Alternative Realities: Carla Saide
We are back with another alternative realities for you! Today, we take you with us into a small flat in Hamburg, to meet Carla Saide, a 20-year-old artist and on-going student of “fine arts”. In a few weeks she will move to Amsterdam to begin her fist semester. We took the chance to tune in with a young woman on the very start on her way into an industry that fascinates and amazes. What inspires young people now-a-days inspire to do art? We were stunned by the pieces that take up nearly half of Carla’s bedroom. Painting’s paintbrush and palettes- a self-made little art studio. Dive into another, alternative reality with us.
Briefly introduce yourself, and tell us, what is your most recent project.
Hello, my name is Carla and I am a visual artist from Hamburg. My main medium is acrylic on canvas. My recent project is called “shadow-work series” and circles around certain happenings in my past and the feelings that stuck with me since then. I am aiming to paint three big canvases for it. It’s a very intense, and personal project.
When did you start doing art?
It always felt very natural for me to be creative and to do art. In my childhood I loved to do pottery and was a member of the school theatre group. As a kid, my mom used to call me a „träumerle” which is a German word for “little dreamer”. So I guess I always have had my head a little “in the clouds”, searching for creative ways to explore my surroundings and to express myself. After I graduated school, I really got into painting and quickly developed the style I work with right now.
How would you describe your style of painting?
I like to paint very abstractly, but without fully losing shapes and features. I also love to work with shading and variations of the same base colour. The “in- between” is often the most interesting part, not only in paintings, but also in life in general. I experienced that good and bad emotions are often very intertwined and that there’s not a clear black or white. There are always several layers that together create an emotion and I always try to reflect that complexity in my paintings as well.
What distinguishes painting from other forms of creative expressions like music or writing for you, and why do you want to study art?
Painting feels really fitting and natural for me since I’m a very visual person. But I love other forms of art too, and I really enjoy being around people from the music industry or writers or any kind of people that create. When I look back at my life, it really does make a lot of sense for me to be where I am right now. I often find words unfitting as they are so rational, to express and explain myself and my feelings. When I paint, I am able to skip the rational part. So it feels just right for me to go further in this direction.
Our format is called “alternative realities”, where do you see the connection between “art” and “reality”?
For me, art is great to tune in with myself. There’s always a lot going on in my life, it’s fast and can be very stressful. The creation of my paintings is slow and intuitive, it really centers me. I guess you could say that with painting, I am able to create a different, and alternative “reality”, in which I am able to “sit with my emotions” and where I can take my time to really acknowledge them. It’s a space where I give them the room they need. Acknowledging my feelings, and really working with them and through them, makes it also so much easier to talk about them because I already know all the layers and it’s not that overwhelming anymore.
Is there anything you would like to add, in order to make your pieces more understandable?
No, not really, because I think it is very fascinating how everyone sees something different in my paintings. It often reflects my relationship to that person, or where they are in their lives right now. If they’re happy or not. I often find myself really liking other interpretations of my work or being surprised of how different they are to one another. I think, it’s not necessary to interpret an art piece “in the right way” as long as it moves you and makes you requestion and rethink, it kind of does everything right.
go check out Carla’s paintings and more on her art acount on instagram; @ccc.333.ccc_
all photos by: Sia Foday
