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Interview with Franz Miklis
Featured Artist for April 2002
Would you introduce yourself and give a little personal background?
My name is Franz Miklis, born in 1963 in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria, and I´m living and working in Nussdorf bei Salzburg in my house in the sunny, hilly landscape some miles north of Salzburg City at the northern gates to the Alps. There I enjoy living with my wife Monika and my two kids Helga (11) and Daniel (9) plus some cats. Art has been always an important part of my life and as soon as I was able to hold a pen I began drawing and painting. And usually the things you do with love and endurance sooner or later get rewarded.
How long have you been an artist? How long have you been creating fantasy art?
I started my career as an artist in 1980 after having finished Summer Academy in Salzburg, working mainly in the Fine Arts field as a side line (galleries, exhibitions). In 1998 in started my professional career as sci-fi/fantasy illustrator for publishing houses, games companies and so on. Sci-fi and fantasy art has always been my main focus in my artistic expression, so it was hard to tell when all this started. I can remember teasing teachers even at ground school with painting flying saucers and aliens instead of trees and houses, and later on in my teens I have been called "the ufo-painter" in my home village.
Have you had any formal training in the fine arts?
My most important education has been the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg in 1980, where I studied all important things one needs to create big canvas artworks. I continued arts training with two years of life drawing at the Berufsvereinigung Bildender Künstler in Salzburg.
What are your biggest artistic influences and inspirations?
The most important influence for me is nature. I love walking through forests, climbing on mountains, visiting old cities, studying the masterpieces in museums. But I also like to talk to artists and illustrators, visit their ateliers or exhibitions. I am interested in archaeology, astronomy, history and thousand other things. However, in arts you never stop learning.
Can you describe your creative process - how you come up with ideas for a new drawing and how you take those ideas and create a finished piece of art.
My most impressive and successful paintings and nearly all in my epilogue gallery were directly created by dreams. I have a sketchbook full with sketches plus descriptions of the most bizarre dreams I had. (I must be one of the lucky ones who actually has fantasy/sci-fi based dreams). I think a good sketch is about fifty percent of success for an interesting piece of art. I play around with the illu, twist and turn, reduce and enlarge, put details in and out - a sketch is the mud I need to form out the visionary creatures. The rough sketch is like a frozen thought and accompanies me throughout the painting process, no matter how big the finished piece will be. The next steps are maybe best compared with sharpening a focus lens: adding details, surface structures, shadows and so on in order to form the narrative scene for the eyes of the viewer.
Do you have a favorite fantasy artist or an artist you admire?
I must confess I admire Jim Burns since I first saw his art in "Mechanismo" back in 1978. It´s always a pleasure to talk to him. But he is just the "Merlin of the magicians of fantasy art". There are countless great magicians around now, just take a look at Epilogue.net or visit, for example, Worldcon artshows. There you can get this wonderful feeling of sense of wonder.
What advice would you give to young artists who are just starting out?
Open your eyes wide, take a careful look at shapes, colors and forms in the nature, travel to distant countries, visit old cities (take a pencil and paper with you). Study the great masters, don´t be shy to talk to artists and ask for help. It is no secret wisdom to learn things like perspective, color schemes, or simply mounting a canvas. But most of all I think you need an open mind to the whole universe, from ancient cultures to modern space races. Watch the colorful dances of the Aborigines and create in your mind the splendid crowning ceremonies of alien kings at distant planets…
If you could be a character from a fantasy novel, movie or game, who would you be?
In my youth I always dreamt of being a prince high on the horse and having an eye on… well, now as the beard grows longer and greyer I think I would be quite satisfied of being a happy dwarf, sitting with my ole friends at a glass of beer in a nice, old tavern somewhere in Middle Earth, talking about our adventures we had in our little, funny part of the world…
Finally, what cartoons did you watch as a kid?
I can remember having watched cartoons like "Wickie", "Pink Panther", "Wastl" and such. But I have laughed tears watching the inexhaustible endeavours of "Karl the Coyote" or the dynamic efforts of the "Tasmanian Devil". No other figures resembled the life of an artist (sometimes) than those.
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