From Contemporary Art Curator’s interview with Jack Balas:

Your body of work has transitioned from landscape and constructed environments to a more central focus on figures since 2003. Could you discuss this evolution in your thematic concerns? How do you see your earlier themes of landscape resonating in your current focus on figurative subjects?

Your portfolio spans painting, photography, writing, and sculpture, often interweaving these media. How do you navigate the boundaries between these forms in your creative process, and how do they inform one another in the context of a single artwork or series?

Let me address both of these questions by sketching out my evolution or trajectory, that has always been more intuitive and dependent upon circumstance than something consciously mapped out. I began painting watercolors in high school, at first in an art club but then going off by myself for years painting. When it came time for college, however, instead of an art school I wound up studying architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. My casual interest in architecture didn’t last freshman year, though, but the Institute of Design was there and I spent my sophomore year learning photography and studying all sorts of graphic design.

Read the full interview
Browse all of Jack Balas’ work at CLAMP.