Eve Luckring
Los Angeles, CA
Age 61.5
What keeps you excited in the studio?
Learning
Looking back at your trajectory as an artist, how would you say your work has developed?
My trajectory as an artist has developed from a narrow commitment to the craft of one medium, photography, to a constant search for the best material form– moving image, installation, language, sound– to serve as a container for my conceptual and perceptual explorations. A channeling of wonder in years of anger; wonder in years of sadness; wonder… often with a sense of humor, sometimes not. Finding beauty in it all.
What role do you think the artist has in today’s society?
I believe the role of the artist is to reveal and illuminate the hard questions that are not being asked. To model what quality attention looks like. To embody all that is necessary to living a truly full life– living creatively– those crucial things that cannot be quantified in terms our society uses to measure worth. The question is how to navigate the deeply embedded class values of the mainstream art market which masks a conservative money-based perspective with lip service to the radical offerings of art making.
What’s the most important advice you could give to an aspiring artist?
Pursue your own self growth as passionately as you pursue your art making. Take risks. Don’t be seduced by trends that are not aligned with your core being. Give your work your all.
Find community to help you stay sane.
Does age matter in art? Why or why not?
Yes, age matters because it is often related to the range and depth of one’s experiences and the scope of one’s world view.
My artmaking as a younger person was powered by a much rawer energy that came from an internal insistence that new worlds could be imagined and materialized beyond the way things actually are.
Now, as an older person, I think I spend more time examining the intricate interrelationships that already exist between seemingly disparate parts of being. I approach it all with a deeper sense of humility that comes from a quieter contemplative space that has processed and integrated a lot of the wild and roaming of my younger self.
What can we look forward to from you next?
My second book, Signal to Noise is due out in 2025.
Is there anything else you would like to share about being an artist later in life?
Living as an artist is more and more on my own terms.
@thetenderbetween
