Johannah Silva Interview

Artist Bio & Statement: Johannah Silva is a Chicago-based artist. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and currently teaches full-time at Wright College. In the last few years, I have been making work using the circular shape/form as a starting point for my paintings and drawings. The circles allude to micro as well as macro forms, -- cells and atoms as well as planetary bodies, for example. My working process involves the repetition and placement of these shapes and marks on the painting surface, in consideration with formal elements such as color and space, to arrive at surprising and discovered compositions that follow an internal logic. I am interested in theories and/or imagery derived from physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and geology, and in philosophical and spiritual notions regarding concepts of space and time, being and nothingness, internal mind and exterior reality. Thinking about these things influence my work, though the end-result is ultimately arrived at through a personal and intuitive working process. (Artist bio & statement was taken from http://johannahsilva.com/about.html#artiststatement