personal graphic code and uses the energy from the colors as a therapy.
He has been working for many years on reflections based on networks and connections. His symbolic language speaks of nature and the universe.
He believes that geometric forms associated with the simplicity and the strictness of structures and composition can lead to a great purity...
Today Mow selected 8 of your artworks inspired by music. Can you tell MoW why you chose to create about these music artist ? What was the music behind them ? What inspired you to create those ?
The inspiration often comes from the moment when I listen to something hovering. It can be modern Jazz, Funk, Dub. Once I become very relaxed there is a kind of automatic writing happening that thrives on the canvas or walls...
Why is music important to you and your art?
Music does something to me almost like a hypnotic effect a light trance which is very nice and very interesting to exploit especially when you are in a creative process. I also think that we underestimate the influence that music can have on our subconscious and that is for this reason that I do not listen to Gangsta Rap or Metal (among others)...
If you had to choose between the artworks presented today, which of your artwork would be your favourite ?
My favorite artwork is always the lastest I create. A bit like in families as there is always a special affection for the new born, well this is not very objective I guess.
Can you tell MoW more about the techniques you used. How old is your technique? How did it start? How long does it take you to make an artwork ?
Everything depends on the support I work on. Paradoxically it takes me more time to make a 1x1m piece that make a wall 10 times bigger. A piece can take me three weeks it is a very thorough and precise work. I am very slow what is a real frustration for me because my creative mind is so much faster than my speed of execution. I sometimes I have a hard time keeping track of it...
MoW spotted one of your artwork during the artshow Mythiq27. How was the experience to take part to this project ?
Mythiq27 was a project initiated by Yves Suty a friend of mine and also a very important person that took part in my artistic evolution. He asked me to do a painting on the death of John Garrigan, a musician that died from overdose at the age of 27. I then painted a yellow needle on a green background and as for me death is a journey I could not help but make a spaceship finally.
Very sadly, the story does not stop there as a few weeks later Yves Suty unexpectedly left this world. This painting has now an even bigger and very special emotional resonance for me.
Do you listen to music when you're working ?
Music is omnipresent in my creative process whether in the street or my studio. I often listen to modern Funk or Dub, a little bit of Electronic music. Music is an integrate part of my work, it is a tool in the same way that my brushes or my spray cans are.
What is the song you liked the most lately? Or album ? What was the last gig you went to ?
I've been listening a lot to a song a I discovered on a webradio show Soulection, Jordan Rakei - "Add The Bassline" (Evil Needle Remix)
The last album I bought was "Toeachizown" by Dam -Funk
As for the concert it was two or three years ago, I went to see Kool Keith a musician I had previously discovered at a concert in Paris in 1989 when he was touring with the Ultramagnetics MC
Are you a musician yourself ? If so can you tell MoW more about your music projects ?
Well I 'm not a musician but I grew up with a jazz musician father who have transmitted his artistic sensibility but not the musical one because I have always been more confident with my eyes than my ears. And I think that the concepts of vibration transcripts of the musical rhythm and musical writing are present in my painting.
Watch Seize Happywallmaker painting live :
