Art Seeker Stories

Today on the Art Seeker Stories 17th Episode I have an Art 2 HeArt with Sally Whelan, a figurative self-taught artist working in Wiltshire.

 In this episode we chat about Sally’s larger than life figurative paintings. Her calling to create them and how they have evolved. From the Goddess Sittings to the Gender Divine. 

 She is interested in the connection between the viewer and subject, in creating, she is the woman in between. Her pictures capture the full person, from all sides, the light and the dark, vulnerable, and strong. 

 Her figurative paintings share the subject’s intimate stories, their skin hidden in shades and depths, in a narrative that is ever changing. 

 Ultimately Sally, shows people themselves, seeking their soul. 

 Sally's recommended books:
Colour : Travels Through the Paintbox : Victoria Finlay
120 Days of Sodom by  Marquis De Sade

You can find more about Sally and her work here.
Website  www.paintersally.com
Instagram @painter.sally   
&  @the_gender_divine project
& Remember to tune in to Sally's Artist Gasbag series on IGTV on Thursday's at 6pm.

Today on the Art Seeker Stories 16th Episode I have an Art 2 HeArt with Gina McAdam, artist and founder of Haus of Paint, a small slow fashion label from Surrey.  

 In this episode we chat about the traditional paths that our art can take us. We talk about Gina’s love for print making and poetry and how Lockdown gave her permission to follow her dream to carve a new path into fashion

 We discuss claiming ourselves as artists and the frustrations of diluting your artist voice to commercialism. In contrast, we move on to Grayson Perry, an artist who we both admire. 

 Of course we also chat about the first year of Haus of Paint, the learning and experience of building a new fashion brand business.

 And then we talk colour -    

 Gina's book and creative inspiration is Grayson Perry, here's a link to the series I spoke about :
Grayson Perry's Rites of Passage, a Channel 4 series.
I also have a couple of his books in my bookshelf:
Grayson Perry, Portrait of the  artist as a young girl. Grayson Perry
Grayson Perry's Sketchbooks. Grayson Perry

Gina also recommended day out for inspiration:
Barbara Hepworth Gallery in St Ives. &
Watts Gallery Artists Village in Compton

Gina's Haus of Paint Fashion Designs 

Website : https://hausofpaint.bigcartel.com
Insta: @haus_of_paint
Art and creativity : @ginamcartist

Today on the Art Seeker Stories 15th Episode I have an Art 2 HeArt with Nirali Patel, a London based multi-disciplinary artist whose mission is to empower change through creating art. Her artwork is bright and bold, accessible, and inspiring. Each collection is created with a deeply meaningful cause in mind.

In this episode we chat about the blurred line between art and our lives and how one feeds into the other, as our art essentially becomes who we are. We discuss improving our skillset, the value of learning and how do we keep the light joy in creating when it becomes heavy and pressured in becoming a business. 

 Most of all I love Nirili’s idea for shifting our mindset, she has created her own 32 weeks of rejection. It’s such a great project, I for one will be doing my own version – so watch this space!

Nirali's book inspiration is :
Green Lights by Mathew McConaughey

You can find out more about Nirali and her work here:
Website:     https://www.nirali.art
Instagram @niraliart

Today on the Art Seeker Stories 13th episode I invite Laura Parker to Art Seeker Island. Of her Art she says: Art is like a strand of her life that has developed as she’s grown older (She’ll be 70 in 6 months’ time!).  For many years, art was something she loved and studied, gaining a degree in History of Art & Architecture at 45, but it had never occurred to her to try to create her own work.  

 At fifty, Laura began painting portraits and the human figure in oils. She explored landscape painting, going outside to paint ‘en plein air’.

 Currently Laura finds greater self expression in working more abstractly, capturing a sense of ‘landscape’ that is less representational but more emotional, expressive and authentic to her artistic vision.

 Laura’s use of colour and mark-making is vibrant, creating an energy and vitality to her paintings, offering the viewer a personal interpretation of the world where our individual sensibilities might meet.

 Laura takes us on wonderful magical journey beneath the sea, 

The 3 artist  artworks Laura takes with her for company on Art seeker Island are;

1. By a woman: Jenny Saville – the visceral impact of her Reverse at the RA Summer Exhibition

2. Of cultural significance: We are going to Australia with Brett Whiteley, looking at Rembrandt's portrait, an 18 panel painting: Alchemy and paintings of Sydney Harbour

3. Free choice:  Going to Norway with Ludvig Karsten's Blue Kitchen and Reclining Nude.

Lufi’s Library Book Swap:
Borrowing:  Robot & Boo, The beach cleaning crew by Leeanne Splatt @castawaycolor
Swapping: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki  https://www.instagram.com/ozekiland/

You can find more about Laura and her work here:
Website: www.lauraparkerart.com
Twitter :  @lauraparker_uk
Instagram :  @lauraparker_uk
Laura is also a member of @artcanorg

Today, on the Art Seeker Stories Podcast 12th Episode  I invite Rebecca Tucker to her Artist Residency on Art Seeker Island, to create a concept for her exhibition 'The Shape of Hope.' Rebecca is a Lancashire born/London based painter, whose works are the result of a visual ‘discussion’ between abstract and more representational methods of depicting landscape and the natural world.

 Using colour, texture, line and layers Rebecca is keen to play with the viewers perception of space in her artworks (and what would traditionally constitute a ‘landscape’) and then pull that preconceived idea back to the appreciation of what are essentially abstract marks on a two dimensional surface. 

 Rebecca studied Fine Art at Reading University in the 90's, now lives in Greater London and owns an Interior Design company in Wimbledon. 

 Rebecca Art Seeker Island takes us on a wonderful journey through photography , surrealism and an exploration in light where beams of colour create emotion and illusions of floating space. Her Island lives among the trees, it explores all seasons and all terrain, the grass may be greener elsewhere, but on Art Seeker Island, Rebecca has everything all at once.

 The 3 artist  artworks Rebecca takes with her for company on Art seeker Island are;

1. By a woman: Vivian Maier http://www.vivianmaier.com/ photographer

2. Of cultural significance: Rene Magritte's 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe'

3. Free choice: James Turrell (specifically his exhibition at the Hayward 1993) www.jamesturrell.com 

Lufi’s Library Book Swap:
Borrowing:  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchel
Swapping: Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood
Including: Oryx And Crake, The Year of the Flood and Maddaddam

You can find more about Rebecca and her work here:
Website : www.rebeccatucker.co.uk
Instagram @rebeccatuckerpaintings @rebeccatuckerportraits
Interior Design: www.sunainteriordesign.com @sunainteriordesign
Rebecca is also a member of www.artcan.org.uk @artcanorg

Welcome to Art Seeker Stories, a podcast about Art and creativity. I’m your host, Emma Hill and this is my voyage of discovery. 

Today I invite Elizabeth Mikellides, a conceptual artist working with both music and art with the goal to discover and illuminate the constructs of music through the visual form of Drawing. 

By learning piano pieces by Bach, Mozart and Chopin, this created a love of structure, order and layering which Elizabeth represents in her visual practice of Drawing. 

 Elizabeth’s Artist residency on art seeker Island takes us on her artist journey as she creates her own vision of hope. She looks for parallels between both music and art and incorporates those findings in her artwork. Her work can therefore be interpreted as a visual score but also visual music. Indeed, she calls her practice 'Drawing Music'.

We take an incredible journey within  Elizabeth's Art Seeker Island  of Hope,  there, all senses are stimulated with a vibrant dance of colour and sounds that feed the soul. All created and born from the island itself. 

 The 3 artist  artworks Elizabeth takes with her for company on Art seeker Island are;

1. By a woman: Lydia Okumura, Untitled I, Installation

2. Of cultural significance:  Concerto in D minor BWV 974 after A. Marcello's Concerto for Oboe and Strings, arranged by Bach, around 1715
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJl7f1WGNnw

3. Free choice: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra by Phillip Glass, 1987
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2UlDIw-9GI

Lufi’s Library Book Swap:
 Borrowing:  The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
 Swapping:  Sol Le Witt Retrospective Catalogue

You can find more about Elizabeth and her work here:
 Website: www.elizabethmikellides.art
 Instagram: @elizabethmikellides

Today, on the Art Seeker Stories Podcast 10th Episode I chat to Scottish artist Cat Coulter, who divides her time between Cellardyke, a fishing village on the Fife coast and north London. Here on her artist residency on Art Seeker Island, she describes her imaginary island, as she creates her own vision of ‘Hope’. 

 Cat’s work is a load of old rubbish.

 Her art practice starts with beach combing. She collects and re-presents found objects, to highlight the impact of our throwaway society on the natural environment.

The materials she uses are dictated by whatever the tide brings. Some are natural objects, but most are synthetic items either deliberately discarded or accidentally abandoned on the shore or at sea.

 Cat uses some of these ugly waste plastics to make cyanotype photograms, making deceptively beautiful but dystopian blue-and-white images, where trash imitates nature. 

 The viewer may not immediately notice that what they are looking at is actually rubbish. Cat invites the viewer to look again, more closely, and reflect on what they see. Cat aims to raise consciousness and awareness of the increase in plastic pollution, particularly since the pandemic and the proliferation of discarded PPE.

Each work aims to create, quite literally, a blueprint for change.

We take an incredible journey into a hopeful planet where rubbish is but a thought and a memory of what was, encased in a cabinet, frozen in time and history.

 The 3 artist  artworks Cat takes with her for company on Art seeker Island are;

1. By a woman: Untitled by Dora Maar (the hand emerging from the seashell)

2. Of cultural significance: Zellij tiled mosaics (Elaborate geometric mosaics made in Morocco.

3. Free choice: Rembrandt's self-portrait, with two circles.

Lufi’s Library Book Swap:
 Borrowing:  Natives: Race and Class on the Ruins of Empire by Akala @akalamusic
 Swapping: Robot & Boo The Beach Cleaning Crew by Leeanne Splatt @castawaycolor

You can find more about Cat and her work here:
 Website: www.catcoulterartist.com
 Instagram: @catcoulterartist

Today, on the Art Seeker Stories Podcast 9th Episode I invite French American conceptual artist Laurence De Valmy, for her artist residency on Art Seeker Island, an imaginary island where she creates her own vision of ‘Hope”  

 Laurence de Valmy’ s Art invites us to reflect on the links between artists through times and the relationship between Art and social media today.​

 Inspired by the personal stories of artists, she revisits Art History through the idea of an Instagram of the past. In her POST paintings, she combines iconic artworks skillfully appropriated with imagined conversations, historically accurate yet humorous. Meanhile other art works explore the place of Hashtags in our communication.

In this episode we ponder upon her iconic artworks which ask,

“What if Instagram always existed?’

 We certainly take  an alternative journey and learn stories of art linked through friendship, time and place. 

 The 3 artist  artworks Laurence takes with her for company on Art seeker Island are,

1. By a woman: A  Self portrait by Berthe Morisot

2. Of cultural significance: 'Olympia', by Edvard Manet 

3. Free choice: 'The Four Seasons', a video instillation by David Hockney.

 Lufi’s Library Book Swap:
Borrowing:  Matt Haig’s 'The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig.
Swapping: '9th Street Women',  by Mary GabrielI. 

I've got to know Laurence through Art Can during last summer, she is a true champion of celebrating other women artists and is always encouraging others, be sure to check out artist interviews and features in her blog, ‘The Curious Frenchy’, where I’m also proudly featured. 

You can find more on Laurence here:
Website: www.laurencedevalmy.com www.thecuriousfrenchy.wordpress.com
Instagram: @lauencedevalmy @thecuriousfrenchy
Paintings : @kahngallery @azartgallery @michelemariaudgallery @rangeofartsgallery @singularofficial @artcanorg

Today, on the Art Seeker Stories podcast 8th Episode  I’m delighted to chat with London based artist Evelyn Jean, a visual artist whose career began after 12 years in the music industry, where he became increasingly frustrated at the limits of the medium and began practicing visual art as a method for a new way of performance and true expression of his real feelings.​

In doing this Evelyn seeks to create art that speaks to the soul and to attract a different kind of audience to his work.​

His work covers many mediums including, painting; filmmaking; literature; music;  performance, and installation.​

Of his work he says,

"I am distracted by human behaviour and how we really feel about ourselves underneath the veil. 

I see life and art being played out like a film script with more control over it than we realise. The ability to rewrite every scene."

 I met Evelyn briefly in early 2020 just before our first lockdown at a show we were both exhibiting in, ironically called 'Fake News', and virtually more recently at the exhibition, 'The Shape of the New'. 

​ Today I have cut Evelyn’s episode in two, and this is his part 2 of his artist residency on  Art Seeker Island. Wow, we had such great fun and our imaginations ran wild, if not a little bit crazy. This is a real journey weaving in and out of time, into a metropolis melting pot of culture, in and out of reality and the imaginary. 

We start off with a spark of change, like a lightning bolt, a true awakening-  from the music scene switching to film and performance and ultimately to painting. We visit the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and then move on to Lufi’s book swap. 

Evelyn borrows my Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and he swaps it for Down and Out in London and Paris by George Orwell. 

 If you haven’t heard Evelyn’s first part one, it is definitely worth a catch up - it's on episode 7,  and we talk about Evelyn’s 3 Artworks for company on Art Seeker Island. 

The Juniper Tree by Joan Jonas, Street Scene Chicago Archibald Motley and Atlantic Civilization by Andre Fougeron.

 You can find more about Evelyn:
Website: www.evelynjean.com
Instagram: @evelynjean_art
Youtube: Evelyn Jean Europe