SA: Hi, Joan, is everything all right? Are you ready for my interview?

JF: Hi Gaga - I am fine. Yes, always ready for art talk!

SA: Last night, I search your work's photo on line and I saw your incredible paintings! Your colours are fascinating, your forms are like dream! I like so much it!

JF: Thank you for your kind words. It is special when sensitive artists talk and appreciate my work. I love that. It makes what I do so worth the effort.

SA: What is your inspiration?

JF: I get inspired by form, human forms in motion kind like Hindu art. Hinduism is a religion based on movement, dance. All the gods can dance. That is life. One must dance, move to truely live. I get inspired by different cultures folk art. Naive art, arte brute, outsider art and such. It is so important to not be snobbish about art and cultures. We
all function at the same human level and that is how we connect with every one. I like it when people make scribbles.... they are making the "true" art. Art coming from the soul of their unconscious. That is my connection to surrealism. I like to use imagination and free flowing thoughts which bring ideas to my work. I love it when people interpret my work their own way and see their own visions in it. That is the best. It tells me we all are connected in some way, yet we have our own story to tell.

SA: What do you tell with your work?

JF: I tell that you must trust your inner voice that listens to your eyes. You don't have to ask me what you are seeing. You already know and it is a sign that you must listen to your inner self when you see my work. It tells you about what you like, what you find as ugly and what you desire and what you fear.... if you only listen. Then when you see it all, you may find joy.

SA: You told me that the surrealism is your base, tell me something about that!

JF: Where I studied art, in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, many of my teachers were into Freud and getting analysed. I enjoy psychology and the surrealists really did too. They changed art in a big way and they led us to examine the scary side of our behaviours, like why all the wars and killing, and first look into what it means to deal with the beast inside. We are still afraid, but we have come along way. The surrealists influenced Jackson Pollock and he unleashed his beast and started abstract expressionism, which was really about his movement around the painting on the floor, the experience he had with paint. He was exercising his demons
and it eventually consumed him, but it helped free the artists later on. We need this and if this is prevented, we are not free to really express the inner.

SA: When I admired your paintings for a first time, I through to French painting, in particular the drawing of Annette Messiger, do you know her? You have the same elegance!

JF: Oh yes, I love her stuff!!!! She is amazing! She came once to do a residency in Texas. Elegance is my connection to the European within me. I have big ties to Europe, because that is how we learn our art history. We admire the French, Italian, and Dutch so it becomes a part of us. It is a matter of culture and taste that is acquired by exposure to such beauty, and it is ok to use such words now once again.

SA: After, I through also to Chinese colours, Is this culture an influence for your work?

JF: You are very smart indeed. Yes, I love art from the East like China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Japan. I was aware that due to my love for the masters of western art I had to justly find influences in the East too, because they really have much to be admired and when combined with European elegance, makes for a richer aesthetic and beauty. I am very attracted to bright colours, and gold too. I love the juxtaposition of red and gold together. It makes me want to fly like a butterfly!

SA: When did you start to paint?

JF: I think I was four years old. My father would come home with a new colour pen every day for me (he was a graphic
artist). He later taught me watercolours. I was in awe over what he could do with pigment and water. He made it seem so mysterious and important and I was honoured that he taught me his craft. He passed it down to me and
nurtured it in me. I believe he wanted me to be the artist he wasn't free to be.

SA: How did your artistic search started?

JF: It started in art school when I was 18 years old. Everyone was doing all kinds of things. I experimented with photography, video, sculpture, performance and then went back to painting. I love doing all kinds of mediums, but strong love for colour always leads me back to painting. I used to paint the human figure> (realistically) and then I realized I loved the psychology of human nature and could represent that without using the human figure in an outright way.

SA: Please, tell me about the through that moves your creative soul!

JF: Many things that move my creative soul or force. It comes from viewing films, hearing music and seeing dance (movement). It makes me keenly aware of life and how vibrant it is. We are not truely alive (awake) unless we move and interact as matter does. Sometimes this makes fire and we are connected and sometimes we are fluid and we engulf the world as one. Both are the same, but really different forms of matter and paths we take. I love fabric, textiles so if I see a motif or design on something I become obsessed with it. I believe this holds information to our psyche and I use it to connect to the "bigger picture"!

SA: Tell me also a last moment was fundamental for your creativeness!

JF: I believe my living and working in Pakistan was a big factor in changing my work and I realized what mattered to me. I felt free for the first time since I was old enough to make art and that feeling was the best. Now when I collaborate with other artists, I feel that freedom too. I feel connected and I see clearly the meaning in it all.

SA: You told me that also the collage is your expression! How do you create that?

JF: Collage is wonderful because you are taking what others have created and rearranging it in a new way, giving honour to it once again. Actually, our minds work like a collage so that is natural for an artist to such things. What images are interests for you? I love the fabrics, architecture motifs, wall paper, comics, graffiti, child drawings, art of the insane, landscape, patterns made in the earth, lost cultures and civilizations all speak specialness to me. I go off the beaten path to find them because they cry out to me.... they are the truth I seek.

SA: Do you trust in collaboration among artistes?

JF: I have a lot of faith in artists and try to give them direction if they become lost because it is natural all artists must get lost first and then find the way. I am a teacher too, so by working with other artists, I learn a lot and they do too. It makes me a stronger artist and a more insightful teacher. Not everyone is ready for collaboration. That is ok. One must accept that your art will go out into the world and be changed, even damaged. This is life. We must all walk into the fire, our works go too. This gives us tremendous strength!!!!

SA: Did you collaborate with another artistes?

JF: Yes, all the time. It is the best experience for me. Pieter Zandvliet and I have collaborated many times and have many wonderful works and exhibitions to show for it. We both have learned so much and our work has grown. Because we respect each other and the work, we understand we are treating it like our own, and we take chances the other may not have the guts to do. This is like a good kick in the pants for our egos. Egos can be dangerous at times to the artist. I have a strong ego, but I don't walk around like a primadonna. I am just a person like everyone else and we all deserve respect.

SA: What is technology's roll in your artistic search?

JF: Technology is just amazing!!!! It is so great! If it wasn't for technology I may not have found you and the other artists I work with. My art would still be in a closet hiding!!!! ha ha! The computer and the Internet have open many venues for the artist, even traditional artists use it to communicate. I think of Picasso always on the telephone when it was first in use. He was always connected with other artists and people. He was not a recluse. If an artist becomes a recluse and drinks or drugs himself to death, he has taken the wrong path. Especially now, artists need to unite and work together because our leaders have lost their eyes (vision). We know enough that we can see the writing on the all. We must understand and appreciate one another no matter what the religion, politics, economic and life style choices one makes. Technology as a medium is also great because I can work out ideas in Photoshop and then paint onto the digital print or do other things with it. I think of it as a wonderful sketchbook! Every artist should have a
computer!

SA: I readed about your experience in Pakistan, was it a good moment for your art?

JF: It was the best experience in my life!!!!! I enjoyed it so much and the Pakistani people have given me so much in many ways. We have much to learn from this culture, like hospitality, laughter and beautiful art. My students there were great and they were my teachers in many ways too. I still have dreams that I am there and this has added to my "eastern" sensibility in my art.

SA: What do you think about contemporary art's situation?

JF: What do you like to change in the world of art? Art now is very funny. It is like a telescope. If you view it from one angle it looks just so and from the other it looks far away. When you try to capture its essence it flutters away and its over. All the art you read about in art magazines are the "glamourized" bits and pieces of a select few. They are not the real soul of the art being created today. Think about all the artists in history who may have been great but we don't know about them now!!!! Such a loss! Much has to do with politics more than whether the art is really fascinating. I doubt Michelangelo would have been known if it wasn't for the Pope! He had big influences and that is what it takes. Again, human nature. Non-artists want to capture the creativity they lack and say they found the next hot artist. That is why most galleries will not find artists by the artists walking into their gallery themselves. They want to "discover" their own Michelangelo. Critics, curators and writers all dream of this and want to have that special power to choose. As far as the problems in the art world today, well, for one thing, I hate the snobbishness and the ideas that cause barriers among artists. Too much of I like or I don't like is being said. Maybe I don't like something, I don't get angery about it, and if it makes me angery then something important is going on and I must look inside myself to understand it. I respect artists who make art regardless of schooling, class or culture. If someone is insane and does paintings with their body parts, I say "Bravo"!!!! That is something to be respected. I don't think Matthew Barney is the only hot artist out there today because Art in America says so. What if Gaga and Pieter Zandvliet is really the "hot" artist? Do we ever really know? We could get rid of these petty power structures in galleries and art magazines. They waste a lot of energy and time. Maybe the Internet will change all that.

SA: Ok, my friend, I stop with questions! I finished my interview to tell to artistes: Now tell me what do you do! I give you a white paper... please express a through!

JF: Wow such freedom! Artists are the shamans of the world. We give visions to those that will not see. We have the eyes and hands to guide, so much power within that others fear us. They are really frightened. How can we show them they don't have to be frightened? Why do they get mad when they don't understand? Where did they get lost? I have many questions, but that is expected. I am just an artist!!!! Just like you!!!!

SA: Well, Joan, thank you a lot! We are very happy to meet you and to know your art! Now we wish you good work and we give you our Positiveness! Thank you! Ciao!