Cara Guri

Step into the world of Cara Guri, where photorealism meets the surreal. In this interview, she delves into her process of balancing meticulous technique with imaginative disruption, exploring identity, and how her musical background informs her artistic vision.

Your style is a striking blend of hyper-detailed photorealism and surreal elements. How do you maintain the balance between meticulous technical precision and the intention to disrupt perceived reality?

My paintings are typically created using a combination of direct observations from real life and imagination. Studying subjects, objects and light patterns in real life and then combining them with imagined imagery in ways that feel unusual or unexpected helps me to achieve the blending of real and surreal elements in my work. I am always trying to capture the simultaneous coexistence of inner psychological space with outer world experience. Grounding my paintings in real world observation and allowing this to be in conversation with imagery from my imagination helps me to achieve that balance between worlds.

You mention that you explore “identity and the construction of identity.” Can you tell us how this manifests in your work?

Much of my current practice came out of an interest in wanting to explore and unpack the expected purpose of portraiture and its typical intention of representing a subject in a particular light. Portraits are usually a curated version of the subject, and are consequently always about a type of constructed identity. In the history of traditional Western art, this construction of identity was typically about a certain kind of idealization of the subject, often filtered through the male gaze. I’m interested in a portraiture that depicts subjects existing in their own inner worlds, visible to but also separate from the viewer. As such they possess their own inner stories at the same time that the viewer can connect and construct their own story around them. By playing with concealing elements of the subject I am trying in part to question the expected aim of a portrait to capture an identifiable and flattering likeness. Instead I want to capture something in the inner experience of being human and how that plays into our sense of self and identity.

How do you choose the props or objects that appear in your portraits? Do they always carry a personal meaning?

Typically the props or objects in my paintings are mundane ordinary things that I have spent a significant amount of time with. I will paint old scratched glasses from my childhood kitchen, worn wooden chairs from my childhood home, wild daisies that I dug up from a ditch and planted in a pot in my studio and observed over the course of their growth cycle or post-it notes that flutter pervasively around in my daily life. I like to paint things that are meaningful to me in part as a way to fully notice them and commit them to memory. These small ordinary objects often become a backdrop for our lives to unfold in but we rarely really see them in detail. The process of painting them meticulously is a way to bear witness to them and to see them in a new way.

In my Paper Dolls  series, I take a different approach. The still lives I use for reference are created from cut up printouts of art historical paintings from the canon of Western art. I cut out the figures and reconfigure them into a fresh composition sometimes integrated creatively into my space to generate new meaning.

What has been the most challenging technical difficulty you’ve faced recently, and how did you overcome it?

I was recently diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is a connective tissue disorder that causes chronic pain. It has been challenging at times to navigate how to make work that demands so much time and physical energy in a body that doesn’t always want to cooperate to the level I would like. I’m still in the process of working through this and learning what I need to optimize my practice, but learning to respect my body’s limits, alternating works and varying the scale of the pieces I am working on, taking more regular breaks throughout a working day and carving out time for rest, physical therapy and exercise/stretching have been helpful in keeping me feeling physically better as I work.

Is there a particular work or series that you consider a turning point in your career, one that defined the direction of your current practice?

My work “Headpiece” was a significant one for me, both in terms of concealed portraiture as a direction of interest and also in terms of integrating self-portraiture into my practice. I often create self-portraits, or portraits of people I am extremely close with, as this becomes a very freeing exercise – I can use my own body freely as a prop without needing to factor in how someone else may wish to be portrayed and I have creative license to do whatever I wish to my own body. This piece definitely heightened my interest in exploring the idea of personal space, playing with portraiture that feels both real and surreal, and toying with the feeling of inner experience unfolding at the same time as one exists as a being in space.

In addition to being a visual artist, you’re also a musician. Are there parallels or influences between your musical discipline and your approach to composition, rhythm, or expression in painting?

Yes in addition to my practice as a visual artist I am also a classically trained opera singer/vocalist. There is absolutely crossover in my way of thinking and approach to both fields. As a person I am in general meticulous, expressive and creative, and that is evident in the way I approach both painting and singing. I often think of music in terms of colour as a way to bring more interpretation to it, and I also frequently think about brushwork in terms of a kind of innate musicality (how fast, slowly or rhythmically I am painting a section will feel musical in some ways).  I also often sing when I paint, so it becomes part of my experience of being in the studio. Potentially in the future I may find ways to bring both fields together for some works, possibly through composition and painterly installation, but those are longer range projects.

Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share with us?

I am currently preparing for an international exhibition and will be sharing more details about that in the coming months on my Instagram account @cara.guri. I am also currently working on several new series of works, including new portrait works as well as further works in my paper dolls series and am excited to share those soon as well. 

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To learn and see more of Cara Guri's work, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

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