Listen along as Cara and painter and teacher Ilana Zweschi chat. They discuss Ilana’s journey to becoming an artist including her schooling and family foundation. We hear the amazing way Ilana creates her paintings and her thought process on how she came to land on her process.

Ilana is represented by Linda Hodges Gallery. To inquire about her work click here.

You can find her on instagram here @ilanazwechi

ARTIST STATEMENT

I target destructive texts—official or influential words that have harmful repercussions on a mass scale. Then I disempower the messages in these texts by transforming them into paintings through handwritten algorithms.

I take the numbers, letters, and punctuation that comprise these texts and alphabetically reorder them. The result is total nonsense. All of the same elements are there, but they no longer have the power to do harm. They have been disarmed. Like taking a gun and switching around its parts so the mechanism can no longer fire.

Finally, I use both forms of the text to write an algorithm that that drives the decisions of each brush stroke of paint. I input the raw data of the text into the algorithm, run it through a series of “if/then” rules I assign based on the structure and grammar of the written words, and receive an output of painterly actions. Each letter of the text corresponds to one discrete brush stroke, creating a larger idea from the individual elements. The painting could not exist without either the original or altered text.

Alternately, in my drawings I am seeking an antidote to this poisonous psychology. I engage in acts of repetition that facilitate an accumulation of similar but inevitably unique marks while concentrating on compassion. These actions are meant to highlight the concept of the individual while showing the strength that many individuals have together.