The world of art has always attracted a very specific kind of person, so specific in fact that in so many cities that world is often pretty small in comparison to how loud the work produced by this select group of people is. In this interview I sat down with local Jacksonville artist Victor Ali, where we discuss, among other things such as artistic process and inspiration, creating and networking in Jacksonville; a "big small city":

S: So Victor, How are you doing?

V: I'm doing good, I’m doing good. I had a stomach…food thing yesterday, and I’m getting over it now, so I’m feeling kind of grudgy. Like I was working at Jimmy John's earlier today and I was feeling kind of sluggish, like “This is not my best I promise!”

S: *laughs* So tell me just a little about yourself, like where are you from and how did you start getting into art?

V: Yeah, I was born in Houston, Texas and we lived in Houston for like a year, and then we moved to Atlanta, Georgia and we lived there for like a year, and then we moved down here to Jacksonville, Florida.

S: What brought you to Jacksonville?

V: My dad. Pretty much traveling for his car business, his used car dealership. We’re always just moving around and then we just settled here, so we’ve been living in this house since, so that’s like…fourteen years.

S: How do you feel about Jacksonville as a city, or just as a city in which to create art?

V: I would say that we could do better.

S: How so?

V: The communication between artists is kind of weak I would say, like it could definitely be improved. The only good networking type of event or meet and greet would probably be Art Walk; that helps bring art communities together and network. And the other one, Cork, you might have heard of that…

S: Cork?

V: Yeah.

S: Elaborate, I’ve never heard of Cork.

V: It's like a studio/art networking type of community, and they usually have artist studios there. But yeah, the art community in Jacksonville I feel like…the thing with Jacksonville is that it’s a big small city, like word gets around pretty quick, but I just feel like it’s hard for artists to network with other artists.

S: Well how about you as an artist? When did you first start getting into art?

V: I started in elementary school when I would be doodling in the back of the classroom. I was that weird shy kid, like that was me…just sitting in the back of the classroom doodling. I was always the best drawer in the class, like if we had a project or something they would have me do all the visuals and stuff, and I knew I had a nick for it…is that a word, “nick?"

S: “Knack” I think…

V: Something like that.

S: I believe it’s…I’ll Google it and I’ll edit it out.

V: *laughs* Should I replace it with another word?

S: *laughs* I believe it is “knack” though! Like… “I had a ‘knack’ for it.”

V: Okay “Knack.”

S: Yes.

V: *laughs* There you go. So… yeah, I already knew that it was a thing for me, like a thing I knew I would pursue in the future and…I was always just drawing, like I mainly drew anime characters, portraiture, and cars and houses…for some reason I really liked to draw houses and…yeah that was pretty much it. Then I started becoming serious about it when I went to LaVilla School of the Arts which is when I first started using paint as a medium…and I was like “I love this stuff," that’s when I started doing a lot more portraiture and less houses and less animals. Animals were one of the things that I liked to draw too, wolves in particular. So yeah then I just…continued, you know? My teachers helped me build certain skills in painting and I worked in several different types of styles and it just kind of opened my mind to the whole world of art. Then in 2009 I went to Douglas Anderson for Visual Arts as well and I just kept pushing myself and drawing and painting every day. Acrylic was my #1 medium that I used until I got to FSCJ, which was the first time I ever used oil, and I was like, “This is the shit!” *Laughs* You know? Like “This is it! This is where its at!” and then I was just using oil all the time.

S: What do you think drew you to painting, as opposed to other mediums of art?

V: Other mediums besides painting?

S: Yeah, like you could have gone with drawing, you could have gone with photography, you could have gone with sculpture…what drew you to specifically to painting?

V: The thing is…my three favorite mediums are paint, drawing and sculpture. I don’t do that much sculpture anymore because I don’t have the supplies for it or whatever, but I love doing stuff with clay. Like…this was back in high school when I messed with clay, I’d do like…sculptures of whatever the assignment was. I did this teapot that was in the shape of a monkey, and the monkeys tongue was sticking out so that his tongue was the spout, and his tail was curved as the handle. It was the coolest teapot ever.

S: That sounds amazing, I would buy that teapot!

V: It really was! It was an orange monkey and I think the leg broke off and…I don’t even know where it went honestly. But yeah, I went back into sculpture at FSCJ and I started doing metalwork and welding and that was the coolest stuff.

S: I notice just looking around your room that you’re very deep into portraiture. I’ve seen your work both at FSCJ and the stuff that you post on Facebook and Instagram. Like you’re DEEP into portraiture.

V: Yeah.

S: What draws you to other people as the subject matter in your artwork?

V: I guess because…there’s so much to say from a face, and I guess there’s just so much more information when you’re rendering a face or just the body in general. For some reason I’m not that much into doing interiors or landscapes, I do love doing them and I love seeing them, but I’m just drawn more to the human body. I guess because of the colors that they produce, the hidden colors you see in human skin and the shadows that the human structure is able to produce, and there are so many shapes and nuances in portraiture and I just think that you can really revolutionize the idea of portraiture, and I feel like I’m heading towards that.

S: Expand on “Revolutionize." How do you feel portraiture can be revolutionized? More importantly how do you feel like YOU can revolutionize portraiture?

V: I just feel like there’s more to just portraits. I see it all the time, I mean…if someone practices at portraiture so often, they’re able to twist it and mold it into something new and sort of add a new meaning to it instead of just plain portraiture and I honestly have no idea where it’s going to take me, I’m just going to see what I can do. It’ll probably just happen where I’ll just be like “…oh, wow, I can do THIS with it now,” you know? Because you’re so comfortable with that. It’s like how soccer players start by learning the basics of soccer and then once they get that down it’s like autopilot and they start doing their own tricks and back flips and stuff.

S: And you feel like you’re in that stage right now? That sort of experimenting stage?

V: Yeah, getting there.

S: Who are some artists that you feel revolutionized portraiture or artist that you look up to as far as their portraiture goes?

V: I would say one of my favorites is Jenny Saville. She does these close-up large scale paintings of humans either pressed up against glass or their skin folding on top of one another; that’s an example of how I think someone revolutionized portraits.

S: Because it’s different, like in typical portraiture you don’t get to see body contorted in that sort of way.

V: Yeah, she really took it to another level, it’s super inspiring. And also Lucian Freud, that guy is one of my favorite portrait artists. His portraiture, oddly enough, is of his family and friends, nude portraits of his family and friends.

S: Weird.

V: Yeah, and his twist on portraiture is having them lay or position their body in whatever relaxed kind of way they want to have it in, and he just lets it all hang out like…he doesn’t try to make them look pretty. You see the veins and stuff; usually in Caucasian models he’ll have like the veins blue and the redness of the skin and he’ll just have all the pigments going, it’s crazy, and his proportions are on point, so it’s amazing to see his work.

S: Where do you see yourself like five, ten, maybe even like twenty years down the line as an artist? Either as far as your style, or what level you want to be at, or your subject matter…where do you see yourself?

V: I really have high hopes for my style in the future. I hope to expand it to a ridiculously crazy level where I’m pushing myself and putting out super novel and original work and just pushing the limits of portraiture and just kind of…probably going to go bigger. I really want to do large portraits and full body portraits. Usually my portraits are just from the torso up. Some of my portraits are full body and those are the ones I like the most because I’m really interested in it, as well as doing things I’m super uncomfortable with and seeing where it takes me. Hopefully having art in museums and just really getting out there basically. I’m going to New York next year for art school actually, The School of Visual Arts.

S: I’ve heard about that! A lot of really good people have graduated from there.

V: I have a couple scholarships from there, they’ll handle like seventy-five percent or eighty percent of tuition, and the rest I’m probably going to use to get more scholarships and yeah, I’m going to go there. I mainly want to go because of the city more than the school. I want to go to the school because of networking and growing up with other artists such as me, but New York should be fun and it’s a huge step from Jacksonville, from my social life to my career.

View more of Victor Ali's work via his Instagram