1. Vonn Cummings Sumner The figures in my paintings are based on my friends, family, favorite artists, and my self. I do not think of the paintings as portraits in a traditional sense; I am interested in the fictionalization of reality, rather than the representation of it. The figures are often costumed, mostly on their heads, as an attempt to make visible their internal and psychological states. They move through my paintings as actors in a personal and ambiguous narrative. I try to create characters that convey a feeling of strangeness and absurdity. I think of them as people from another world who have just dropped down into ours- destined to misunderstand what they find. They are alarmed to find themselves in a world where people are capable of that which they are capable. When presented with the choice they choose madness, weirdness, freedom. They choose to let go, to loose their mind. On one level these paintings are an attempt to bring together my love of color field painting with my need to draw and build forms in a fictional space. I want to couple the emotive possibilities of the one with the felt experience of the other. While the final products are oil paintings, there is an element of performance in my process: dressing up in costumes, staging photo shoots, using images of actors and performers. I have begun to view a painting as a stage where mini-operas or film stills can exist. I am always trying to find the area of greatest artistic freedom, while still knowing that freedom and creativity may only be possible within a system of rules.

2. Vonn Cummings Sumner grew up in Northern California, the son of a picture framer in a family of artists. He attended the University of California at Davis, earning both a bachelor's degree in art and an MFA in painting. While at Davis he worked closely with Wayne Thiebaud, Mike Henderson, and David Hollowell, among others. Upon graduating, Vonn moved to New York where he painted and worked for galleries and museums, including the Guggenheim Museum. The community of artists Vonn found there, as well as frequent trips to the Metropolitan Museum, was very influential on his development as an artist recently out of school. In the summer of 2002 Vonn moved to the Los Angeles area with his wife Jennifer and their dog Murietta. He currently lives and works in Long Beach. Throughout this period Vonn developed a highly idiosyncratic style of painting that is both recognizable and enigmatic. Hand made props and hats populate his canvases creating a theater of the absurd... all juxtaposed with the cool emotional distance of the subject pressed into the forefront of the painting. Vonn has exhibited regularly since 1997, he has shown his work nationally and internationally. In 2003 he was a featured solo artist at the Scope Art Fair in Los Angeles and since then his work is part of significant private international collections. He is a founding member of "Pharmaka," an eclectic group of Los Angeles based painters who, in 2005, built and opened a non-profit exhibition space in downtown L.A. devoted to the advancement of contemporary painting.

3. CJ Vonn. You went to the University of California, Davis. Can you discuss your academic years and how they helped you grow as an artist? For example, did you have any influential instructors during that time? VS Several teachers at Davis were very influential on me. Most of all Wayne Thiebaud, who was the reason I went there in the first place. Second would be David Hollowell, a figurative painter who studied at Yale with William Bailey, a big guy in NY and east coast figurative people. But I studied with everyone and absorbed as much as possible. Other notables would be Mike Henderson, and abstract painter and blues musician, and Squeak Carnwath who is not known down here but is very successful in the Bay Area. There was also a visiting artist from New York, Tim Rollins, who is in all the recent art history books for his work in the 80s and 90s with South Bronx kids doing collaborative art. They were all very encouraging and generous to me, it was a hugely positive experience. CJ Tell us more about your influences? For example, are you influenced by any specific artist or art movements? VS I grew up in the Bay Area so the Bay Area Figurative (David Park, Richard Deibenkorn, Nathan Oliviera, etc.) were a big influence. Thiebaud was a kind of cross between that era and the Pop art of the 60s, which was influential on me. But I love all kinds of things. From the Metaphysical Italians like de Chirico and Morandi, to contemporary conceptual guys like Bruce Naumann and Joseph Beuys. My father had been an abstract painter in the 50s and 60s, and was into hard edge abstraction, so a lot of the NY school from de Kooning and Rothko to Frank Stella and Brice Marden were also very influential. There are lesser known people too, just artists that I have seen there work and it has an impact on me.

4. CJ Tell us about your art? Perhaps you can tell us about the process of creating your paintings and staging your models, the methods you utilize and so on? VS I always start with sketches, little working drawings that I am always doing in my sketch books, just working out ideas. The "props" or "hats" that costume some of the figures are things that I have made, or have had someone else make, for the sake of the paintings. Eventually photos get taken in order to get better information about what the figures would look like in a certain circumstance. Then from those photos plus my earlier sketches I start the painting. It varies a lot beyond that. I have a love hate relationship with photography, and am always considering tossing it out as part of my process and making everything more handmade and less "realistic". CJ What themes do you explore with your work? Can you tell us more about the thoughts behind your art in general? For example, is there a specific message or idea that you strive to convey within the context of your art? VS Those are very hard questions to answer, and honestly I am probably not an objective person about it. I have to say first that any explanation I would try to give would be false by definition, since what i am doing is above all visual and not verbal. That said, there are certainly a lot of thoughts about that stuff that float around in my head as I work. Questions of self and identity, and the bluring of those things, or the concealing of self and identity are interesting to me. And just in general, the human experience of the world is very strange and mysterious to me, and in a basic sense I am trying to make pictures that carry that strangeness; put another way, I am trying to create my own mythology, to make meaning through pictures, to make codes for the unknown and the unknowable aspects of existence.

5. CJ What are the social implications of your work? Are you exploring any aspects of society or culture? If so, can you go into further detail about that? VS I don't feel that i can answer that question of social implications. I just work from my intuition, try to trust my instincts, and be as open and sensative to the world around me as possible. If some kind of social significance arises from that, then great, but it is not my goal. I just have an intense need to make stuff, to paint and draw and make pictures. And I am responding to the world around me and the inner world within me as best I can. What it all means is beyond me, and i would not really want to know an answer anyway. CJ What are you working on at this time? Can you give us some insight into your current work? VS I am working for my next show in San Francisco and New York. I have several paintings already for it, and am trying to round it out in a way that will work as a show. It is along the same lines of what I have done the past couple of years. These paintings are more interior, less of the ocean or beach or wall stuff, more the groupings of figures and the formal play of compostition and color and how that creates space and tone/mood.

6. CJ I understand that you are an instructor as well. What has teaching taught you, so to speak? For example, do you learn from your experience as an instructor and take that knowledge into your personal work? How do you find balance between teaching and your personal art? VS Teaching has taught me a whole lot, and continues to. It forces me to try to articulate clearly and concisely what I believe to be true and interesting about the basic fundamentals of painting and drawing. It keeps me grounded in the basics in a way that is very useful to my own studio practice, it keeps me honest in a way. I am also always surprised and intrigued by what the students come up with, and that is very inspiring to me. I steal from my students, to put it another way! CJ Speaking art and exhibiting... do you have any concerns about the art world at this time? VS Too many to go into fully. But I will try to be brief: I think too many people think they can be artists without really having something to say that is substantial and relevant on a human level. I think so much of art is a kind of cleverness game that becomes very nihlistic and insestuous. I think that "Art" has become a kind of lifestyle that is too often detached from any real communication or emotion or inquiry. It all boils down to money of course. Too many art dealers and curators who are kind of fashion trend watchers rather than real connuiseurs and scholars of the practice of making art. Too many collectors treating it like real estate and commodity. Too many magazines talking loud and saying nothing. It is a strange time for Art. This has been going on since the 60s or so, with a huge boom in the 80s and since then. I think though that things might be shifting a bit, there may be a backlash against the kind of mentality I am describing, not sure yet.

7. CJ Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the goals that you have? My goal is to paint every day, and make the best paintings that I can make. The opportunity to do that is my definition of success. All the rest is a distraction and noise.