Noferin Interview

D: Hi Nick & Candy. To start things off, what are your backgrounds? When did you start doing illustrations/sculptures?

Noferin: Noferin is a husband and wife duo.

Candy is an artist with a background in Graphic Design, whilst Nick writes and sculpts.

Candy started painting in late 2006. The fast-paced commercialized graphic design world was not really her thing, but the training and experience has greatly helped shape her work ethic and sense of colour and composition.

Our sculptures started coming shortly after that.

D: You work as a team – how did you get together?

Noferin: There wasn’t really a conscious decision to form what is now Noferin. It was more an evolution of continuing the things that we are both passionate about. We are both interested in characters, and the role that they play in representing philosophies and guiding both children and adults through the challenges that life throws at you. It is hard to pin-point when things started to grow into what it is now. Our ideas bounce off one another and before we realise it, a whole stream of creative energy has filled up the room, leaving very little room to breathe.

Even though we both bring different ideas and skills to the table, our vision is identical. We wanted to have a name that represented the both of us, which is why we are Noferin.

The Art
The individual characters are a reflection of ourselves in many ways. Their personality traits and the adventures that they get up to are based on our childhood memories, or the memories that we wished we had.

D: How do you mainly produce your art?

Noferin: At first I was trying different mediums such as canvas, paper, board and then wood. I found wood to be the most fitting as it often has an unpredictable result when the lighter colour stains are applied over the wood grain. There is a sense of warmth and character with the wood that is very important to us. The wood grain works harmoniously with the mood of the paintings, allowing the medium to become part of the finished work. It in effect becomes part of the environment.

D: What inspires you?

Noferin: Our biggest influences are Tove Jansson (writer and illustrator of Moomintrolls) and Hayao Miyazaki (Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, among others).

First and foremost, both of these amazing people are fantastic storytellers. They each have created timeless worlds where their characters are and always will be.

Their worlds are real and their characters have a strong philosophy. They are the things that memories are made of!

Jansson and Miyazaki both have a keen appreciation of nature. On almost every page or frame of their work, lush vegetation dominates the scene. They are expert landscape architects!

We are also very fond of Japanese woodblock prints. Utagawa Hiroshige is our favourite. He focused on landscapes of varying scales with a strong sense of narrative. We enjoy escaping into his worlds and following the often faceless
travelers.

D: Your artwork is based around a group of characters, the pecanpals – how did you come up with them and their world?

Noferin: The Pecanpals live on Carrara Island. If you like, you can read more about the individual characters via our website.

We didn’t exactly “come up” with the Pecanpals. They more so found us. I think that they were always within us, we just didn’t know what to do with them. The individual characters are a reflection of ourselves in many ways. Their personality traits and the adventures that they get up to are based on our childhood memories, or the memories that we wished we had. It is funny that we both share this same vision. Candy paints and illustrates it, while Nick writes about it.

The environment is an idyllic, very stylised portrayal of our vision of Carrara Island. Perhaps it is a form of escapism.

D: You’ve obviously got the website at noferin.com, any other presences on the web you’d like to publicize? Social networking?

Noferin: No, just our website. We neglect our other sites. : (

D: As you use the internet to showcase your art, are there any other websites you feel have influenced you, opened your mind or shown you new ways of creating art?

Noferin: We don’t really spend a lot of time on the Internet, but what time we do spend, we like to look at websites such as this one, that showcase a wide variety of different styles, mediums and platforms.

Generally, we get most of our inspiration from books.

D: Thanks, nice to hear you like the site.

Of all the work you’ve created, or at least the ones showcased on your website, can you name a couple that you have a special love for or connection to?

Noferin: Our wooden Pecanpals figures are very important to us. These were released at the end of 2008, after a very long and tiring process to get them produced. Wood is a very difficult medium to work with, as all the elements are entirely handmade. We are so happy that now people from all over the world are able to adopt our Pecanpals.

interview: Diskursdisko