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Hunt Slonem – Art to make you happy

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The art of Hunt Slonem makes me happy. Hunt Slonem is an American Neo-Expressionist artist who is very much loved and celebrated for his distinct animal paintings, most famed for his bunny paintings in particular. I personally love his bird paintings. He finds inspiration from his many rescued exotic birds, over 60 which live in a beautiful large avery. With such a strong spiritual connection to his subjects, his paintings depict the auras of the animals he admires so much. As a child growing up in Hawaii his passion for exotic birds in particular deepened then during his time in Central America. Slonem has travelled the globe with much sensitivity to other cultures and the natural world around him. So much so, his paintings express an ongoing scene of constant stimulation from a world he so clearly admires for its beauty and energy. What strikes me the most about Slonem’s paintings is that they’re so beautifully unpretentious, naive at face value, but so intricately and diligently executed at a further glance. At first sight, the textures …

Adam Handling Chelsea – The Art Of Belmond

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Last year I began a project that could only be described as a dream come true. To create bespoke artwork for an impossibly beautiful hotel in the heart of London. In a complete whirlwind of compositional sketches, late night note jotting, ideas bursting at the seams, scouring the internet for historical records and deciphering latin names for all kinds of botanical specimens… I set to work on a creating bespoke commissioned original oil paintings for the newly renovated building that would become one of the most lavish, expensive and artistically drenched hotels imaginable. The Belmond group have renovated a building, where the room marked 118 is famously the room where Oscar Wilde was arrested. The hotel is owned by the Cadogan family, a lineage steeped in rich history as the ancestors of Hans Sloane, the 18th century physician, naturalist, adventurer and collector noted for bequeathing his collection of 71 000 items to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum. He traveled to Jamaica …

Creative block – When your art doesn’t look how you want it to!

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I love this topic. But I think there is another side to the conversation of creative blocks that doesn’t get mentioned. Maybe because it’s not about free creative expression and letting your brush work the canvas without a care or thought. Its logical. Its creation, but its not whimsical or freedom. I am talking about when your physical capabilities block the way you want your art to look. The subject of creative blocks and physical capabilities are intertwined but worlds apart. I don’t get creative blocks. I may have a day once in a blue moon where my paintings don’t come together as they usually would, or writing doesn’t flow out onto a keyboard like it often does. In fact I am so heavily flooded with ideas that I sometimes worry that I won’t have enough hours in my lifetime to create all the things I want to. I do understand creative blocks though, because I used to experience them in a way that symptomatically showed itself as frustration at life.  I know many people …

Lets stay connected

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Lets stay connected. You and I have been connected for a little while. You actually see into every corner of my soul, if you do in fact look at my artwork. Scary. Sharing my sacred art space has been something I have felt more strongly towards for a long time now! From starting communities on FaceBook to trying to share more information on the how behind my artwork, for anyone interested in the creating side of my art. Whilst also adding additional information for the people who just enjoy the viewing or the more theoretical side. I know from my own experience that when I had made the decision to make my art more of a prominent feature in my life, the social media profiles of other artists were my biggest source of inspiration and drive. I waited for their next post, and I hoped for more information of the how. Be it how they created, how they marketed, anything! Because of the ever changing social media landscape and the difficulty staying connected to the …

Lately…

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It has been such a long time since I last wrote a blog post (1 year in fact) and I thought I would revive and refresh with a few teaser close ups of my newest collection that I’ve been working so hard on. But first allow me to explain my absence from writing (one of my favourite forms of expression alongside painting) and what I have coming up that warrants a blog post or two! The last blog post I wrote, I typed with a sleeping baby strapped to me in a baby sling, who had been walked around the kitchen table over and over whilst I sang Bohemian Rhapsody (not sure why, but this method seemed to work occasionally) until he fell asleep and freed up my hands somewhat. I could have cooked, but this was too loud or messy. I could have painted but the arm movements seemed to disturb him. So typing it was! Fast forward a year and the tiny sleeping baby is a walking, babbling, giggling, dancing and relentlessly curious …

Some of what I have worked on in 2018

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2018 has kicked off to quite an eventful start, as I work on a collection, I have meanwhile worked on some smaller pieces that has helped me correct some of my skills with intricate details. I love to work large scale, and often find it difficult to change technique to fit a smaller canvas. Time for me has been particularly limited and there are certainly not enough hours in the day, but when I can I am painting, and trying to keep up the challenge of changing things up to better myself. This in part isn’t just trying new techniques, compositions and styles, but revising old ones and improving upon them! Here are just a few of what I have worked on this year, as well as commissions, great (white shark) and small! Each piece below is oil on wood panel, this is the way I mostly work! For any further information on any of my works, contact info@wishboneart.co.uk to be directed to a gallery near you! I also recently asked for what you would …

How I began selling my Art

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Selling artwork is not always an artist’s perogative. However not everyone has the luxury of creating for the joy. Of course that is where it has stemmed from for me, but in my early painting days getting the money for materials to work with was an important factor in actually being able to leisurely produce the work I was so inspired to do. I was working in a small coffee shop when I picked up on painting for the first time in years. University had left me a trembling mess of an artist, the soul crushing deadlines and inspiration stifling guidelines to follow for your work to be valid within the perimeters of that semester’s course had left me not wanting to even look at a paintbrush again. I loved working at the coffee shop and had the opportunity to talk to so many people on laid back shifts or quiet mornings. I had talked at length to a regular about art which left me wanting to use what little money I had left that …

Motivation – The Art of Staying Inspired

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The topic of motivation comes up a lot when your job is your hobby. There is a great argument for the need to keep work life and personal life separate, for the sake of your sanity and ability to relax. What do you do when your hobby becomes your way of earning a living, and your passion becomes a necessary daily thing. Does this make sitting down to work harder? If so in what way? Also, does working from home create problems with motivation levels when your are presented with oh-so many distractions? I am hugely lucky to be able to paint as my passion and my job, however some days motivation is slightly harder to find. Here is what I do. Go for a walk Nature is soothing. When I began painting for a living I lived in an area built up of rows of terraced housing in a small city. Nature was hard to come by unless you ventured to the outskirts, which I could not do at the time. I knew of …

‘Jaws’ – Shark Painting

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I am very excited that my original painting ‘Jaws’ is being made into a limited edition print, with editions of 75. It is a privilege that this piece is endorsed by The Shark Trust, a wonderful charity. The misunderstood nature of sharks means that their demise as a species is hugely overlooked. Their importance within the marine ecosystem is of such huge importance to the health of our oceans. There are many threats to sharks that can have adverse knock on affects. The global decline of sharks can create a cascading effect. As one of the ocean’s top predators, sharks have potential to structure ecosystems in crucial ways. Decline can mean rearrangement of marine communities. One of the biggest threats to sharks globally is overfishing.  This is fuelled by a large demand for shark products such as meat and fins, cartilage, leather, teeth and jaws. Other threats include finning (the cruel practice of cutting off a shark’s fins whilst alive. Also, pollution and habitat destruction contribute to the hugely declining numbers. Climate change and pollution …

Social Media, Art and where I have been!

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The past year for me has meant a slight distance from painting for the best reason. In 2018 I spent a vast majority of the year working on something that in the end, I didn’t feel was good enough to release as a collection. This work has stayed private and ongoing, and hopefully one day I will be able to call it complete. For now, it is one of the first times I have felt that I couldn’t quite meet the challenge that I had set for myself. I took this quite hard, as I have always stepped up to my own personal goals with painting, however it is good to know there is still so much to improve upon and aspire towards. I did manage to work on a collection named Dawn Chorus based on bird species from around the world, this made my heart glow and reinstalled my love for painting. Just after finishing this collection, I had my son Reuben. I continued to paint in small doses to ease myself back into …