Chris Regner
Chris Regner is an artist born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He works serially, using autobiography as a jumping-off point for satire, humiliation, and explorations of the grotesque. His work tackles a variety of topics, including religious and cultish indoctrination, the effect of technology on societal discourse, how to navigate adulthood as a male with no strong role models, and stereotypical notions of masculinity that find their way into every subject he explores. Using his personal experiences as a foundation, his paintings have questioned archetypes found within these themes, all the while challenging his own values and beliefs. He positions himself as an anti-proselytizer, complicating the easy answer and presenting morally questionable individuals with the intent of causing contradictory interpretations by the viewer. Navigating this discomfort is vital when searching for a greater truth. Chris is a recent graduate of RISD’s MFA Painting program. He is represented by Kravets Wehby Gallery. He has shown his work internationally. His work is a part of multiple private collections internationally
Hi Chris, can you tell us about your background. How and when did you first start to paint?
I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’ve been interested in art since I was a child. I would copy the drawings from my comic books and video game box art. I actually didn’t start painting until senior year of undergrad. I’d always just been interested in drawing and it took me a while to get into using paint. I learned how to oil paint, sort of, switched to acrylic, and eventually adopted the airbrush.
What is your main source of inspiration?
It’s hard to nail down a single source as I find inspiration in many disparate things, some kind of odd. If I had to pick one thing it would be people that are highly skilled at what they do. That can be anything from cooking, fighting, playing video games, woodworking, etc. People at the high end of their fields always inspire me to get off my ass and get to work. I’ve always wanted to be a person like that, so the striving continues.
What is your process like? How do you begin to work?
I typically imagine an image built around an idea that strikes me as worthwhile. I mentally begin to piece it together, and I typically do this while I’m working on another painting. Sometimes I can nail the composition down in my head, sometimes I can’t. I go into photoshop and I start constructing a digital collage. They usually start very awkward and require a bit of messing around to get right. Sometimes I can finish one in a couple of hours, and some take me a week. Unfortunately, this isn’t something I can rush, so I try to just let them come naturally. After this the process is pretty speedy, depending on the size. I’ll pre-mix all my paints and just get to work. Painting is the most fun I have in the process and I probably get to do it the least when compared to taping, making a collage, and prepping surfaces.
What does your artwork represent?
At its most basic level, it represents whatever is preoccupying my mind at the moment. Since I work with collage, every piece of that puzzle represents a different facet of the overarching idea. I try to emulate the way Picasso and the cubists utilized collage, where the parts equal the whole. The specific ideas vary from series to series, but reading my paintings like a puzzle of sorts is the connecting thread.
How do you choose the characters of your paintings? What does portrait mean to you?
I build my figures around an idea, so every part of them is either related to a narrative or an overarching theme. I very rarely depict a straightforward portrait in the more traditional sense. I think of the format of portraiture and figurative painting as a scaffolding that I can attach different pieces to. If you take a scarecrow apart you are left with hay, a flannel shirt, a sun hat. If you take my portraits apart you would experience the same scattershot meaning without that underlying framework to tie it together. Portraiture in its typical form is concerned with encapsulating the aura of an individual, whereas I want my “portraits” to encapsulate an idea.
When did you become interested in the airbrush? And why?
I started to notice artists gravitating towards the use of this tool back in 2013-2014. I was not having much fun trying to paint in acrylic with brushes, as I was trying to get a seamless, flat application of paint. I decided to pick up an airbrush to see if it would work better. I quickly discovered that it was very similar to drawing, so I began to learn how to render imagery with it and fell in love.
How has your practice changed over time?
Early on I had a deep focus on life drawing. I spent hours every week trying to hone my observational skills. After I started to become decently proficient at it, I wanted to figure out how to integrate these studies into a more fully-formed work of art. I began to use digital collages as a way to create compositions to make work from. This has been the basis of every other series I’ve done. The idea changes, but the way of constructing an image has stayed relatively the same. A major difference now is that I let the collages be awkward in how they’re constructed instead of attempting to make them seamless. I have dabbled in 3D modeling, video game engines, and VR sculpting, but mainly I use photoshop and paint.
Describe a real-life situation that inspired you?
Here are a few:
1. Seeing Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait with Two Circles” painting at the Milwaukee Art Museum
2. Watching Greg Lutzka skate at 4 Seasons Skatepark in Milwaukee
3. Meeting Laurence Juber and having him personally demonstrate how to play his songs on acoustic guitar
4. Meeting Chris Walla from Death Cab for Cutie
5. Sharing a studio with my fiance
6. Seeing the Greek and Roman sculptures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
7. Having a 15-minute studio visit with Dana Schutz
How has the city you are living and working in influenced you and the art you make?
Living in the midwest has helped me to form a tolerance for disparate viewpoints, as I don’t live in an area with a dominant political discourse. I think this has helped me realize that I don’t wish to make paintings about righteousness or to champion something in particular. Moral ambiguity in art is fascinating to me if you dare to call art “moral”. I enjoy challenging and uncomfortable work. This definitely stems from the mix of rural and metropolitan opinions that I’ve been exposed to over the years.
What is your dream project?
This is a difficult question and one I’ve been asked a few times. I’ve never been able to come up with a great answer, as my work has shifted a lot in the past. It makes it difficult to nail down a real dream project. I will say, from where I’m at now with my work, that making huge, epic paintings like Rubens managed to would be amazing. I also find myself drawn to theatricality and I feel a small, irritating itch to do something like a film or 3D rendered animation. It’s something I keep thinking about so we’ll see if that ever comes to fruition.
