Aidan Koch just completed school and she’s looking forward to a productive and creative summer.  Her talent just seems to grow and develop at an exponential rate.  I sense she’s tuned into the source of endless love, the gift that keeps on giving.  She’s working on a follow up to her thesis project (Love Poems) called Night Poems and she also just finished a new comic called Yes.  Little Flashes is a new work she created just for Arthur, celebrating the ephemeral/eternal beauty of divine existence.

We’d like to get to know Aidan better; here’s some excerpts from an interview she did in March 09 with Privelidge House:

Which influential artist would you like to ask for advice?
I once wrote some fan mail to Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson and sent them a copy of my latest comic at the time. They were delightfully responsive to it. I think just understanding that the artists you admire are often just sweet, hard working people is enough to be an influence to me. Advice is good, but motivation seems key.

If you had to put up one piece of artwork on your wall and stare at it for a year, who would it be by and why?
Honestly, I have this dog painting from a thrift store that was done in like ’72. It’s an amorphous husky face and I think it would have to be the one. There’s a lot of art that I love and am influenced by, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather just laugh. It’s one of the best paintings I own.

Tell us about your creative process.
Usually I start with an agenda for painting or drawing. What am I doing? What am I looking at? What is it for? If I’m just going at it, the color palette I’m using is the most important part in creating a piece I like. There are very particular shades and tones and saturations that I use. They’re usually the same no matter what medium I’m working in and generally never fail me. Or I just use pencil and am pleased. There’s a lot of different feelings though that take hold of me and make me want to produce specific work. Sometimes they are simply circumstantial (being stuck in a location for an extended amount of time for instance) or I have a particular show coming up,or sometimes I’m really angry or hopelessly depressed, or sometimes I just don’t know what else to do with myself. There is no special environment necessary for me to work. Sometimes very personal is good. Other times, I just want to sit and draw people and buildings and coffee for hours and listen to conversations. I guess I’m a very skillful adapter.

Do you ever find weird connections between life and art?
It’s the same! The biggest thing I’ve noticed with myself is that my style, and wardrobe, and objects, and everything I surround myself with mirrors my artistic maturity. Or maybe it’s the other way around. These changes can be seen in palette, patterns, line quality, media, and seriousness. I look at pictures of myself and can pinpoint what I was painting at the moment. My interests and style change a lot, so there’s a lot for me to investigate into.

Which of your own works are you most proud of/ is most meaningful to you and why?
My comics and zines actually. I love some singular pieces, but I’ve emoted the most in the works I distributed. Knowing that I’m exposed to an audience for such an extended amount of time, in a variety of locations is terrifying. I’ve done some books that were very specific to me.

Do you think there are boundaries you would never cross in your art making?
I don’t think I can make any such claims at the moment. I only know that I will never give up drawing.

Do you have any magic cures for creative blocks?
I wouldn’t say I have blocks so much. I can always make work that I’m okay with. For work that I feel amazing about though, it’s usually essential that I am feeling a bit out of place or particularly self reflective. Things that I create while basically freaking out are usually what I relate to for the longest.

Which art mediums and brands do you prefer to use?
Gouache is lovely. Rives BFK & lightweight. Sometimes stonehenge. I pretty much exclusively use moleskin notebooks because they have toned pages and just look smart.

Which direction do you see your art heading in the future?
Expanding into space and the invisible.