ARTIST
RYAN TURLEY Interview by Harryet Candee
We sure live in a big world, sometimes overwhelming, enough to experience, appreciate, engage and react to. What has been a goal or focus for you in terms of what you want your audience to understand and experience with your art? RyAn Turley: Thank you for taking the time to engage with me on so many great topics. We for sure live in a big world and sometimes it can be overwhelming with all “the things” to do, see, experience, and consume. I am honored whenever anyone takes notice and time to look and/or have an experience with my work on any level. I am not sure that I have a specific goal for people to understand or experience anything with my work anymore. Years ago, after my graduate studies, I came out of the gate, guns blazing with a lot of ideas of what I wanted to “tackle” with my work. I really thought I knew what was up. Sexuality, otherness, marginalization, and a host
Photography of the Artist by Bobby Miller
of other heavier socio-political issues that were important to me at the time were center stage. The work tended to start with THE message and ended with the visualization of that message. I think that was where I needed to be at the time but often felt that the actual object or visual product became more of a dictation of my political view and less about my own personal visual language. My visual language and trust in my abilities as an artist needed development. I approach my work very differently now. I believe that I have built confidence and a few other tools that enable me to make the work and come from a personal place without forcing my agenda onto anyone. The work can be consumed hopefully allowing a unique experience to each viewer. I want to create something that is approachable and original, that will have people thinking and even questioning what they saw on the way home from the show, maybe longer. I always use ele-
32 • DECEMBER | JANUARY 2022 THE ARTFUL MIND
ments that are familiar in my art making and then I shift it, twist it, manipulate it, and present it in my own, hopefully new way. A new way to see something might be a good goal with my work. Let’s take a close look at “Rainbows are Gay.” It is complex and fun-feeling. Tell us about this work of art, please. Great place to start as a follow up to the last question. This particular work was in my master’s thesis show at Pratt in 2011. It was the centerpiece of the entire show and what I based a lot of my thesis paper on. The work in this show revolved around my own experiences of growing up gay in America in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I was looking a lot at what “Gay Pride” was when I was growing up and what it was evolving into. The parades, the marketing, the Budweiser labels on floats going down the street in NYC…It all seemed like something had gone awry… like it
