Noah Xaver Pfister: Contemporary Artists Redefining Modern Abstract Art for a Digital Generation (Abstract Expressionist, 177K Followers, Australia)

Noah Xaver Pfister Interview

"I’m this way because any sort of rigidity feels limited to me, and I like to strive for the limitless. "

Q. Noah, can you tell us a little about your journey? How did you first discover your calling as an artist, and what drew you to abstract expressionism?

When I was a kid, I got really interested in film, and I pursued that for a little while, more seriously from my late teens to early 20s, making some short films and writing some screenplays. 

I lost my steam trying to get a stable income through hospitality work and entered something of a depression. I was spending a lot of energy trying to fit in and do things right, being naturally introverted and disagreeable but I had also become a great admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and at this point came upon his exhortation, in Ecce Homo, of following one’s own instinct as the most supreme life strategy. 

I started to do this and felt that my life improved. To be sure, I tested the theory by making a painting only on instinct, with no preconceived notions. If Nietzsche was right, it would be a great painting; if he was wrong, it would be bad. And what came out happened to be abstract expressionism.

Q. Your work is vibrant, layered, and very dynamic. How would you describe your personal visual “language” or signature, and how has it evolved over time?

My work was initially more concrete, but I think it has become far more abstract and complex over time. If I have a visual signature, or something that sets me apart from other artists, it begins with my wildness, the lack of caution with which I apply strokes, the lack of conformity to structure. 

I’m this way because any sort of rigidity feels limited to me, and I like to strive for the limitless. This would also be why my work became so abstract, because I strove to express many things simultaneously rather than a few. 

This also led to the increasing complexity in my paintings. There are a few other artists who are similar in these attributes, but where I am separate from them is in my morbidity. Since I saw the movie Alien when I was 5 I was kind of traumatically obsessed with darker themes.

As for the vibrancy of my work, it is simply because I use pure colours. I rarely mix them. I have always felt more visually seized by vibrant colours, and I strive to create the most visually penetrating work that I can so this explains this. I liken my use of colour to how some poisonous animals are very strikingly coloured as a display of danger.

Q. Being based in Australia, how does the local art scene influence you? Are there Australian abstract artists (past or present) who you particularly admire?

I don’t think too much about Australian painters. There has been a painter in the 20th century whose style was almost alarmingly similar to mine, although I cannot recall his name or say whether he was Australian. Still, he only painted a few works which bore semblance to mine, and it was not his oeuvre. 

There is one Australian artist whose work I think is awesome, but I also cannot recall his name. He did these sorts of massive abstract cosmic paintings. He is still alive and old now. These artists, however, had little to no impact on my practice.

Q. What’s one piece of advice you would give to young artists who want to dive into abstract or experimental painting?

To artists who wish to dive into experimental or abstract painting, I would have no advice. Advice, I think, is the bane of the artist. And all the best things have already been said, famously, by others. All I can utter is the platitude - follow your instinct.

Q. If you could paint a mural anywhere in the world on any building or landscape, where would it be, and what would you paint?

I would paint a mural on the inside of an active volcano where no living thing would lay eyes upon it before its extinction. Or in New York, where it could possibly get the greatest exposure and further my career.

Bio

Noah Xaver Pfister is an Australian Abstract Expressionist known for his emotionally charged, multilayered canvases that merge colour, movement, and psychological depth. With a rapidly growing audience and over 177K followers, Noah has become one of the emerging contemporary artists redefining modern abstract art for a digital generation.

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Interviewed By Tarunanshi Sharma