Allie — Charli Beck

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Getting to the Root of Artistic Roots

How a Sense of Home Impacts the Style and Content of Allie Yacina’s Work

Artist, illustrator, and designer, Allie Yacina grew up near Philadelphia, went to university in Delaware, and began her career in New York CIty. Though this might seem to some like ideal circumstances for a graphic designer, it wasn't quite what she needed to thrive. She told me,

“I did an internship at this Broadway marketing design agency and didn’t like it and then I visited Portland and I was like, ‘I’m going there instead.’’’

Over a casual Zoom meeting, Allie and I discussed the role of home in her art practice. We talked about apartments and cities, work and art, and dove deeply into color, mood, and intuition. Since artists’ environments can have an impact on the work they make, I wanted to learn what Portland means for Allie’s landscapes and interiors.

“Let Go” Allie Yacina

Charli “In your bio you mention not only that you live in Portland but also that you're from philadelphia. That’s maybe not a necessity professionally, I mean, people who are hiring you don't care, necessarily that you're from Philadelphia. What is the impulse to hold onto and call that out?”

Allie “I have this bicoastal perspective that I think is important to me. As a graphic designer and someone working for a salary, I think that being from the east coast definitely got me hired in Portland because there's this weird concept of a work ethic, not saying that I agree with that, but I think to me what's important is sharing where I'm from and that being enough.

I think knowing that about someone says something about them and, like, moving across the country or moving somewhere new, I think takes courage and a different kind of tenacity, especially when it's your choice. So I feel like that speaks something about me that I still like to mention.”

Charli “I love that. That is not the answer I was expecting. I thought it was like you're holding on to Philadelphia in a certain kind of way, but it's very much not that.”

Allie “No. There’s a reason I left. I got here and I felt, like, just more able to be myself.”

Allie Yacina

Realizing that I had been off base with this idea of holding on to the past, I dug a little deeper into what it means for Allie to be home. Allie admitted to certainly having a sense of security in the “idea of home” in regard to her parents home. They still live in the house she grew up in. But she narrowed in on the house she lives in now as a very meaningful place.

After living in a bad apartment with an ex during the pandemic, she found her own little refuge with big windows and rounded edges. The sense that, “this is the spot, this is the place” in the absence of, “that feeling of something’s not right” was a critical reminder for Allie that her intuition is one of her strongest tools.

Allie “With painting, and any sort of creative work, there's so much decision making that needs to happen and I think a mark of an artist is someone who’s really curious and also has a strong intuition and can make those decisions even if they don't know where they're going or if it's unclear if there's a right or a wrong, it's just like put the mark down. How did that feel? where's the next mark gonna go, there's a lot of intuition.”

As I began to better understand this self-trust-based mark making practice, I wanted to know more about Allie’s use of color. I asked about the prevalence of green I was noticing.

Allie “I'm informed by the colors that I see but I've never been great at painting the exact color that I see but I think that’s a good thing. I make choices that feel better, to me.

With my greens, first of all, it's like the widest range of a color. I love adding oranges into my green to warm it, I love a warm green. You can have so many different variations of that. You can put it next to a cool one or a dark one, there’s a lot of different temperature nudging that I do when I'm painting and choosing my colors. It is informed by what I'm looking at, I know I don't want it to be accurate to what I'm looking at, I just want to be inspired by this thing.”

Allie Yacina

Charli “Would you say that you feel pretty at home with color?”

Allie “Yeah. Totally. I do feel at home in color. It’s nice, thank you for commenting on it. I feel like a lot of people comment about my color and I wish I could explain it better.

I have gotten better at talking about it and it is a home feeling, maybe, if you think about the intuitive aspect of it and the – safe-ty – that I feel with it. And the confidence. I feel pretty rooted-in-there with my color use and I'm not tired of exploring color. Maybe I'll go back to still life interiors over the winter, especially now that I'm going to be inside more and there’s less green. The fall colors are really inspiring right now.”