Vanshika Khaitan was interviewed by Mark Kilfoil on CHSR's (97.9FM) program "The Lunchbox," on July 25th, 2018.
MK: It’s nice to meet you, Vanshika. I’ve never seen you before, so I have no idea what you do, but I’m seeing all of these wonderful paintings around me so I’m going to assume you’re a painter, is that right? VK: I am a painter, yes. MK: So tell me a bit about your paintings. VK: Okay, so I usually paint with acrylic paintings but recently I started getting into oil too, inspired by <indistinct>. So usually I paint surrealism paintings, so I’ll start with an idea in my head, and I’ll find a couple of reference images, and then I’ll kind of combine the reference images together. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of paintings with a space theme to them, so if you look around, you can see a similar theme to my paintings with the space or the sky, combined with a surrealistic element. MK: So how long have you been doing the painting then? VK: So right now I’m fifteen, but I’ve been interested in art all my life. My mom’s actually a henna artist, so a lot of my art inspiration comes from her, but I remember back when I was maybe in Grade 2 or 3, is when I really started getting into drawing and art, so maybe when I was around seven years old. MK: Wow okay, so you’re only fifteen so far, but this is more than half of your life devoted to this. So tell me a bit more about that process when you started out and were interested in drawing, when did you realize that you had a pretty good knack for it, and how much was it just you working hard to develop your skills? VK: When I first started drawing I was just kind of like cartoon characters, and I remember in Grade 5 there was this art program at my school actually, and we never had stuff like that because I had a really small elementary school; I went to Montgomery, which is literally a hallway, so we never really had programs like that, and so I entered into the program, and the teacher there, she was telling me that I was really good at getting accurate lines, and I remember I drew the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and I did it with pastel, and it ended up coming out really, really well. So this was a big sketchbook I had, and I think that’s the sketchbook where I started drawing on my own, moreso, after that art class, because I realized that I was actually pretty good at it, and then when I went into middle school, there was a lot more programs offered, and I remembered my art teacher and I had so many good conversations, and I was always in her classroom at lunch times, and in Grade 8 there was an evening of the arts organized, and I organized the whole thing with a couple of friends, and my art teacher helped out a lot. So I think Grade’s 5 through 8 is when I started getting really involved. MK: That’s amazing. So most folks around your age probably aren’t aware of terms like surrealism, and even the term “acrylic paint” probably applies more to walls on the outside of your house, or maybe your living room. What’s it like for you? Most people see the images, they can probably relate to those, but they aren’t really understanding the process? Or is art a very prevalent thing among all your friends? VK: In my friend group, we’re all pretty artsy. My friends are really interested in drawing and things like that. Actually, one of my friends, Megan, she’s the one who introduced me into the program of Isaac’s Way, where they do art auctions, so a lot of my friends are in the art area too. And the reason I know terms like that is because, I’ve never actually taken art classes in the past few years, maybe a couple here and there, but I think when I’m really interested in something, I do a lot of research on it on my own, and start watching YouTube videos and stuff like that, and my art teachers go above and beyond to ask questions and stuff like that during my classes, but I definitely think art is very prevalent in my friend group and people around me, for sure. MK: So when I think of surrealist paintings or painters, I think of, say, Dalí, and we’re lucky here to have, most of the time, pretty prevalent Dalí, where two of you had the chance to take a look at those. Do those inspire you? VK: I’ve had a chance to look around galleries and stuff, but I feel like most of my inspiration comes from things I see online more. I’m really involved in Instagram and social media with my art and stuff like that, so I have a lot of art up online, and there’s this one artist on Instagram, here name is Sara Shakeel, and she does collage work, so she takes real images and combines them together, and a lot of my inspiration comes from her, too. MK: What about that appeals to you? Is it just because it is taking the existing things and transforming them? VK: Yeah, I just really like the idea of taking realistic things and putting them together, and the way she does it is just really interesting. MK: When you’re doing surrealist art, and you have have references, do you sketch out a pattern you’re going to put them together in or do you wait for the paint to speak to you? VK: Sometimes I start with a thumbnail sketch, but sometimes also I’ll start with a thumbnail sketch, and my painting will do something else, and I’ll just roll with it. Or sometimes I’ll just have an idea in my head and I’ll just start painting. But usually everything just starts with a small sketch beforehand. MK: How much of that final image do you have? To give you a bit of background, I’m always amazed by the process of art, because I’ve seen painters paint, and they’re making brush strokes and putting things on the page, and I can’t even figure what it is yet. VK: Yeah, so usually when I start with a sketch, it’s more just the line work, but I feel like the colours and everything comes after that for me, so I’ll start with a picture, kind of like black and white in my head, and then the paint kinda does its thing to get the colour back in there. I really like colour in my paintings, so my paintings are filled with a lot of colour, just because that’s the way I like to go with things. MK: There’s a lot of precision in your works here, which is kind of amazing. I’m seeing that one painting you have behind us here, I guess I would describe it as a woman lying down, reaching up to the stars, and there’s strings coming off of her fingers, holding planets and moons and things. But I can see the strings, I wouldn’t expect that kind of precision, necessarily. VK: One thing I really focused on this year in my art classes was contrast, so with the painting over there with the boy with the stars in his face, the focus of that painting was colour, so purple and yellow with the contrast, so I want to make things pop in my paintings, I make sure to use the colour. So with the strings, they’re white, and the background of it is the stars, which are black and blue, so when I wanna make things really precise, I make sure to make the colours really contrasting with each other, so I really like contrast in my paintings, which is why the colours look so bright. MK: They’re beautiful. So, take me through a day. Are you one of those people who paints every day at a particular time for several hours? VK: This is a little weird; I don’t paint every day, but let’s say I start a painting, I’m going to finish that painting in two days, and then I’ll take a break for two weeks, and then I’ll be in a painting zone again, and I’ll paint for three days. MK: Do you have to find new inspiration? VK: Yeah, that’s the two weeks where I’m just kind of not in the mood or something, and I’m also really into music too, so I play ukulele, piano, and I sing, so sometimes I’ll be in a music zone for a week, and then an art zone for a week. I’m definitely more arts in the summer, because I’m really involved with my school too, so I get busy really often. MK: I could imagine you’re quite busy, how do you manage to find time for all of it? VK: I like being busy, I don’t like sitting at home and not doing anything, so in school I’m involved with student council, red cross response team, junior achievement, a couple other things here and there, and then I’m involved with the arts community outside of school, so I just like keeping my schedule busy. MK: I can see that. So what’s it like being here for a week where you’re really called upon to continuously be painting? VK: Well I’m in an art zone this week so it’s not that bad, because I’ve been spending my time painting the whole week, and sometimes I’ll take a break and walk downtown and just look around, because it’s beautiful here in downtown, so it’s definitely a change but I can easily take breaks and stuff, so it’s pretty fun. I did this program last year too so I knew what it was all about. MK: So it’s your second year returning and you’re only fifteen. Is this something you think you’ll pursue as a career? You’ve certainly already created a great body of work. VK: For me, art is kind of like what I do to de-stress. If I went into it as a career, I feel like I’d be doing it all the time, and it just wouldn’t be something for me to de-stress with anymore, but I definitely want to keep it on the side of things. I’m really interested in sciences so I definitely want to pursue that with my university, but I definitely will never stop painting and stuff like this. It’s just a way to take a break and breathe, so I’ll definitely continue, but I wouldn’t see it as a full-time thing for me personally. MK: So do you think your artistic eye and background and experience will help you in the sciences? VK: Yeah, for sure. I’ve already noticed that with my science classes, there’s a lot of diagram drawings and stuff like that, and that always helps me out, and just like my eye to detail always helps me out. I think any passion or any hobby that you have will forever help you somewhere along your life. It’s something my mom says actually. MK: So you’ve managed to collect all the hobbies. So what kind of things inspire you? Do you get inspired specifically by surrealistic art or are you looking for other things? VK: Sometimes the weirdest things that you’ll see will just inspire you. Sometimes I’ll just be on a walk outside, and I’ll see someone with a really unique face or facial feature, and that will inspire me. Or I travel a lot with my family, so just going to different places and seeing architecture and stuff like that, it’s just the most random things that you’ll see along your day that inspire you. You just have to keep an eye out wherever you go I guess. MK: Are you constantly taking pictures for reference? VK: Yeah, I draw a lot of hands sometimes, so I always take pictures of my own hands because its so difficult to find random positions online. Sometimes I’ll take a picture of one of my friends’ faces or something, just because I want that angle of the side view or something like that. Or the sky or sunset. Sometimes I also find my pictures online MK: I find the hands part fascinating because, first of all, as you said, you said your mother, I believe, was a henna artist, which is typically done around the hand. Do you think that is what influenced that fascination? VK: Maybe, yeah. I never really thought about it like that before. Even the painting with the planets and the hands, I actually ended up taking a picture of my own hands to get in that position so I could draw them. Hands are something that are either right or wrong, because the anatomy is just so precise on hands I guess. MK: It’s one of those things that seems to be the most difficult for people to get right. I’ve seen entire books about nothing but hands. VK: Yeah, they’re tough. MK: So you’re not formally trained at this point? Do you think you want to get some formal training? Because you’re obviously doing pretty well; your work, as I said before, is beautiful. VK: I think working around artists like Matt, who are formally trained, helps a lot. When I’ve been painting this painting this whole week, I’ve been getting tips from other people. I can’t see myself going into very formal training classes, because that’s just not my thing. I usually self-teach, even with instruments I play, like ukulele and piano, I don’t like taking lessons that much, I just like doing my own thing. But I definitely would like to take more art classes in the future because it definitely helps with your technique and everything. MK: I would imagine that it’s not about, necessarily, the painting that you want to take the classes on so much as all the other stuff. VK: Exactly. MK: Now you said Matt, that’s your casemate buddy for this week? VK: Yeah, Matt Watkins. He’s a painter and he does jewellery too, and metalwork MK: So what’s it like being around other painters? You said for most of these that you’re either solitary or you’re working on it, totally focused. What’s it like working with other people? VK: I think it’s very inspiring, especially with Matt, he does a lot of oil painting and I recently just bought oils and I’m not that used to oils, so just seeing him work with the oils, I can ask him questions about oil painting, and that’s what kind of got me into oil painting on the painting I’m working on right now. So I think it’s very inspiring and very helpful to be around other people that are artists, because I’m not usually around them, like you said. MK: Well the other part of being here in the barracks, now you said last year you were used to it, but has the idea that people can just wander in and wander by at random, and they’re gonna have questions. What has it been like for that experience? VK: Usually at school when I’d be doodling in class, I would hate when people were watching me, so when I first started this program last year, I was kind of hesitant to have people just walk in and be looking over my shoulder. But, it’s actually kind of nice because they don’t know me, they just see me as a painter, they don’t know who I am or my age or anything, so really the only thing that’s fascinating them is my painting right now. So it’s really nice to hear them and talk to people, because I am very much a people person, so I love talking, so when people come in and ask questions, I actually love answering them and just talking. Usually people who visit here aren’t actually from Fredericton, so we’ve been asking everyone where they’re from, because most people are from Ontario or Quebec visiting Fredericton, so it’s really interesting to see all the different types of people around the world who like art and like to visit and stuff. MK: What were some of the most surprising questions you heard so far? VK: Well actually, usually most people just ask me how old I am or what kind of paint I’m using, what inspires me, how long I’ve been painting for; these are the kinds of questions most people ask. Sometimes there’s a couple of unique people, like one lady came in and she was reading us a poetry book yesterday, there’s just all types of people who come in here. MK: So are you strictly inspired by visual things? Or do things like poetry inspire you to paint? VK: Sometimes things like music inspire me to paint. There’s this one drawing I did back there, and it’s an astronaut holding balloons, and that drawing actually went viral a couple years ago and that’s how I gained most of my Instagram followers. That drawing came inspired from an album called “Sounds Good, Feels Good” by Five Seconds Of Summer, so I remember that’s my favourite band, so I always listen to that album, and it has a lot of a space theme to it. There’s a song called “Airplanes” on that album, and it inspired me to create that piece of work. So a lot of times my inspirations come from music, mainly visual things though, usually. Sometimes poetry too. MK: Have you ever decided to try to combine these things? Like adding music to the painting or a painting that you have an inspired music piece by? Have any of your hobbies collided yet? VK: I’ve never done that before, but it’d be cool to try for sure. MK: You’ve mentioned Instagram a number of times. Is that the way you have been exposing the world to your art? VK: For sure; I started my Instagram before I really got into art. It was more of music for me, so I was posting videos on there, and then my friends were like “you should post one of your drawings.” So I started posting my drawings on Instagram, and that’s when my following kind of getting up. And then I posted that drawing with the astronaut and the balloons, and at that point it was going crazy on Instagram and on Tumblr, and people started following me, and some people actually started recreating that drawing, and a couple people reposted the drawing without crediting me and that was getting me kind of angry, but I figured it all out, and that’s when I started posting. All of my drawings are on Instagram now, along with a lot of singing videos, and think that’s just the way I expose myself to art and artists all over the world, because on Instagram, when you’re connected, for example, I have group chats with artists from Africa and India and places all over the world. MK: That’s kind of amazing. So you’ve kind of touched on one thing that a lot of modern artists do have to deal with is the idea that it’s great to be out on the internet, people can see you, but then someone can use your image. VK: Yeah, that’s a big problem. Even with the artist I was talking about, Sara Shakeel, earlier on, she has so many problems with people stealing her collages, and a lot of magazines will steal her collages, and then it’s just a whole ordeal. But I think that’s just a struggle of modern life, we can’t really do anything around it. You can watermark your images, but then it takes away from the image too, and you don’t want that for your followers to see: something taken away from your image. MK: Do you think that art is highly appreciated or do we have too much art to really appreciate individual pieces anymore? VK: It’s still highly appreciated, but a lot of times, you’ll see, like on Instagram, or just with regular artists, that an artist will draw something, and many younger artists that aren’t too much into their own style will copy the same image, and then they’ll get a lot of exposure for that because that image is just so popular, so I’m not really fond of that, like drawing eyes a lot, and then many artists will copy the eye and then redraw the eye, and you just see so many pictures of eyes, and it’s a little repetitive, but I still think that’s how you’re going to get into your own style. That’s how I started off, so whenever you start off as a new artist, I think copying images is how you kind of build up your technique. So yeah, I think it’s still highly appreciated. MK: There’s an old saying that comes to mind, “a good artist borrow and a great artist steal.” Do you think that’s true? VK: I don’t think it’s true, I think great artists are good at creating their own style. I think that’s what makes the art the best kind of art; when it’s something new and it’s your own style and you kind of added something. You’ve put in something that’s your own into the piece. MK: Well, obviously the best place for someone to check out your artwork would be on Instagram. What’s the name to follow? VK: My Instagram is @vanilla.art MK: Okay. Vanilla, usually assuming to be some sort of a plain or simple flavour, but from the art I’m seeing around, nothing simple or plain about your art. VK: I started with vanilla.art a long time ago, because my name is Vanshika, so the first three letters are V-A-N. And then vanilla just kind of came from there I guess. MK: Welcome to the internet where we all choose the wrong name way to early. We live with it, we accept it, we claim it as our own. VK: I could change it, but I just kind of like how it sounds too. MK: It sounds pretty cool. Well thank you very much, Vanshika, for joining me. VK: Thank you. MK: Have a great week. VK: You too. Listen to the full interview here.
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