Could you please introduce yourself and your artwork?
My name is Shae DeTar and I live in NYC. I am an artist/photographer. I shoot a lot of fine art nudes, I do painted photography and fashion photography.
What is your first memory of creating art?
As a teen I would make collages and paint on fashion magazine images…that’s probably the first thing I remember vividly. I was into musical theatre, so I didn’t consider art as a career, because I was so into acting. It came much later in life.
You use a very unusual technique, painting on photographs, how did that come about?
I don’t know how I started doing it, it was as a teenager. But I remember loving Yayoi Kusama and Peter Beard in my early twenties.
What/Who inspires you as a person? How do you remain inspired?
Impressionist paintings…Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Vulliard, and also newer ppl like Cecily Brown. I’m super inspired by cinema and classical music from films. Darjeeling Limited I love and the Sigur Ros video my friend Alma Har’el directed called ‘Fjogur Piano’ is uper inspiring to me…and anything by Terrence Malick
Your art work is very colourful with mythical touch, could you explain why that is?
Color and nature are such great muses. Color moves me. It adds a dimension of fantasy…the exaggeration of color to the landscapes and the girls that I photograph helps remove the feeling of reality. I try to say something in each image, something about what I am feeling or thinking about and color is just a tool by which to express that.
I noticed that you have a lot of art work revolves around nudity? It’s very organic and innocent, why are you so fascinated by nudity?
I’m working through things that I’m thinking about and feeling…there was a rape in my family a long time ago and I think I have a lot of fear and worry from being raised with that knowledge. Rape is happening so much these days, and it’s appalling. I think in some of my images of a girl nude alone…I’m saying something about some of the fear I feel in this world as a woman. Then there are groups of women together nude, and it’s much more freeing and I think I feel more secure even while shooting them. I worry about men coming up to us when we are shooting and I always feel safer when I am shooting groupes of girls rather than just me and a nude girl in the woods, you know? I’m also saying something about sexual freedom. I was raised in a liberal but Christian home…my parents are amazing and they are cool with nudes, but the youth group I went to was very judgmental about the body and nudity and sexuality. I think as a grown woman, I am finding freedom in shooting nudes…freedom from religion and judgment. So, it’s very much a part of a journey of expression and freedom for me.
Where do you see yourself next? What is your dream project?
I am hoping to be in Europe a lot more. I am heading to London in October through beginning of November. I’m trying to get an agent in London and I just want to work, I dream of shooting for magazines, and creating fine art images for galleries. I am always trying to create, and I post new work on my Instagram all of the time – http://instagram.com/shaedetar
