Artospective: Paintings by Rebecca Tillman-Young from United States.

Grief

An Interview with Rebecca Tillman-Young.

Who and from where are you?

I'm an oil painter. I'm originally from Texas, but I moved to Los Angeles with my husband about two years ago.

How you got into this?

I've always loved art. I started drawing when I was very young, and it was a favorite hobby of mine throughout my childhood and teen years. I was always sketching, and in high school I started digital painting as well. I got a BFA in painting, which is when I began oil painting, and I fell in love with the medium. I dabble in other mediums like watercolor, but always come back to oil paint.

What is your driving force?

It's hard to define exactly what it is that drives me to make art. It's inescapable for me. I am always drawn back to it, like a gravitational force. It's a desire to make something that is meaningful and beautiful. I see things around me and my first impulse is to think, "I want to paint that." I'm particularly inspired by people. Faces, figures, personalities. They are beautiful to me and they make me itch to try to capture that beauty in some way.

What kind of work you do and why?

I primarily paint figurative images. Sometimes they dip into the surreal but mostly they're just about the figures. I paint mostly women, because I think I'm able to talk about my life and issues of femaleness more pointedly when I'm painting women. Much of my recent work has been about identity, femininity and social mores or standards. I think a lot about how women move through the world in different ways, how people respond to us, and the expectations that we set on ourselves and that others set on us. I also like to challenge myself, so I like creating complex or challenging images. I often include things like flowers or complicated shadows, because it complicates the image and makes it more interesting to me.