In our series Behind the Scenes, artists answer questions about their creative process, philosophy, and more. This installment features Claudia Hart, a contemporary artist, curator, critic, professor, and pioneer in the digital art world. See her Meural exclusive, The Bouquet of Odilon Redon. (Read our other exclusive interviews with artists here.)

What is your ideal work setting?

My ideal work setting is at the top of a house, still connected to people on the ground, yet on a hillside where I can see water and rolling hills. It should be silent. Actually, I’m describing my current studio.

How influential is your personal history and/or politics in your work?

My work is pictorial and very visual, so one would not associate it with conceptual art, but it’s theory-based! I take a polemical position in relation to the conceptual bias and artwork of the proceeding position and conceptual bias and artwork of the current position and then push that into the future. I correct the future in relation to the past and a possible future.

If you could have any artist, living or dead, paint a portrait of you, who would you choose?

Vincent van Gogh.

What’s an image of yourself that makes you feel old?

All art is theft—true or false?

That statement is sort of true and sort of false. As I described before, art is a process of correction.

What would you be if you weren’t an artist?

I was trained to be an architect but never practiced. So if I could start over, I would be a total designer: architecture, interior design, fashion, fabrics, furniture, ceramics. I make augmented-reality apps for my own fabrics and furniture that I also use to use for my wearables. The same app can be used for my hand-thrown porcelain ceramics. My favorite one is called The Looking Glass App. So I’m already down this road, but given my druthers, I’d work in the high-end design context rather than the art context so I could connect to more people.

How do you know when a work is finished?

When it pops! It cries out to me and it’s just done. Nothing irritating in it anymore!

What’s an image of an artwork that you hated 10 years ago but now love?

What will make you feel successful?

Quitting teaching. I love my students; they give me life. But in the end, a day job is a day job.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

From a long-retired department chair at another school: colleagues. They are not your friends and not your enemies, but they are dangerous. And elaborated by a former student: like beasts in a jungle!

What’s an image of an artwork that you loved 10 years ago but now hate?

If you could own the exclusive rights to any specific color, which would you choose (and why)? (i.e., Anish Kapoor owns Vantablack)

I want to own olive green. In fact, I think I do—no one else wants it.