Artist Feature: Talia Rouck

Melissa Gibbons // Contributor

Vibrant, colorful and eccentric are a just a few words that describe the art pieces that CapU IDEA student Talia Rouck creates.

Rouck imbues her art with romantic and expressive character. A younger version of Rouck wanted to be an ornithologist, as she loves birds. Some of her surrealist pieces illustrate characters with human bodies and bird faces. These quirky birds imbued with personality are inspired by how high fashion mimics male birds.

“It’s kinda all about being showy and really expressing your class and the amount of money you have by being as bright, colorful and garish to reward you in some sense,” she explained. After watching last year’s Met Gala, Rouck was drawn to combine the garish outlines of humans with eccentric bird faces.

When she was younger, Rouck stayed away from colour and used mostly graphite for client pieces. After realizing that she was just using graphite in order to please others rather than herself, she decided to give life to her illustrations by using vivid colors and bold textures. “Art serves me as much as I serve it, with the stuff that I want to do I [would] rather capture an essence, a personality or a moment rather than every freckle on a person’s face,” she said.

Although Rouck has fun illustrating human-birds, lately she has been enjoying placing a brush on canvas and creating abstract paintings. “The abstract ones are part of my soul, that’s why I like those ones a little bit more,” she noted. “Art comes from a moment, and sometimes that can be expressed within a topic or sometimes you just scribble and paint a bunch of words that don’t make any sense.”

Follow Talia Rouck on Instagram @talrouck

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