In the Studio with Hayal Pozanti: Shapes & Color

“I first started painting on square panels. At the time I was thinking about icons in programs like Twitter or Facebook—they’re all in a square format—and then Instagram came along. I’d never thought of it at that time, but I’m really interested in this idea of how works of art look on screens, and how they’re distributed through our image system. So my paintings were like icons for an imaginary system or an imaginary world. I hadn’t worked on square panels for a long time. I used panels in the proportions of the iPhone 4 for a while, and then iPhone 5. But I wanted to go back to the square format.”

“I usually finalize it on the computer. But once I print it out the colors will change dramatically, because screen colors and real-life colors aren’t the same. I don’t want to mimic the screen colors. Instead, I use colors that I mix myself (I don’t buy my paints); and I think my natural inclination in mixing colors goes towards more earth tones. Once I feel comfortable with the colors, then the painting is done. And for that to happen, it usually takes many, many layers of over-coloring. I’ll play with hues of color, mostly grays and dark earth tones. I like them to have a particular mood to them.”