Say hello to Winnie Truong! She is one of the four Canadian artists who created work for our “Afterlife” project with Poketo.

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WINNIE TRUONG INTERVIEW

If I could only eat a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner in Toronto where should I go?

I’d urge you to go to Saving Grace in Little Portugal and brave the wait for breakfast, brunch and lunch, it’s just that good there. Dinner is a two-parter: you should go to Mandarin at Yonge and Eglinton and gorge yourself on all-you-can-eat chinese food, then head a block up the street to the movie theatre (half price on tuesdays) and enjoy that hard-earned food coma.

What kind of things do you do for fun?

I enjoy riding my bike and doing a whole lot of nothing with good people. Now that the weather is awesome, me and some of my closest friends have started a midnight bike gang to cruise around explore different parts of the city. Working all day in my studio is also very enjoyable as I get to watch a lot of movies and tv series on my laptop while getting a lot of work done.

Have you always loved pencil crayons or is it a new love?

Pencil crayons are more of an old acquaintance to me, one that’s kind of always been there on a casual and amateur basis… only recently winning me over with its sensitivity, colour and childhood familiarity…

If your artwork was fed into some kind of machine that turned it into music what song would play?

Goonies! Awesome. Are your drawings based on people you know?

I’ve recently finished a large drawing based on a friend and the whole experience had me anxious about achieving a proper likeness. That said, the subjects in my drawings are loosely sourced from fashion and hair magazines, and despite the fact that I’ve had many people drawing associations with either friends or celebrities, they are intended to be anonymous.

Do you keep bad drawings?

I try keep everything I make, and I think it’s especially important to keep failed projects just to remind you of the types of things aren’t working. That said, I usually work in stages just to avoid abandoning projects from working in my sketchbook, to doing more resolved studies before a final product.

Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?

Not really, just occasionally hopeful.

Can you talk a little bit about your thought process making the artwork for this wallet?

I wanted to respond to the theme with an ambivalent point of view, in doing so I created the artwork using the changing states of ambiguous “life-forms” to tell a story through their disjointed relationships. I drew some not-quite-persons, and not-quite-creatures that I thought would illustrate both life and death simultaneously, so that the theme of “Life After Death” is open to individual interpretation.

Do you feel like what you have created is in any way a self-portrait?

Not by way of likeness… However, I think that in the process of inventing each new portrait and the transformations that take place within it, I also attempting to define a part of my own character or experience.

What’s next for you?

I’m planning on releasing a limited edition print in July as well as an upcoming solo show at ESP in Toronto this September that I’m very excited about. So stay tuned ! ! !

To see more of Winnie’s work, head over here.

To see the entire Poketo x Booooooom “Afterlife” series go here.

Now I’m gonna give away one of Winnie’s wallets! If you’d like to win it leave a comment below with an encouraging message to Winnie! I’ll pick a winner on Monday!