Multidisciplinary. Aleksandra Sidor

What are the themes in your work?
I think that there are many and every painting has its own story, but there are certainly some recurring themes. I’m particularly interested in the evolution of morality and awareness. My approach always seemed to be rather psychological but I can not escape the fact that those themes are often entangled with religions and spirituality. 

Where do you get your inspiration from?
I love everything about culture, low and high. I think of my artworks as of mixes of inspirations. The music inspirations are often mixed with great paintings, movies, books, tv shows, poems, costume design, theatre etc. I’m trying to be as intuitive as possible, therefore I really enjoy seeing the finished artwork and finding the aesthetic inspirations from the cultural findings that I have had recently surrounded myself with.  

How would you explain your style?
I get bored very quickly so I try to change the way I work as much as possible. My style can depend at times from the approach that I’m taking. I paint from photographs, memory, prepare collages or experiment with apps. There are still a lot of ways that I’m excited to try out.

I love old illustrations, maybe that’s why I really enjoy shaping lines. I’ve also noticed a lot of ornamental tendencies in my work.

What is the best part about being an artist?
Being curious is very important to me and it is part of my practice to research things that intrigue me. It is very vital and makes life liveable. Sometimes I enjoy not knowing where the work is going, sometimes I like everything to be planned ahead. The way I work can be a clue, at times, for what is going on with my mental health.

Apart from art. What are your interests and hobbies?
I have recently discovered that my biggest hobby is to read people’s comments and ratings of movies and books online. I am still convinced that there are more factors at play than just a „psychological profile“ of a person writing the comment. Seeing huge amount of different readings of one piece, always gives me joy. I guess, I just find people fascinating.

What are you working on right now? What do you have planned for the next few months?
I might be moving countries in a month. It means having a new studio which would enable me to get into some wood and metal work. I also promised myself to work around the parable of ‚ The Blind man and the elephant‘. It exists now across many cultures and religions, nevertheless it originated in Buddhist texts. After touching the elephant for the first time, blind men discovered that their experiences significantly differ. The mismatched perceptions of the elephant caused some men to accuse others from a group of deception. The moral of this parable is that people should avoid claiming to possess the absolute truth, which seems to be made out of many subjective, limited experiences. I really like this parable.

Aleksandra Sidor – www.aleksandrasidor.com