Life & Work with Arabella Proffer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arabella Proffer.

Hi Arabella, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today. 
In the 90s, I was a typical punk rock girl; I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then moved to Laguna Beach (before the reality show) when I was 16. While I was into lowbrow things such as punk, I was also fascinated by Renaissance and Elizabethan portraiture, baroque architecture, and Meissen porcelain. Even going back to age 14, my art was always a combination of high and low culture. 

I got my BFA from CalArts, where I studied animation and film mostly but stayed in the art department so I could get a studio to work in. At the time, figurative and portrait painting was out. I was constantly torn apart in critiques and told to try installation art. But instructors from other departments and even the administrative staff bought my paintings. When the magazine “Juxtapoz” came out, that was a revelation; all these artists doing what I was doing. Not quite illustration, not quite fine art, but pop surrealism seemed to be where I fit all along. 

The best art history class I ever had was my first job out of CalArts, working for LA’s oldest art gallery. They had everything from all time periods; it was amazing. As much as I wanted to work in film, the artwork I was doing was getting into group shows every month, punk portraits done with a classical twist. I had also started a record label called Elephant Stone, and after signing two bands from Cleveland, I went to visit several times and liked it a lot. So, in 2004, I moved! People thought I was nuts, but it is the best-kept secret for artists looking to actually survive. Only in recent years have I started to meet more transplants who caught on to what I saw. 

One day for some reason, I didn’t feel like painting people anymore. I started doing these biomorphic abstracts. It was when I got an MRI on the cancer growing in my leg did I see it looked exactly like what I had painted months before — tentacles and all. I had part of my leg amputated. The biomorphic work continued; it’s what got me more recognition internationally and with the more “fine art” crowd. In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic and a decade to the day, my cancer came back. This time, it is everywhere, and I’m terminal in hospice. It hasn’t stopped me from doing shows or art. I became interested in NFTs to the point I became a go-to person in Cleveland for panels and classes on it. The world of Web3 got me into doing digital art and doing animation for the first time in ages. What’s funny is sometimes people can’t tell the difference between my digital portraits and oil ones. Once a painter, always a painter, I guess. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being a woman in any field is always a struggle, and I’ll leave it at that. I learned early that if I was going to deal with things like cronyism, I better become one of the cronies. And it worked! You also have to deal with a lot of rejection, and you must learn to deal with it and move on. I have won grants, but the amount I didn’t win is quite a lot. You get better at talking about your art the more things you apply to, and you get better at doing paperwork that normally scares people off. I’ve had my share of gallery rejections, had a few exhibitions where no one showed up (one was a group show!), I’ve had shifty galleries try to keep my money, I’ve had a few paintings stolen, and I have learned that running a big art gallery is a rich person’s game — and they are usually in debt. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve never done just one kind of artwork; I have several collections. There’s the digital art, the portraits, and the biomorphic work. Oh, and the commissioned work. 

The punk portraits I did all had little biographies I wrote for them, and it became a book. Until 2010, I was mostly known for that, although now my digital portraits are a more surreal version. It’s funny; my last time showing at Art Basel Miami was a big painting of a women with blue hair in 2009, and now this year, I will be exhibiting my glitch art and digital animated pieces. 

Many have said my biomorphic work is my true work, that gets a lot of attention, too. It’s the most fun to paint because I don’t have to make a thing look exactly like a thing, and it is a transcendental way that I work. 

What matters most to you? Why?
My husband. I’ve adored him since I was five years old. I hate what my cancer diagnosis is doing to him. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.arabellaproffer.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/arabellaproffer
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VendettaBella/videos