Ask The Artisan - Andy Anissimoff

Ask the Artisan is a weekly feature highlighting the talented vendors you’ll find at our night market. As a new addition to the Sunset Music Series, the Sea to Sky Gondola holds a Night Market at the base every Friday from 4-8PM. The intimate marketplace hosts a variety of local designers and craftsmen in a unique setting.

What do you do? 

I am an artist. I make and sell art every day. I specialize in large, original, acrylic paintings, but I also produce limited hand detailed reproductions of my work.

How did you become a landscape artist?

I've been artistic my entire life, but it was always drawing and then design that sparked my interest. Painting is what I found to give me the most satisfaction creatively and personally. Once I decided that, it was a matter of applying my creative time to painting - this was about ten years ago. Then, I started selling my paintings here and there. At first, it was to friends and family, now it’s almost totally to people I do not know. The activating agent is time. Without making the decision to free up my life entirely for my art in 2014, I couldn't have made it a reality. So I guess I finally really believed it was possible. 

Where do you find your inspiration? 

The coast of BC offers endless opportunity in composition.  I find a lot of beauty in our grey days, when you get the mountain shades six to seven layers deep. I could paint a lifetime in just greys. Equally captivating to me is how the last little light will hit certain surfaces of the mountains. This is the lighting I use in almost every painting. What I create is as much a surprise to me as it is to my viewers. This is fun and exciting, keeping me driven to create.

Describe your typical work day.

I wake up before 6:00am every day and am usually in the studio by about 6:30-7:00pm. I am most productive in the morning, so I try to paint for about 4-5 hours, or until I need to eat. Then I head home and if I can, take a few hours off or running errands. I'm then back in the studio in the late afternoon until maybe 10:00pm.

Tell us about your personal style and how it influences your work.

I consider myself a Canadian interpretive landscape realism artist. My works feature a lot of graphic movement and are recognizable from across the room. I am self-taught, so I really just have done my own thing and tried to figure out my style. I've been doing the tree scenes in the valley for about 12 years now, so that is the base for my newer shifts in the past few years which incorporate a lot more mountain surfacing. 

What is your go-to music to listen to while working?

 love music of all kinds, and discovering new music. Just this morning I was playing some Built to Spill! 

What piece of advice or encouragement do you have for inspiring artists?

Be confident in your work and what you’re doing. Make what art you like, but try to build a bridge to people. Make your own mistakes and have fun. Different people like drastically different art. If you make good art and share it with enough people, you will find your people and that’s all you need. Fight the urge to feel competitive with your art. Again, your people will like your art. Not everyone needs to like it. You can't sell all the art, but if you’re good, there is room for you.

Meet Andy and an array of other talented artists this Friday, August 19th from 4-8PM at the gondola base. After discovering the collections, head to the summit for live music with Will Ross.

See more of Andy’s work at artinbc.com