By Agustina Carrizo
For painter Laura Krifka, process is key to both style and content, and it takes time to develop. “I wanted to be this great artist, but I had no idea how to do it,” Krifka told a UC Santa Barbara audience.
Laura Krifka, a painter who is a UCSB alum, recently spoke to a campus audience about her artistic style and content.
Krifka did her Masters of Fine Arts at UCSB in 2010 and is now a professor at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly). She spoke at the UCSB Art Department’s Visiting Speaker Series.
Process, Krifka said, is the series of events that produces a result. She believes every artist’s practice is the result of their process, which determines their style and of the body of work that they are constantly working on and developing. The process is different for every artist – and Krifka says hers is an extensive one. She described how she developed it over her years as an artist.
After completing her undergrad at Cal Poly, Krifka attended UC Santa Barbara to pursue a master’s degree in fine arts. Throughout her years at university, she worked on evolving her process and style, and she shared her experiences.
Painter Laura Krifka recently spoke as part of the UCSB Art Department’s Visiting Speaker Series to discuss her artistic process.
According to Krifka, an artist’s style comes through more the ideas they portray rather than the physical look of their pieces. “Your style is nothing, it should change,” she said. The look of the work can change, but their ideas should stay consistent. In her case, she focuses on power and inverting power dynamics.
She begins her process with multiple sketches, drawing inspiration from other artists, films, or even her own previous work, and begins to experiment with different mediums. Part of Krifka’s process includes sculpting models to visualize what she wants to paint. She creates small figures and backgrounds, experiments with where she wants to place them, and figures out the lighting with the sculptures. Then, she takes the concept and puts it onto canvas, already having a vision of how she wants it to end up.
Krifka has had her work exhibited, from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and New York, including at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Art, Design, and Architecture Museum at UCSB. Her pattern-filled work has also been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and other publications.
UCSB alum painter Laura Krifka, gave a largely student audience advice about art and painting at an event held by the Art department’s Visiting Speaker Series.
One tip she gave to UCSB students is to be willing to change a composition halfway through. An artist will have multiple ideas for a single piece, and her advice is to not put all those ideas into one singular thing, but to express the same idea in multiple ways. Trying to put too many components onto one canvas can be difficult and rush one’s process.
“My worst paintings are the ones where I rushed my process,” Krifka said. Using different mediums and various sketches, having multiple ideas down on paper, allows for more freedom when putting together the final composition, she said. And she left students with a crucial piece of advice about developing a distinct style. “If you don’t like your work, change the people you look at.”
Agustina Carrizo is a third-year English major who is pursuing the Professional Writing Minor.