Studio Visit with Chanel Kreuzer

Originally recorded May 18, 2022.

George Irwin of Western Gallery visits with Chanel Kreuzer, whose work centers on landscape painting and who is based in Texas hill country, east of Austin, for a wide-ranging conversation about the artist’s work, process, and studio practice.

Transcript note: Speaker labels were assigned from the source audio where available and dialogue context otherwise. Paragraph breaks were added for readability, and verbal filler was lightly edited. Joint labels mark rapid or overlapping exchanges. This was prepared from an automated transcription, so minor transcription errors may remain.

Instagram Live studio visit—May 18, 2022

Watch the original video on Instagram (33:08)

Participants: George Irwin and Chanel Kreuzer

George Irwin: Hello out there! George Irwin from Western Gallery here and today I have the pleasure of introducing a new artist to our Impermanent Collection. Chanel Kreuzer is a talented artist outside of Austin in the hill country or sort of the hillcountry, she's the other way east. And she is a very talented landscape and all kinds of stuff really artists like I think that my wife has a piece of hers that has birds in it. And she's shown in a few different group shows with Western Gallery, and this is our first time to present a body of her work altogether. So it's very exciting. And we're gonna hop on with her and talk to her about her work, her process, career, whatever. And I hope that you enjoy. Let me know if you have any questions throughout. Just pop them in the comment thing and we'll see if we can answer them for you. All right, there she is. Hey Chanel. How are you doing?

Chanel Kreuzer: Good I am... I had to actually exit the studio because I don't think it was like allowing me to connect to the live so yeah it's really well insulated in there.

George Irwin: there. Oh, lost you for just a second. Well insulated but the service may be not so great

George Irwin / Chanel Kreuzer: and maybe even not so good outside little bit. Yeah, yeah. We're out in the country so.

George Irwin: Yeah well awesome! Well I was just telling people that this is the first time we've been able to present like a body of your work and it's really exciting to see all these pieces together and you've been working on these kind of this spring around in the area, you know inspired by the area around where you live and where your studio is

Chanel Kreuzer: and you work right? Yeah so I always paint from uh lives. You know i think it's important to document the beautiful moments in nature um and so that's kind of where this collection began. So you know spring I feel like was a little bit, we got some late blooms here and so once everything kind of started to bloom that's when I started to get really inspired by the land around here um I think it's important to bring awareness to um the conversation or conservation of the land. So that's kind of what I'm trying to do when I see, you know, these flower fields and the cattle and stuff like that because any push further and further out

George Irwin: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's interesting you mentioned like a flower fields, and it's nice to we know once you when you are out in the country to see kind of like these naturally occurring like wildflowers and, you know, flora that is like native to the area as opposed to different kind of like landscaped yards or things like that.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah. Yeah so are those? The service is so spotty.

George Irwin: Can you hear me? That's okay. I can now yeah. Are those like, are those like brown eyed Susans or sunflowers? Or what are the...

Chanel Kreuzer: They're wild flowers and then brown eyed Susan. So they're actually mixed together. And we didn't have any of those wild flowers on our property. And we actually had some work done and we had some dirt brought in from Smithville. And so they were actually like such a surprise for us and for the neighbors. They were like, we live on the sand it's mostly like really sandy here. So you know plants and stuff like that are they don't take. And so there were really excited to see that like all these wildflowers had spread in the front of our gate of our ranch gate. So it was, yeah.

George Irwin: That's so cool, huh? Yeah I mean, I've been to McDade, a good friend of mine used to live out there and yet I always remember being like just super sandy. There's grass but it was coming out of the sand that was always so surprising.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah we don't really have grass on this property. So we'll have like, hold up the plant watermelons to well here there's like a watermelon festival here that we're like, maybe people are...

George Irwin: Cool. Well and so the bison that you have in a couple of these pieces one of them well once sold and then the other one is still available for the moment but is that on that was from a neighbor's property? Yeah so that's

Chanel Kreuzer: going to be, so on the backside of our property it's the Heritage Ranch which is a really good friend of my husband's and they bought that property and started a cattle ranch back in their 30s. And so it's still there and it's a working ranch and behind them there's you know, all the bison and it's really, I mean, it's just really neat to see because this land hasn't been touched in over a hundred years. And it's still a working ranch so, you know I have people come in from the city to come

George Irwin: visit us and they're like what are the paddles doing?

Chanel Kreuzer: You know, I'm like they've been here for a very long time.

George Irwin: Yeah cool. sort of the, I guess, I don't know if it's a silver lining but like it's interesting how the expansion of like the Austin Metroplex is impacting you know the surrounding area and also like just you know uncovering these sort of gems that are around the area that most city folk or

George Irwin / Chanel Kreuzer: suburb dwellers don't see. Yeah and I mean my husband and I um

George Irwin: I think that's what attracts us so much to the south, right?

Chanel Kreuzer: Like we wanted to face where we could live off the country or live out in the country. And it's about being self-reliant and it's constantly challenging every day. And it just feels like you have to be very independent out here. There's so many challenges, you know, like we had to figure out how to create a ranch gate because the people in the area kind of wanted to some of those traditions to stay. They want you to have like a ranch that looks Like what they have. So they come and they help you when they tell you how to do these things which is really cool.

George Irwin: Huh, that's awesome. It's interesting to think about too because in looking at your work like you see that you're clearly really inspired by the area around you but to think about this is your job, you're working in your studio and out around painting all the time. And kind of like dealing with all the challenges of learning about life, I guess in rural side of things, I think.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, there's times where my husband has to remind me to be really aware when I'm out here because I become really comfortable and yesterday I was in the studio, the dogs were barking and I thought, oh like you know maybe someone's working on the property next door and I looked outside and there was a bobcat not in a trash can. And so sometimes there's I have this false sense of security because we do, we have to have guys out here just because there's a lot of coyotes and stuff like that but I'm in the studio, art studio I wasn't ever thinking that I needed to be prepared when I was in the art studio. Yeah, you know and I like

George Irwin: Strapped and painting. Yeah

Chanel Kreuzer: Exactly. Oh man

George Irwin: Well, um chanel can you I guess? Tell us a little bit about I mean, I think we've been talking about sort of the inspiration and you've talked about it a little bit before for these pieces but You want to tell us a little about like where you once you get kind of like an idea of what to do for a piece or a series of pieces. How you take that idea and magic into reality.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, so I think So, have the fundamentals of art because we have a color theory that way our monies are

George Irwin: like that. Sorry you just cut out there for a second but I'm going to try and interpret okay? I think you said something about it being important to think about the fundamentals of art and like balance and color theory and then.

Chanel Kreuzer: So I'm always looking for when I'm out in here and talking to anyone, so I'll usually do a rough sketch of a composition that I will work and I'll write down all of the colors that I can pull these harmonies together. So I have a book where I put all of the, I'll come to you. And I often say that I create work as fast as I destroy work because, but you learn from each piece. There's times where I'll look at a piece of artwork and I'm like, although it was beautiful in real life, the composition is off on the painting or it's not harmonious. and I'll learn from it and kind of move on instead of forcing it to work. So, I do paint kind of fast. I think I like to be intuitive as well as knowing the fundamentals is important but you also gotta trust your gut a little bit too.

George Irwin: Yeah, I think your work has a good balance of that. I mean, I thing knowing the fundamental and then having practiced them enough to where they are just sort of like intrinsic in what you do, allows you to work fast. And then having that fast, energetic kind of brush action really is just like really nice to see and like you can feel the energy on the canvas and that's really exciting. And you say you work fast but again it's like you work faster because you put in thousands and thousands of hours up to this point.

Chanel Kreuzer: Right, and like one painting, you know, it does still take hours to finish once I get to the canvas but there's also, like you said, hours of friction prior. I'm constantly reading books and taking online courses on learning the fundamentals, the compositions, the colors and stuff like that. So I think painting fast, it's about creating a painterly look with the brush strokes. Not really creating it the work fast but yeah.

George Irwin: So once you have your idea and you like you have like kind of like a concept for your composition maybe you've done a sketch or two and I want to like footnote this part but like you reference your colors that you wrote down. Do you take that and make a sketch on your canvas or do you just have like a background underpainting color and you just kind of

Chanel Kreuzer: go at it? I just kind-of go to the canvas and I think a lot of people are kind of surprised by that sometimes they'll see me working on you know on

George Irwin: Instagram and they're like, you didn't even create a background sketch. But I already

Chanel Kreuzer: before I created the painting, I have an idea of what I want it to look like? Does it ever look like no? And I think there's that element of surprise when you start working that kind keeps artists going to the campus. I always say that if I know everything then that's when like I would be scared that my work would be boring. You know, I'm constantly surprised when I go to the work and it's almost you're constructing and then deconstructing. And there's times where during the deconstruction I literally am like no this is just not going to work and I'll get rid rid of it. And then there's times where, you know, you create a new technique for yourself. Not so much that I invented that but I'm like oh that's how that style developed.

George Irwin: It's like a discovery. Yeah. That's awesome and maybe that's one of the things that keeps your work exciting to look at too is that sort of the push and pull of like knowing how to paint, but also like discovering what the painting is. And you never know what's going to happen. Like you said, maybe you end up with something that you don't like and you wipe it or start another one. That made me think about talking with a friend a long time ago at a concert. The most exciting moments to me when hearing people play music live is when the band is jamming or something. But it feels like they are about to just like lose it. Like, they're not going to be able to pull this back together, you know? Like, it's... They're going out there too far and it sounds crazy and then all of a sudden it just comes back together and everybody freaks out. And that I think is kind of like

George Irwin: a similar thing that you're talking about where you gotta... You have to like kind of take those

Chanel Kreuzer: brave steps and make it come together in the end. Yeah, I mean you definitely want to have a plan of action but also not be afraid to take risks because that's where you start to really kind of find yourself and your style through the work. People will ask me like how do you find your style and I'm like, I don't know that I have one. Maybe I do but you'll only find that through the work. You're working. That's when you start to discover more and more things and I think it's important to be incredibly disciplined. Yes, I'm always looking for inspiration but I also find inspiration through working.

George Irwin: Yeah, I mean that's a good point. There's something to being able to just like start making something and then have it become something you know even if you don't have something that you're trying to embody with the work itself when you start maybe it reveals itself.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, I mean, I heard someone say creativity comes through being creative. So you know, I think if you overthink things too much, you start to almost get like analysis

George Irwin: paralysis, you know?

Chanel Kreuzer: It's like just do the work and it can... It doesn't matter what it is at first. And once you start working then that's when all the ideas start to kind of come. You're like okay this was a bad pain. That's okay. toss it, get the bad ones out of the way and that's when really good work starts to develop.

George Irwin: Yeah that's good. That's important I think for artists to recognize as well that not only are there bad paintings but sometimes they're very necessary so that you can process what it is that you're trying to discover by doing that bad painting.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah it might be a new technique that you say it's not going to work for this but this will look really great in another type of painting.

George Irwin: So yeah, awesome. So oh okay so I wanted to come back to your writing down the colors. Yeah so you write down just like blue, teal, green.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, yeah. My verbal will be in the car and I'm like Oh, pink, lime and blue and orange.

George Irwin: And my husband's like, what?

Chanel Kreuzer: I'm like, mapping color combinations that you know, that I just saw in the sunset and then like, I'll type it on my phone or I'll write it down. And then when I go to studio, I have a photo but the photo never actually resembles, you know the accurate colors But because I wrote it right, that was a line green in this section. And so then yeah.

George Irwin: So then you can kind of go discover what the colors actually are and how what the relationships are to each other.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, I do know with color. And it does come from previously, I previously owned a salon and did hair. So I used to say that I hate hair for a living. But that's all I was ever doing when you know, I can look at person like this color of hair would look good on your phone or that kind of thing.

George Irwin: Interesting yeah so You may have just said this, but I cut out for just a second. But so when you start to, When you get back to the studio and you start figuring out your colors, do you start then? Would you say that you start an actual painting by figuring out the palette first?

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, sometimes yes. So I'll go ahead and start to mix my colors. And I do work from a linear palette because I do love color so much. If I had a full palette, I think I would just wanna incorporate all the colors and now more than ever, I'm starting to value the importance of grays

George Irwin: and I always tell artists, you know what?

Chanel Kreuzer: I know that we love color but that color is not gonna pop unless you have the proper grays in there. So, I know what colors I'm going to want to work with. And then once I actually start painting sometimes that's when I'll add like a pop of you know a certain color in there that I didn't necessarily plan for it to be in that specific area but I knew that I wanted to use that color.

George Irwin: you just feel like it needed something that then that's kind of like what pulls I don't know the rug really pulls the room together I guess. Cool. Let's see, I was okay so I had a thought then a minute ago about the colors and the

Chanel Kreuzer: palette. Oh, okay so you work in acrylic mostly? I use it. Sorry go ahead. You were cutting out when

George Irwin: you asked the question. Oh I was gonna say you work an acrylic mostly. Do you do you use like thick body acrylics or do you used like the like blendable kind or what kind of like what are your

Chanel Kreuzer: preferred materials, I guess. Yeah so I use golden acrylics and they're pretty thick but

George Irwin: what's interesting is I actually watered them down quite a bit. Okay yeah um I think I kind

Chanel Kreuzer: of start off with a wash and I'd like to leave some of that wash showing through at the end of the painting. So it's really careful that I don't overwork a painting because I do like to see some of that under, under coming through and kind of add layers to that. And so that's

George Irwin: when I want the acrylic paint to be a little bit thicker. And that's why I use um thicker paint

Chanel Kreuzer: that I can water down and then also make it kind of thicker towards the end. Usually

George Irwin: when I'll start to add thicker brush strokes of paint that you can see. The buffalo actually,

Chanel Kreuzer: the clouds are an underpainting, the wash and start to like layers add on to the buffalo.

George Irwin: Gotcha very cool. Do you have any like do you just do you use like a spray gun or like tricks for keeping your acrylic wet or do you just work with it as it dries?

Chanel Kreuzer: It's like cleaning water and paint. I just like clean the paintbrush with water onto the paint but I do use a sponge sometimes.

George Irwin: Okay. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Let's see what else should we do? So you just sold like 10 pieces

Chanel Kreuzer: in the square foot show? Yeah so I think it was 11 pieces under, it was under two days. I think the first 10 sold in like 30 minutes and then the last piece sold

George Irwin: the following day. Wow, can we talk a little bit I guess about how you transitioned from doing the hair color into painting full-time? And when doing that did you... We've talked before about how since you had the salon, like you understand the way business works a little bit and approached your new career in a strategic way. But can you talk a little bit about what it's like to kind of just be like okay well now I'm painting? Yeah. And the way it's the path that's been to get to the point where you are where your, this is what you do.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, so I think I've always lived a very creative lifestyle, a bit of an unconventional lifestyle. And that's one of the things that draws me to want to live out in the country. I mean, I know it would be easier to live in the city and I know it would Be easier to work for someone else. But yeah, I had open my own salon. And even though I was a hairdresser, I have made my entire life my entire like of been an artist. My mom had cultures that I created when I was three and four years old. So um, I always I guess if you ask me if you asked me when I was a child what I would be when I grew up, I would have said an artist so yeah. And so I chose to do you know, I went to the Paul Mitchell Institute and I went to community college and took art classes. And I thought to myself, I would like to live out on my own. I need to find a way to create a business.

Chanel Kreuzer: And so that's why I chose to open a salon. And it felt like OK, I have this salon. Now let me start to work on creating this art business for when I become older or retired. And that was always in the back of my mind. And the more and more I started to paint, the more I stated to put my work out there. I started build a clientele and buyers and I was really like surprised that so many people would reach out for commissions and it was a bit overwhelming because I still had a business going on that I was trying to run. And then the 2020 pandemic happened.

George Irwin: And I was like, you know what?

Chanel Kreuzer: This is just too much going on. I need to pick one thing and focus. And so that was a great opportunity for me. I shut the salon down and I went full-on time, full-time artist. And so I think one thing

George Irwin: is that no matter what type of business you own,

Chanel Kreuzer: you always have to be creative with the way that you put yourself out there and the way that you find clients and sell things and stuff like that.

George Irwin: Yeah, that's cool. I think it seems that there's a common thread about a lot of artists that are becoming known that just decided to just go for it when the pandemic hit.

Chanel Kreuzer: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, you know, you can't predict everything. You can't protect how your career will be. You just kind of have to be self-reliant and figure it out. And you're not going to figure it out until you're out on your own and struggling. And you can create a struggle.

George Irwin: Yeah, it's like the thing where you don't know what you don't know until you know what you don' t know. Yeah. Well cool. Well Chanel would you mind? I don't if the connection will be friendly or not but would you mind kind of like showing this around your studio a little bit and giving us sort of some close-ups of the pieces? Yeah, should i turn the video around do you think that would be better?

George Irwin / Chanel Kreuzer: Um, maybe. Yeah that might be good. I can like come outside and then that way you can see

George Irwin: this right here. So your husband built the studio out of a shipping container right?

Chanel Kreuzer: A shipping container we haven't painted the outside yet but let me turn this around. So here's the outside. So we plan on painting it black so that it kind of just blends into the background of the woods, and then there are some lights on the outside eventually this will be an entire deck. Oh wow, that's a patio area. Yeah and so there's that.

George Irwin: And then um so is uh Is he looking to do more of this? I think I just saw that um He started a new company brand, Waldworx maybe.

Chanel Kreuzer: Yeah, yes. So it's actually a team of a lot of different craftsmen from the Austin area, Bastrop area. And so you're talking about a group of men with 20 plus experience and woodworking, tile all kinds of stuff. So they're coming together and doing custom shelves. And my husband's a builder, so he does custom bathrooms and stuff like that. So we are building, we are actually building our house and working. So yeah.

George Irwin: Cool, these are beautiful Chanel. I wish the resolution was a little better but you guys can go see them up close personal on western.gallery. There's a lot of photos and you can check out all

Chanel Kreuzer: the little details there. So this painting is kind of like what I was talking about how there's an underwash for the clouds but then there's also a lot layers in the buffalo. Is the resolution still kind of...

George Irwin / Chanel Kreuzer: I mean it's okay. Okay and then let's turn this back around. Okay there we go.

George Irwin: So do you work on the wall up there or do you have like an easel or work on the table flap? Or how does that... I work on

Chanel Kreuzer: the wall, um I typically am standing, I listen to music while I'm painting and And then the smaller pieces, I do work on this little wooden easel. I'm working on this Little Guy. So smaller pieces are here, larger pieces are on the wall so that you have space to kind of back up and look at the painting from a distance to know whether or not it's going to read well in someone's living room when someone walks in, that kind of thing.

George Irwin: Yeah, do you um and so I know like most oil painters have a number of them going at the same time because they are for things to dry. Do you do more than one painting at a time or you just like knock one out next painting.

Chanel Kreuzer: Um, I usually will knock one it out and Like with this collection. I would do one and then I put them all together on the wall and I would come back to each painting. It'd be like, okay, you know more work. And I wanted the collection to look cohesive so the colors I did map out before I started the entire collection. Right now it's really hot in Texas, so there's a lot of warm phthalo blues in there and more add yellows and that

George Irwin: kind of thing. So when they're on the wall I'm like okay this one needs a little bit

Chanel Kreuzer: more blue or if this one looks you know not warm enough and that kind of

George Irwin: thing. Oh cool. Yeah. So you kind of were looking at them all like in the context of each other. That's really cool. Yeah. Well, cool Chanel. Let's see you are on Instagram here at Chanel Kreuzer underscore art maybe? Yes. And then what's your website? Chanelsart.com. ChanelsArt.com cool. So go check that out folks. Check out her work on western.gallery and I don't know she's always up to painting something awesome so enjoy and Chanel thank you so much for chatting today and for making this work for the Impermanent Collection it's really fun to show. Yeah thanks for having me George and I think half the collection is cool right? Yeah, half is gone at least before we started talking. So if you got your eye on one, grab it now. There was somebody that missed out on one earlier today. But all right. Thanks y'all. Thank you everybody for tuning in.