by Natalie “Lee” Arneson
This past Thursday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with artist Paige Nakagawara for an interview, who I’ll let introduce herself in her own words.
Hello Reader!! My name is Paige Nakagawara, and I am a Sophomore here at The Evergreen State College. I’m a Japanese American, queer artist with an unsatiable love for cats and strange over-sized earrings. I create art to be a voice for people with similar identities as me, and hopefully make more voices be heard in the long run.
CPJ: What medium do you use the most?
Paige: “I went to a Waldorf charter school when I was a kid and the first thing they do is sit you down and give you watercolors. I have such a vivid memory of using watercolors and I was kind of a troubled kid who had a hard time in public school–even as a kindergartner–and I remember being really calm while painting. It became my favorite medium because of that and I’ve stuck with it ever since.”
Where do you draw your inspiration from for your paintings? Is it something that’s kinda filtered by your everyday life, or–I know a lot of people tend to draw on their backgrounds and the places that they grew up in.
“I feel like my paintings aren’t based in reality very much. I think I draw a lot of inspiration from nature and from personal experience than anything physical.”
What kind of personal experiences? If you don’t mind sharing?
“I kind of represent my own struggles with mental health and growing up female through my art.”
What kind of art pieces do you normally paint? What do they look like at the end?
“I think, unintentionally, I painted a lot of self-portraits Not so much recently since I’ve been trying to get away from that, but I usually paint women or femme-looking bodies and inages. There’s patterns to them, they tend to be surrounded by some form of nature, and for a while–for some reason–I was only painting people underwater.” A quick laugh was released. “Which sounds creepy, but those tend to be my big projects that I put a lot of effort and time into. When I’m just sketching stuff it tends to be a lot less emotionally connected, because I do just like to draw sometimes.”
What have you been working on as-of late? Either in class or just on your own personal time.
“I don’t have any personal projects going on right now, but I am working on a still life for the class that I’m in which is leading up to us doing a self-portrait and a portrait of another person–which I’m nervous about. I know I just said I do a lot of self-portraits, but they’re not super accurate because it was subconscious that I was doing self-portraits, so now it’s kind of making me nervous that I have to actually try to represent myself more accurately.”
Would you say that the self-portraits you’ve done in the past are you sifting through your identity in a sense?
Paige: “Yeah, I think a lot of it was coming to grips with my identity and things I went through at a certain age. Cause they all, kind of, represent me from that time, which I kind of just realized afterwards.” We share a laugh.
Yeah, that’s kind of how it goes.
Would you say that art–obviously it’s had a huge impact on your life, it’s what you’re here at Evergreen for–but is it a mode for you to also process and make sense of the world around you? Like the things that you’ve gone through, other than just to reflect on yourself.
“Yes, I think it’s about processing it, but for me it’s mostly about healing. I’ve always used it more to work through things internally than externally. I’ve never made anything that was more about the outside world, which is interesting because I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that.”
Is there any art piece you’re most proud of that you think fully represents what you want to do and be as an artist, in a way?
“I think my most recent project I’m most proud of, but maybe that’s because it’s the most recent. But I don’t think I’ve made my best work yet, necessarily. I feel like I haven’t really nailed what I want to be as an artist, but I don’t mind that.”
What drew you to Evergreen? Was this your first or second choice for colleges or was this like way at the bottom of choices?
“This was actually my first choice and the only college I really wanted to go to. I think we all consider really fancy art schools, but I don’t thrive in more elitist and competitive environments. That’s what I like about Evergreen–they’re a little more open-minded and less rigid when it comes to education–and I love the trees.”
I know Evergreen–maybe not itself as an institution, but the students at least and a lot of the faculty–are very much taken in with the land that we’re on. I feel that Evergreen is a very much ‘cultivate a relationship with the land you’re on’ type of place; do you think that mentality will seep its way into your art?
Paige: “Yeah I think so. I think naturally Evergreen inspires me because I’m connected to nature so much, and just being here for a year and two weeks already has made me appreciate and feel more connected to land and appreciate it more, especially being half-white and y’know not from here originally.”
Is there anything about your art that you just want to talk about–that you feel like putting out there into the world?
“I don’t know–I don’t think about my art that much.”
It’s just kind of something you do?
“Mhm. It’s too hard when you’re trying to make art meaningful to me; that just doesn’t work. I’ve just gotta do it and paint what I like–or sometimes I get images in my head and it can be from anything. Sometimes I see something or sometimes I’ll have dreams that make me think of images, and I feel like the fun thing about art is finding meaning afterwards. I get the fuel to do art from my emotional state and not anything logical inside my head.”
Are there any closing words that come to mind now that we’ve talked about all this?
“I just think everyone should try making art at some point in their lives. I think there’s so many people that think it’s an elitist or closed-off thing to get into, but the truth is humans are meant to create things and that’s the best part about being human–that we can make things out of nothing and that we get to represent ourselves through art. I think so many people would feel happier with their lives and be able to work through a lot of things within themselves if they let them have that healing time and give themselves the power to create things.”
To check out more of Paige’s art, visit her Instagram @tereru
