On the “City Lights” series “Speaking of the Arts,” local artists share insights into their influences, processes and experiences in town.
Sanithna Phansavanh is a painter, illustrator and designer in Atlanta whose work often celebrates the vibrancy of flowers, striking human figures and whimsically stylized animals. He builds images with a range of depth and detail depending on the medium, tending to bring big splashes of color and gestural linework to his murals and public art displays, while often playing with realism, light, shadow and texture in his smaller-scale works on canvas and paper.
“I started creating art as a child and I’ve just never stopped. I have vivid memories of drawing on all my apartment walls with Crayolas, creating these elaborate scenes with ninjas and weapons and sprawling battles. As I got older, I would recreate comic book characters and then skateboard graphics. You know, all of my class notes had doodles in the margins,” recalled Phansavanh.
As the artist came of age, he grew his relationship with art as “therapy, activism, ceremony, whatever you needed it to be. Today, he makes a living producing artwork in Atlanta, a town he describes as “an underdog; like it always has something to prove.”
Phansavanh added, “The spirit here is palpable. It’s an energy full of defiance and independence and virtue. You see it in our history and in our culture. You see it in our heroes … There’s concrete surrounded by trees. There’s progression despite unending repression. There’s revolution served with Southern hospitality.”
