7 Questions with Timka Szőke, ORIGINAL issue

Timka Szőke is a Hungarian artist. She was born in Budapest. Featured in Al-Tiba9 magazine.

Her versatility unfolds in illustration, lead glass design, and photography. Her artworks are inspired by the antique art trends, most notably Renaissance, Expressionism, Baroque, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau, also the cartoons and comics. She likes to combine old styles with new trends. Her characters carry a natural, exceptional beauty. She displays the facial mimicry that she spices with natural charm in her works. She also likes dreamy childish themes that are both visionary and realistic, facile, more cheerful. Whether it is a fictional fantasy world where anything can happen, we can be anyone, and we can go anywhere because nothing is impossible. Timka works in a pop surrealistic style. The classic, natural beauty characterizes the characters of her artworks.

www.timkaszoke.com | @sztimka

Interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj.

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Timea, you are a graphic designer, graduated from Metropolitan University’s Art faculty, and visual artist. What kind of education or training helped you develop your skillset?

I gained more new skills and new techniques that I experimented with a lot and combined with other technologies - I liked to work not only with oil but also with watercolor in several pictures.

I learned a lot about anatomy at the time. I loved drawing nudes, especially plus-size female figures. I was happy to develop further the themes of some of the paintings - such as Hellenistic, Renaissance, or Baroque art elements.

During my school years, my main passion was mainly comic drawing. My diploma work was a short sci-fi comic, for which I enjoyed making a variety of designs from interior designs to detailed elaboration of characters. At the time, the futuristic cyberpunk itself, the sci-fi world was attracted me a lot like pop art, surrealism, and so on. I also drew and painted many of my portraits in the spirit of this.

Please describe the intention behind your art. How do you successfully express this intention?

For me, art is a form of projection of several specific dimensions. Each artist processes his reality and vision in their works. Each of my images is a set of a given set of thoughts, a world of my own; I put many different feelings into one scene, one composition.

I have different eras, I paint portraits for a while. I often perceive different feelings when placed in images in an imaginary environment. You can be inspired by many things because every day, there is so much stimulus that hits the man that many times it is incomprehensible. As the world changes, with these tools, evolve, everything is modernized, the power of modern technology is facing us everywhere. This has been the most popular since the spread of the Internet, and millions of information flow per day. The most important information source is life itself. For me, it is a real endless philosophizing to think of the miracles of life and nature.

Art is relative; everyone is captivated by a diverse work. It also provides an exceptional experience. It is interesting to listen to the different feedbacks about my work.

Your work is a result of a various mix of inspirations from baroque, renaissance and expressionism, to fashion, digital art, and comics. As an artist, please tell our readers short stories that have been a big starter for you.

I have always been fascinated by art. I inherited this from my parents. My mother is a jewel designer, and my father, though he is a jurist, he draws and makes sculptures.

As a kid, I visited art museums with my mother practically every week, we went to the National Gallery, then to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Palace of Art and the National Museum. I loved books and storybooks to look at illustrations and gave an insight into that story. This has greatly influenced my early drawing worship.

I am interested in science and history. However, still, the works of fine art were most impressive to me—ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman art, Renaissance, Baroque, Expressionism, and Art Nouveau. The 19th century Hungarian artists are both architecturally and artistically fascinating. Budapest is complex and captivating; there are always exciting discoveries. The statues of the city itself have amazed my life.

Throughout your art, we perceive your self-portrait in different characters and expressions. The “Countess” has a rebel expression in a baroque style, like to be the Marie Antoinette of the 21st century. We are curious to know how do you relate yourself to your characters, please tell us more.

It is merely in one’s subconscious to experience one’s vision in the eyes of oneself. Besides, we see ourselves subconsciously most of the time. Our brains recognize the structure of our face into our consciousness, and this leads the artist’s hands.

There is indeed conscious self-expression in my work, an intention when I have a negative feeling. It’s when you recover from bad experience; you concretely rebel against the holding back force.

I took a bit of myself into the character from another dimension, which gives a particular reaction. I mixed the renaissance with a bit of extravagance in the painting, so the girl is in renaissance attire. Still, instead of the usual rigid, gloomy, dark-toned depiction, a liberated, bold, heroic female figure now looks back on us with a peculiar, selfish-like yet naughty mimicry, baroque style haircuts. In other words, her early modern character, like Marie Antoinette, for example, only in the case of the girl in the painting, creates a new direction in a narrative scene from the stained glass window of an old cathedral.

Your process includes photography, graphic design, mixing different tools, and exploring new techniques that are not traditional. In other work like “Ultra Girl,” you combine advertising notions with other symbols. How can you describe your artistic production and technique for our readers?

My technique is very involved in my paintings for which I used watercolor pencil, graphite, acrylic, oil pastel, watercolor at the same time. There were some images that I further developed after drying by adding other tools, such as felt-tip pens, ink, but for a few of my work, I use digital techniques.

What current project are you working on?

I am currently working on a Greek mythological inspired mini-series. I process Hellenistic figures in a specific environment, from my perspective. I had a similar idea in the plan for a long time, I further developed the projects, and now I am working on the implementation.

What is your favorite experience as an artist?

I think my favorite moment as an artist is that little moment in which I am alone, in front of a blank sheet, where my creativity is the limit, and my inspiration is up to heaven. That moment of uncertainty because I still don't know what this piece will look like, but at the same time, I feel a sense of power to create something mine.

What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future?

I am currently working on pieces of social inclusion, which go beyond the usual and can be seen through our hands and ears. I am also working on pieces that can change the way we imagine museum art, dealing with more profound issues that are currently affecting our society. My plan for the future is to break stereotypes with my work, manage to break cultural barriers and unite people through feelings and empathy, to be able to share my vision with more people around the world to create awareness of situations that many are ignoring.

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