All in the details
Andrea Simonsen, Artichoke, oil, 8 x 10.
This story was featured in the October 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art October 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
IF YOU’VE EVER sliced through a fresh artichoke, you’ve inevitably observed the vegetable’s intricate inner layers and alluring web of colors, gradually shifting in hue from lime green in its outer leaves to pink, tender ripples at its heart. In these elegant details, Utah artist Andrea Simonsen saw a still life waiting to be painted. “Color combined with texture are the two things I look for in a subject—and complexity,” she says. “I like to challenge myself.”
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- Andrea Simonsen, Measure Up, oil, 16 x 12.
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- Andrea Simonsen, Everyday Kisses, oil, 6 x 14.
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- Andrea Simonsen, Create Your Reality, oil, 12 x 9.
Simonsen’s ARTICHOKE, featuring the vegetable against a solid blue background, exemplifies her realistic style and painstaking approach. She describes her process as “very detailed and very meticulous.” Some people have told her they wouldn’t have the patience for such a process, “but it’s very therapeutic for me,” Simonsen notes, crediting her methods to artist Chris Young, her mentor at Utah Valley University. Young taught the procedures she’s been following in her own work since earning her Bachelor of Fine Art in 2016.
“I’ll take 20 to 30 photographs with a single setup until I get what I want,” says Simonsen. “Then, in Photoshop, I make it exactly how I want to paint it.” Next, in pencil, she draws out her imagery on paper that’s affixed to a board, delineating all the details of her still life. She then seals her drawing with a gloss varnish to protect the paper from her oil paints. “Then I [apply] Liquin and start painting,” says the artist. “It’s time-consuming, but I love that process.”
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- Andrea Simonsen, Tomato, Tomato, oil, 14 x 11.
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- Andrea Simonsen, In Between the Roses, oil, 28 x 40.
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- Andrea Simonsen, Fruit on a Fork, oil, 20 x 28.
Despite her attention to detail, though, perfection isn’t the only thing she’s after. Simonsen, for example, seeks out an array of subject matter that displays both perfection and flaws unique to the object, like “the folds and the tears” in lettuce leaves, she says. When she once dropped a ripe garden tomato, the artist still opted to include it—front and center—in a painting depicting a handful of other plump tomatoes, its ripped skin revealing its inner flesh. Simonsen has also been known to pair up objects “you wouldn’t normally see together,” she says, “keeping in mind the colors, contrasts in light and dark, and perspective. I like to tell a story, but I also like to give viewers an opportunity to think of something in their own life to relate it to. I leave it up to viewers to interpret.” —Kim Agricola
representation
Meyer Gallery, Park City, UT; www.andreasimonsenfineart.com.
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- Andrea Simonsen, Plein de Vie, oil, 20 x 20.
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- Andrea Simonsen, When in Rome, oil, 12 x 9.
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- Andrea Simonsen, Windsor Love Affair, oil, 20 x 28.
This story was featured in the October 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art October 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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