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Who Are You As An Artist?
Who Are you as an Artist?
Hello,
For this month's newsletter I've made a short video telling you about:
The importance of making time for your own practice
Taking inspiration from old family photos
The process of experimenting to find individual style
Abandoning a painting (even though I invested lots of time on it!)
I'm glad to say things are back to normal here after the upheaval of the last year and it’s been wonderful having a few weeks off over the Summer to spend time in my studio.
I've spent the majority of the last 8 years teaching and working on portrait commissions with very little time to work on my own projects. Whilst I love to teach, it occurred to me that I've lost sight of who I am as an artist.
Having always been a representational painter I've been exploring a more expressive way of art making and introducing more abstract elements to my painting using mixed media.
Working from old family photos and drawing inspiration from Edgar Degas with his experimental techniques and Pierre Bonnard with his bold use of colour.
It’s the first time in years that I’ve been able to focus on my practise without the pressure of producing an end result, it feels like the freedom of childhood all over again - and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
Watch my short video here
I've made a quick reel of this oil painting portrait study (below) showing my process
It was meant to be a quick half hour painting but I lost track of time and it ended up taking over 2 hours! It's useful to do timed studies to avoid over working, but easier said than done to stop fiddling with it.
I've really enjoyed running my Life class throughout August at the Petersfield Museum. We've had some great live models sitting for us and I've met lots of new people. I even had a chance to do quick painting sketches between teaching (below).
I like the immediacy of these studies and the quality of the mark making -time was very limited, for me this is always a good thing.
Throughout Autumn I'll be continuing my Portrait course 'Art of the Face' at the museum. There are still limited spaces click here for details
That's all for now, thank you as always for your support and I'd love to hear your comments or questions,
Livvy x
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