In 2016, Aly Ytterberg quit her job in admissions at Washington University to pursue art full time. The change has taken some time to get used to, but Ytterberg says she’s never been happier: “Being an artist is a hard job, but it’s always a very rewarding and joyful job and I can’t imagine doing anything else.” The artist and mother divides her day between painting and caring for Olan, her 2-year-old son. “I work during naptime, after bedtime, and before he wakes up. I’ve never been more productive,” says Ytterberg, who paints at all hours of the day, even if it’s just for a 20-minute spurt.
How did you get your start? I was the kid who took every art class. By my senior year of high school, I decided I wanted to study art, which was a little terrifying. My parents are accountants, and my sister’s an engineer. My parents have always been supportive of my work, so it wasn’t them I needed to convince; it was me. I chose Washington University, and I studied sculpture. It was a challenge because it made me think differently. You have to think spatially.
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When did you switch to painting? When I got out of college, I realized that being a sculptor is hard when you don’t have an amazing space. It’s hard to fit welding material and a wood shop into a 900-square-foot home. Painting was a bit more feasible, and I’ve always been a fan of all styles of art.
What’s your process for working on a painting? I use acrylic paint because it dries faster, and I work with lots of layers. To get the hard edges, I tape everything with duct tape. I always knew I wanted to experiment with hard-edge artwork; I’m a very type A person who likes control. It took me a couple of years to develop my method, but tape and a hairdryer—that I use to dry the paint faster—are must-have tools for my art.
How does your background in sculpture influence your current work? Sculpture helps me to break things down into simpler forms. For a sculpture, you generally start with what you envision it to be at the end and then break it down so that you can create it. My paintings work similarly: I start with a completed image of a landscape and then break it into shapes and colors and forms and compositions in order to build it back together.
Where do you get inspiration? I get a lot of my ideas from nature and the world around us. I’ve always been influenced by the colors that are found in the world and how they don’t really exist in paint, and sometimes not even in our eyes.
How do you come up with your palettes? Normally, for commissions, the clients have a couple colors in mind, so I find a palette that generally has 16 colors. I play around with them and just kind of see how they work together. It’s a lot of trial-and-error. Colors play differently with each other, and sometimes they surprise me.
From your Instagram, it looks like you also paint on wood. I think it goes back to my sculpture work. I worked with wood and was enthralled with the grain and the warmth of it. I’ve always been fascinated with how paint colors interact with wood grain. It’s something I can’t control, and as you can see from my artwork, I’m pretty tightly controlled [with all of] the color blocking.
