Edna Dapo and The Art of Being Human

On an unusually cold and rainy afternoon in the middle of May, I met with artist Edna Dapo in her studio at the Phoenix Center for the Arts. She brought out painting after painting from the back room, as well as a portfolio of etchings, until we were surrounded by her artworks. We studied them for awhile and then sat down next to Play, one of my favorites, and began the interview.

CK: In your artistic statement you said that you try to "bring together tragic and compassionate images to achieve harmony." What do you feel is truly tragic in life, and do you feel that there are commonplace tragedies in the everyday life that we live?

ED: I feel that there are tragedies in everyday and my later work actually encompasses that rather than specific tragedies that happened in my homeland Croatia. Obviously there are tragedies in the United States in the universal scheme, but there are tragedies that happen personally to everyone. Actually while I was working on the triptych Reconciled, my mom was going through breast cancer, and I was away, and it was really hard for me because we are extremely close. So that was another tragedy for me but I also have this background of universal tragedy of the civil war that happened in ex-Yugoslavia, where I'm from.

CK: How's your mother doing now?

ED: She's great. I think the tragedy on this (painting) Play was more showing the violence, showing the tragedy, whereas in my later work . . . I became more subtle, and I'm showing the aftermath of tragedy. I'm interested in how people heal . . . what happens, how do they survive. Hope is what matters, so it's the hope and the tragedy that combines. Going back to color: If you have red and green, red becomes more red when it's next to green, so tragedy next to compassion is more tragic than on it's own, right?

CK: What do you mean by that?

ED: Well say, . . . I read in a book . . . in this monotonous voice someone described somebody dying, and it was somebody very close to them. And it was that monotonous voice . . . that almost exaggerates the tragedy because they're not exaggerating the feeling of this. You just kind of go . . . "Well why isn't he acting this? Why is he describing it so monotonous and like he doesn't care if somebody dies?" That was really interesting to me, to combine the opposites.

CK: Do you mean that you want to fill in the emotion that was lacking when you listen to someone describe it in a detached way?

ED: Yes. But it's also a surprise effect. This horrible thing happened so why is he describing it that way? It's almost like the news today- "Oh, these people died" and "We had an accident" and there's no emotion, we're so detached. I don't know if you went to see Eric Fischl's lecture at the Phoenix Art Museum, but he talked of how he went into making these sculptures that were very realistic and . . . looking very tragic. And he wanted to exhibit this for the 9/11 . . . he has one of the same sculptures in front of Phoenix Art Museum. Well, they did not approve it because, they said, "If you show something so realistic, and the guy's in anguish . . ." (you obviously see him falling. His legs are all over) ". . . that would influence people to go back to 9/11 and that they would be shattered". So they wanted something that was more detached of that tragedy, of a human figure. Kind of bizarre.

CK: Do you feel that there's a better way?

ED: Well, I don't feel that we should detach ourselves. We should probably embrace it. History always repeats itself, right? Those types of things are important for us to learn from them. Showing this civil war in my country, especially in Play, crushed buildings, but then innocent kids, also barefoot-- they're playing. Why are they in here, why are they playing in here? It's that effect of surprise, too.

CK: The children have to play. Also in your statement you said "formal techniques allow detachment from the dismal content to achieve a state of impartiality and artistic objectivity." I know you must not be contradicting yourself here, but it seemed when I read this you were saying that you try to get to a state of detachment.

ED: As you're painting it becomes a process itself. I'm in love with that process, the color. Whenever I look at somebody's painting I think "How did they do it?" instead of "What's in it?" That's my second thought. So I get lost in it, too. In the beginning I have this idea and it evolves and in the end I do have unity of both the content and the process. It's the process that really pulls you totally. You're in the zone where when you're piling this on here and you're thinking "Which glaze should I put?" and "What's this?" and you're surprised by that too. Yet I'm painting this chaos, war. So yeah, it is contradictory in a way. But it's unified. That's how Old Masters did it too, when they showed religious paintings of Christ dying. They were probably a lot more religious than we are today.

CK: What do you want from the viewer though, because the viewer's not going through the painting process. I mean ideally, what do you hope the viewer is feeling?

ED: I think they should bring their personal experience to it. Something as specific as this. This is a boulevard where I lived, it's my personal high school, it's my nephew. I think the viewer can take unification of everything and take their personality, personal experiences, gathered experiences of life and get something from it. A lot of people asked me when I painted Play,"Was this about 9/11?" and I said "No. It's actually in my hometown." You know, kids today didn't even know that there was a war, in Europe or anywhere. It was interesting. They combined it with 9/11 experience. And they see kids-- it could be their own. . . I started using this a couple of years ago- a viewer - is shown in here. That's always the person whose face you don't see. In a lot of these paintings they're turned with their back which is the way the viewer stands in Oblivion. Those are viewers. And here in Reconciled I wanted them life-size. So the viewer is included in a lot of my paintings. Whenever you don't see the face, usually I'm trying to personify the viewer, and they're inside of the painting too.

CK: If I can ask you a personal question-- are you able to somehow get over your extreme disturbance about the War? Are you getting through it, have you gotten over it?

ED: It was like a therapy, I think. For a long time I needed to get it out. This was all done in graduate school-- well, most of these. Professors really want to push you to get into specific times, and they were making references to . . . Anselm Kiefer. They were saying "Okay, there's this Kiefer painting--" it says this date- 1940-something-- and they said, "You could maybe do a painting like that." But really I don't have that gathering of knowledge. But first maybe I should talk about the war experience, because it wasn't like you imagine it would be. We were basically all in a building. Where I lived it was 30% of each nation lived there. One of the nations got on the mountains, with tanks and stuff, and started bombing their neighbors, and friends. You know, there were intermingling marriages, and things like that. So it was devastating. It's not like in World War II-- Nazis come and they're specifically your enemy. Suddenly you don't know what's happening. I was friends with this girl. Well, we would ask, "Was her dad on there?" and things like that. But we also were given an ultimatum to leave the town, and we didn't. I remember being in this building, we lived in the eleventh floor, and we all rushed down to the first two floors when they started bombing. I didn't see any blood. I didn't see anyone dying. It was just, "It's coming! They're bombing us!" You hear it. I had a dog who went gray, completely gray, during the war. It was a black dog . . . but they have better hearing, too. It was just incredible. So I think it's the feelings that transcend more. I didn't see blood. People here are more experienced with tragedy, how people are about death, about somebody dying in an accident, their loved ones. I haven't seen any of that. But the feeling of it, it's really hard to describe that. I think it made me more prone to empathize with other people because just hearing about it I could assume, "What's happening over there? Oh my God, who's dying over there?" rather than seeing it, like Kathe Kollwitz saw her two sons die.

CK: When an artist suffers, what could that bring to their artwork? Do you think that it could strengthen their artwork or might it detract?

ED: I definitely think strengthen the artwork. Like I said, the feelings are really important to have. I've seen abstract work and people were talking about things that I couldn't see in it. It's not just the realism or semi-realism, or whatever, versus abstraction. It's just it didn't come through. I think if you're not sincere about it, I mean people were painting about 9/11, but during the 9/11 if you were in the middle of Phoenix, and you didn't have anyone over there-- all your friends, all your family, your whole life you spent here-- how attached are you to 9/11?

CK: Very.

ED: Very? Really? Even though you had nothing there personally?

CK: Very personally.

ED: Well, then why wouldn't you be attached to something that happened in Poland, too?

CK: Well, yeah. I think that's why your work is so meaningful to me.

ED: Now why are you attached? Because you're empathizing.

CK: Yeah. I'm maybe sensitive to pain. And of course, if we're talking about 9/11, watching it happen is terrible, devastating for me. I know it wasn't for a lot of people, a lot of Americans. I realize that.

ED: Yeah. I'm not saying in general. There are people who were not. But then there are those who can empathize . . . there are artists who can go deep, deep, with their emotions and empathize with some huge tragedy that didn't even happen in United States, could happen somewhere else.

CK: When I look at your paintings, I see you treat the human figure in a couple of ways. Some of them are more realistic, and others look almost like extra-terrestrials. I'm wondering what's the reason and why the difference in treatment. Are they human or not human?

ED: Actually a progression, and a progression of content, too. When I painted more specifically the violence, they were more . . . not that I was trying to paint them evil-like, it's just what came out of the canvas. Maybe . . . ugliness is human, too. But then later, once I became more involved with content, in Aftermath, and what happens, how people become more humanized. So they become more realistic, I think . . . I went to an art high school in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and I started realistically. We were taught almost Russian-Academy style. And then I came here ten years ago. Went to first Scottsdale Community College and then ASU, and actually in both, I was working more towards abstraction. But still it was almost figurative abstraction. And once I graduated, I continued almost figurative abstraction, too. Went into graduate school, something happened again, it's like you have to prove yourself. Went into more detail, I would call it figurative abstraction which became progressively realistic . . . My content always influences process, it really does. Sometimes I don't know how the painting's going to look like. An accident can happen on a painting, paint-wise, and that influences me for the content. Like in that painting, Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, I remember it at one point being completely orange, then blue. Then I saw those three figures coming out, and I figured, "Okay, these three figures- they're going to be progression of time." Vita brevis-- Life is Short, its longevity . . . but then, in the back, somewhat realistic portrayal of Rape of Europa. So it's art-- Art is Long.

CK: It seems that a lot of your work is about the Human Condition. Can you tell me why that's what most interests you?

ED: Probably even before the high school, I was interested in the human figure and the Human Condition. I think nothing better portrays the Human Condition than the human figure. And some may argue with me, but I think if you show the figure, you immediately can tell, "Oh, this person is sad." So I think it's the most clear way of representing the Human Condition. Then once I went into high school, it was more old-style oriented art academy, a lot of emphasis on figure . . . I was reading a lot on how we evolved, and how we lost the human figure sometimes in the Western art. It seems that in Eastern Europe, they continued with the figure, with the tradition that we carry over there. There is that specific flair, I don't know if you've noticed. A lot of artists do that there. It's just somehow what comes up. Kind of like Russian writing-- there's something in it that distinctively removes it from the Western influence of style. I'm always drawn to a bit more deeper paintings, or the ones that are sadder in mode.

CK: That dismal content that you mentioned is what appealed to me, too.

ED: I really love abstract art, I love all kinds of art. But somehow it always comes back to figure.

CK: Coming back to Art is Long, Life is Short. If you feel that life is short, do you therefore feel that it is important how we conduct ourselves?

ED: I think it's the shortness that makes life important. If you lived forever, who would care? . . . I really value life and the quality of life. Starting with war, how people don't value life, it just becomes a commodity and there's no price to anything . . . We're removing ourselves from nature and all of that. So I guess our conducting should be going back into purity of humanity, getting humanized again. You know like Eric Fischel wanting to include that human figure for 9/11-- they said "Don't do that, people will be sad." Well, so what? We should get back into that deep state and embrace who we are and what happened. During the war, and then after the war, in Dubrovnik, Crotia, I lived five years there after the war in total peace, and they brought these French sculptors who went around and fixed these Renaissance buildings, and gothic buildings, and almost everything was fixed. How are you going to know what happened thirty years from now if you fix everything? So it was important to leave some signs of "Okay, grenade hit there," and I think they did that in the end. The idea is Life Goes On and we evolve . . . That's why I'm painting-- to keep that moment in history. This is what happened and I'm almost like a witness of things. And we all are witnesses of that moment. So it's interesting how humanity is going up and down.

CK: These are interesting times. Have you ever heard this expression: "Everybody's just doing the best they can"?

ED: Well, I'm a teacher too, so I hear kids all the time, I know they're not putting their best effort, but they always say "I did my best, I did my best. I put my best effort." And I'm just thinking "No you didn't!" I don't believe that. It should be a struggle, it should be pain. I teach adults too. There is one specific character in my Life Drawing class, and he always tears everything. He's 69 years old, so passionate. And I always tell him "When I grow up I want to be exactly like you, always struggling, not feeling confident, and being in that turmoil of not knowing what is going to happen next" . . . You shouldn't feel safe. When you feel safe, quit and do something else. That's why I'm doing the progression of my work, I go back and forth to realism and abstraction but it seems like it's cyclical and circular so I don't know what's going to happen . . . It's important to always be challenged, and challenge yourself.

CK: Another philosophical question: What do you think happens when we die?

ED: I don't know. I'm totally agnostic. Well, actually I was an atheist. I was born in the times when my parents, when nobody, was believing in anything. And then suddenly the war happened, and after the war everyone went back into religion. I mean taking huge steps towards embracing anything they could find. It was just ridiculous to me to look at this. . . Sometimes there's a balance between spirituality and where you're going crazy. I would say that I'm agnostic now. I'm not eliminating anything.