Embracing the Sun with Sunny
I stepped into Sunny and his wife Cheryl’s cozy East Vancouver home as he welcomed me in one Tuesday evening. Sunny, an Art Director, is an old colleague of Ivan and Stefan’s. By day he oversees visual art direction and management for a Montreal animation company. After starting out in the games industry he ended up making the jump into animation and has been exploring more narrative driven stories working on short films for Disney to cinematics for video games.
We trudge up the stairs to Sunny’s studio where he lets me know that he had a lot of trouble deciding which was his favourite piece. Much of Sunny’s art was collected as a result of trades with fellow artists. His chosen favourite piece came as a result of Devin Rosychuk’s participation in Inktober.
‘After he posted it, I was like, Oh my god, I love this and something was connecting me to this piece. I was gravitating to this piece and there’s something really beautiful about it. It reminds me of Yoshitaka Amano’s work. I really like the use of negative space and the bold, confident mark making, the expression on the face of the character and their pose - the completion of the circle, the embrace of the sun, accepting the heat, accepting what comes.’
When I asked him if he spoke to Devin to find out more about his own inspirations behind the artwork, Sunny explained ‘I kind of like my own interpretations that come when I look at it. Sometimes I don’t like to know what they intended. I don’t know if I want people to know what I think it is too sometimes because I feel like it can lose its lifespan of meanings. I like realism but I also love abstraction. The cool thing about art is if I don’t tell you what it’s about then you will go crazy and fill in the blanks and put yourself into the work, whereas if I do tell you it loses a little bit of its magic.’
‘I do appreciate it when some context is provided with realism, however with abstraction I feel like it’s kind of sad to know’.
Sunny shared how recently he was in a car accident with his wife where he sustained a concussion, something he had never experienced previously. ‘It has kind of brought up a lot of things I didn’t know how to process. Perhaps this is why I’m more drawn to this piece by Devin, which is a beautiful but somber piece. There's a little bit of embracing the pain, embracing self reflection and contemplation. It’s something I’m going through myself at the moment. We were hit by a driver from behind on the highway and thankfully my wife and our dog were fine, only I was hurt. I was spooked by it and it's been more of a mental rollercoaster than in previous years. Something new for me to embrace. I also like that the figure in the artwork is embracing the Sun, and I’m Sunny so there are many layers to it that resonate with me!’
