Interview: Anton Aoun
May 27th, 2007 by Menachem Wecker
Anton Aoun, whose art I mentioned here, wrote back (under the name Tony Bushbush) in response to my questions. According to his Youtube profile, he was born in the Holy City of Bethlehem.
Since my early years of childhood I showed a great talent and interest in Arts. I made my first drawing at age of 13. Since that age I participated in several Art Exhibitions. Also, I have done several paintings on walls, such as, The Church of the Nativity, Jesus Christ, Version Mary , Oriental people, Holy Communion and some places from the Holy Land like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tiberias, Nazareth. My drawing and paintings mostly of religious, planets, culture, nature, passion, anthropological and surrealism subjects. Those are some of my Planets art work.”
MW: To what extent do you consider your work religious per se?
AA: Well, I believe that my paintings are affected [by] my religion. I have been raised up by a religious family. I even receive spiritual inspiration with mysterious messages to draw. If you are interested I can send you some of my old paintings when I was only a kid.
MW: How do you weigh the message against the artistic decisions?
AA: I try to put frame to my paintings into four categories; the first is the religious inspired paintings, which I try to express the mysteries and the questions I and so many others have in their hearts and minds. The second category is seen in the paintings of nature. I am so concerned with preserving the nature, especially now with the bad effects of human against it. In my paintings I show natural life, animals and plants. The third one is clustered in the beauty of the human body. I have been all my life interested and fascinated with this creature. I am aiming at communicating how graceful humans are. At the same time I have been translating the body language of the human using surrealism kind of art. The last category is a translation of my imagination and dreams of which I have been using surrealism to explain these emotional language which is extremely vague but rich of feelings that even you would stand for a while trying to realize the truth behind the lies that are covering the beauty of the world.
MW: Who, if anyone, are your inspirations from the religious and/or art perspectives?
AA: Well, I have been always inspired with the power of the Lord, which I have been feeding my self from. I know that this sound strange and weird but, there is lots of psychological transmission of God’s love. On the other hand, I can’t deny Salvador Dali Art. I can spend so many times understanding this famous artist. I have common things with him; the mystery behind his paintings was so attractive to me.
MW: Why the emphasis on planets?
AA: Just lately I have been focusing on planets, because I like to go to origins and to the source of life, to the first creation of God. Have you looked to the moon? Have you noticed how beautiful it is? Well the moon pus all the other planets are so beautiful. Human beings have tried to reach to these planets; well, why not to bring the planets to the human being in a certain imaginary paintings. Hence, I am bringing a closer image of the glob to the human race.
MW: Why did you choose to portray your works in You Tube as a moving slide show?
AA: Frankly speaking, I am a nothing but a poor person who is extremely rich in his artistic mind and heart that are influencing his body to produce these creative pieces of art. I have been striving for a chance to lift me to a new horizon of life where I aspire to belong to. Maybe youtube is not the best place to show my artistic work but I couldn’t find else where to exhibit them.