From the Ocean to the Mountains
"Garbanzos" by Atilla Feszt | pen and ink; posca pen | 2023
Atilla Feszt has spent the better part of the last two years inspired by a new landscape. Originally from the Bahamas, he moved to Steamboat Springs in early 2022 and immediately took up atPine Moon Fine Art.After snagging a guest artist spot for six months, the owners voted him in permanently last July. Now, his bold, comicbook-esque prints hang on the gallery’s walls alongside more than a dozen of Steamboat’s artists.
Attila’s work is recognizable – similar to abstract realism, his style is based on real life with familiar objects that are presented in a different way. His signature hue is a bright, turquoise blue (reminiscent, probably, of the ocean from his hometown, he says). Inspired by the boldness of comic book illustrations, he prefers to work in black coupled with just one or two other colors. The turquoise, he notes, is one of his favorites. “I’m a surfer, so I love the color of the ocean,” he says. “I also like using colors that aren’t realistic to the piece because it hopefully makes you look at it a bit differently. When you make it too realistic, the viewer is familiar with it so they might not give it as much attention as they normally would when it’s presented a little bit differently. I’m trying to make people look at the forms without necessarily overlaying their familiarity with it, even just for a few moments.
Always interested in drawing, Atilla originally wanted to practice architecture but when he moved to Hope Town Abaco in 2005, he began working in screen printing design, graphic design and partaking in arts and craft fairs. “That’s what informed my style,” he explains. “I was doing stylized graphic work so that it would stand out in the islands where there’s a lot of watercolors.
"Pit Stop" by Atilla Feszt | Acrylic on Canvas | 2023
He lives by the motto “by reducing the world, we make it larger,” a quote from the book “Journey to Ixtlan,” which he was reading while working on a piece in the Bahamas. “It made me realize that’s what I was trying to do,” he says. “Rather than a landscape full of everything you can see, what I’m trying to do is pull elements out that you’re familiar with but that sometimes get lost in the background noise.”
These days, the elements that he’s pulling out are less oceanus and more mountainous. “Going from ocean to mountain is a striking contrast that I really started thinking about,” Attila says. “The oceans and the mountains have a similar vastness but the ocean is more intangible because you don’t know how far it goes, whereas mountains are clearly defined; it makes the vastness a little more tangible. That’s what I’m trying to pay attention to and figure out how I’m going to capture that. It’s a chance to look at things differently and try to present them in a different way. I’m looking forward to figuring that out.”