Danielle Draik is one of my favorite artists-a statement I do not make lightly. Her pieces' stars are usually eldritch genderless entities, but they have an odd pathos to them. You wouldn't want to meet them at the other end of a dark alley but, just before they devoured you, you might want to ask if everything is okay at home and if they need a hug. Or, as she put it more eloquently to Gender Terror, she incorporates "shapes and deformity to express moments, narratives, feelings, and identities."
I also own many of her pieces, and yet too few. My backpack has featured one of her pins for years. I have the letter she sent with the last shipment stuck with a magnet on my refrigerator, which she signed with an alien head next to her name.
I met her tabling at No Such Convention close to a decade ago, and seeing her was always one of the high points of the experience. She exudes effortlessly cool confidence; if you are around her, you feel you are doing something right in your life.
I challenge anyone to look at her art and not feel just uneasy enough to look again.
Is it fair to assume you were the weird kid in school? What would your classmates have said about you?
I went to such an absurdly large school that any sort of teasing weaned out quickly. I got fairly lucky, and then I went to art school, so aside from being called "The Matrix" here and there in jest, it was fine.
Given your art's nature, do you have a philosophy or ethos you follow in your own life?
Something something truth is out there something something.
I saw in an interview for Paroxysm that you had trouble with your vision a few years ago? What happened?
It boils down to: I have chronic migraines. A few years ago I got pretty ill for a long period of time and I began having terrible migraines on top of a bunch of other health issues. Migraines are different from headaches. Mine usually feel dull and hot and usually starts in my eye socket and the pain can travel into my teeth. I know what triggers mine, generally, and I can usually notice I'll be getting one by the degeneration/sensitivity of my vision. It's kind of nice to have a warning because I can take action against it and maybe work on the things causing it. I have to wear sunglasses pretty much until the sun sets, and sometimes indoors. Sometimes one pupil will stay open (this happens under certain conditions), which makes me look like a fucking oracle or some shit.
Where have you felt most comfortable working? Is there an ideal situation where you can best enter your flow state?
If it is like, 80 degrees in a quiet room, I'm pretty much set.
Since you do a superb job painting them, have you ever experienced a hypnagogic state?
I have experienced hallucinations in both hypnagogic and hypnopompic states. I've had sleep paralysis before, but it hasn't been chronic, thankfully. I've had many visuals, but most of my sleep hallucinations now are generally auditory.
Are there any artists who have inspired or influenced your own work?
Any time I'm stuck, or upset, or just generally down on my practice, I think of Paul Klee. His puppets are an all time favorite of mine, but I want to say a lot of his artwork is fancy, skillful shitposting and I mean that in the most respectful and admiring way possible. It's pure fun and you can see that.
If you were not an artist, what do you think you would be doing right now?
Probably being dead or something close to that regard.
As some of your work deals with alienation and rejection, do you feel that way?
It's not so much alienation and rejection as it is a hyper analysis (even perhaps an over-scrutinization) of the Self. There's a lot of singularity in my work. The growth/experiences/evolution/analysis of a person or being or entity is the bread and butter of a lot of my practice. It's the "getting down to brass tacks" to understand everything else.
Given the perceived darkness of your work, what, if anything, do you fear?
"The possibility that love is not enough."
What do you do when you are not creating your art?
Right now, I wire about 20-40 lamps a week by hand.
What inspires you to be so delightfully creepy?
My brain doesn't work the way it should and I figured I'd just lean into it.
Was this always a style to which you gravitated?
I started off painting as an abstract painter, which was kind of just an exploration of material. I'm sure it was inevitable though, and there is sort of a visual element to earlier work that still carries over to what I'm doing now.
Do you have a piece that you most love? Is there one that has gotten a surprising reaction?
I have an ongoing collection of figure portraits that are "sainted figures" (figures that represent a moment and feeling and act as an embodiment of it). I know I have better paintings, but "Of Fog" is a favorite of mine.
One that gets a surprising reaction is a very small and simple linocut that I did that is open edition and I print on small fabric. It doesn't have an official name (It's just a common figure I put in my work called an "Enlightened Being" which is just a figure that is trying to actively transcend whatever it is trying to transcend), but I've been asked to have it tattooed on multiple people and given lengthy descriptions on what it means to them. It's heartwarming.
Who or what is your favorite cryptid? Why?
The Flatwoods Monster (some people will argue it isn't a cryptid). Why? Look at it. Look at the shape of its head. Look at its claws and bulbous eyes. Precious. No other "monster" quite looks like it and it is smack in West Virginia with a whole bunch of other weird sightings. Cute boi, A++, would pet and hope to avoid mustard gas smell.
Are you working on a piece or project right now that excites you?
? I'm actually working on two very different projects at once. At the beginning of the pandemic, with a lack of my usual materials, I began to work on these drawings in painted plaster. I'll do some automatic writings in them, let them harden, and then go in painting them. I'm making reclaimed wooden cradles for them. Right now they are very iridescent. They're a bit reminiscent of found relics.
Another project I'm working on is a collection of collages made with printing, making marks with solvent and thermochromic dyes, and rephotographing everything about 3-4 times before final image. It's been fun to work with an experimental material/method, and I might be poisoning myself accidentally, but I'm getting the hang of it. I have always had trouble with collaging, so this has been a nice way to rewire the thought process. These are all in greyscale.
I'm on the fence about how I feel about their stark visual differences, because oh boy do they look different, but their overarching meaning is pretty much in the same wheelhouse. I'm trying to figure out a way that they can possibly be shown together in a cohesive manner or if they're going to be two standalone projects.
How have the last few years influenced your art?
For many reasons, I've had to have a bit of a nomadic practice these last few years, which has had a heavy hand in how I make my work. I'm not talking free-spirited nomadically either, this was just horse shit, unsteady ground. I've had to plan around my surroundings, leave projects on the shelf for when I have access to larger space (which is one of my biggest pet peeves), start hiding and leaving work in places that aren't my own, take doors off hinges and hide my tools in weird places - shit like that. Right before the pandemic began (I'm talking like, a month before) I moved into a studio that was mine and lost it because of pandemic related circumstances. All of this is "cute" to a point: I know I can do it. I'm not concerned about that - I'll get a project done if I need to - it's just another part of the artistic process that I really don't want to have to put this much of a mental load into thinking about. Romanticizing struggle gets you by, but it isn't sustainable.
The upside of this is that my patience for making work I'm not married to is out the fucking window. It's do or die, there's no use hemming and hawing. I've accepted that my work is the way it is (having a rough hand/being "darker"), that it is heavily laden in occult practice and study, and I'm diving headfirst into it. There's no use wasting time not going full on into what I'm truly interested in deep down and I've never had this level of confidence in my work before that. So that's nice. It is me, it is my practice, it is a facet of my being. I'm working more intuitively and the intuition is evolving.
What is the hardest part of what you do that people might not realize?
Taking time to actually enjoy stuff and relax. It is part of the process. It is part of healing and it is a part of growth. Actually stopping and not feeling guilty for it is a practice in itself.
What has been your strangest interaction with fans?
I was once told that my work was the reason mass shootings happen. If you don't wanna publish that one, the next one was a response on one of my pieces with a lady pissing into two other aliens' mouths. Piss-piece was a triangular artwork (a shape I use fairly often) and the piss-ees each had one eye (an older theme I used to use often), so to be fair it was honestly kind of on the mark there.
If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?
Your/friend/cousin/sister/brother's smelly band.
What are you reading right now?
The pandemic has admittedly been tough on me in the reading department, which is apparently because of the way the brain processes stress and also processes information. That's my (legitimate) excuse and I'm going with it. I cracked open Liber Null/Psychonaut to dust things off a bit. I'm still trying to get through The UFO Controversy in America and Uninvited Visitors, which I started both at the beginning of 2020, but viewing UFO/UAPs as a biological phenomenon isn't what I'm making my work on now directly, so it's just another way of thinking and I have to make notes as I go through them. I picked up some other really interesting titles during the pandemic, but I haven't had the oomph to crack them open.
What advice would you give to someone hoping to do what you do?
Have money somehow because wow shits rough out here.Find Danielle on the web and tell her how cool she is: