Authenticity and Consistency: An Interview with Artist Paris Black on Portraiture, Culture, and Film Influence

This is a transcript of a video interview with the Chicago based artist Paris Black

Yukin: Okay, so should we just jump into it? 

Paris: Yeah, we can definitely just jump in.

Yukin: Can you tell us about the moment that you decided to be an artist? What is kind of the outline of your career for you? 

Paris: The moment that I decided to be an artist, I feel like I was probably around 18, 19. I started with photography though in high school when I was about 15, and then I actually started painting my senior year of high school, so around 16, 17. And it's crazy because I didn't like to draw faces. I was just a graphite artist. And then I took an honors art course and my art teacher taught me how to paint just from projecting the image and then drawing it out. I felt like I always felt like that was cheating dope, but it helped me. It helped with proportions. Then when I went to college, that's when I really fell in love with oil painting and I took a Hardhead oil painting class, and it was just painting, painting, painting for four hours every other day, and it just made me fall in love with the process.