All posts tagged: blog

Keep your art practices sacred. You’ll never look back.

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A love note from me to all the creatives, who work from the soul and have succumbed at times to the negative chatter around them. A lot of what people do, which we are all guilty of at some time or another, is resting too much consideration on the opinions of those around us. Our ego is so hugely interlinked with our art practices, we are laying out our talents and often our thoughts and feelings in order to showcase what we can do. Two things that cannot co-exist for your creative practices is the ego alongside the freedom of self expression. It is too volatile. People put others down to their face, or behind their back. Both equally as cutting. It can be their way of a cheap win. A quick rush of feeling better and above someone else. If they cannot or do not care to go out and create themselves it is the only way they can involve themselves in a way they feel on top. In order to protect your creativity …

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 …

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 …

‘Flutter’ Limited Edition Prints

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A common question that I am asked is the distinction between ‘finishing or abandoning’ a painting (in terms of completing work) and which one applies to me?  There are two very different feelings when a painting is complete and is at most an unpredictable part of the process for me. Occasionally my idea is crystal clear enough to see when the finished version is in sight, or be unable to stop until I meet this mark in my mind. This is finishing the work that you set out with a cause, process and visual in mind. Abandoning the painting is a very different but equally as satisfying feeling, in when you reach a stage in the work where you feel it is right to stop. For whatever reason, it may be that the balance is right and anything more could be overworking it. Maybe you feel that what you are trying to put across has been successful and in going further could potentially spoil that. A number of reasons, even just that it ‘feels’ right to …

Second Collection of Original Oil Paintings with Wishbone Publishing / Katy Jade Dobson

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I have been working recently on my second collection with Wishbone Publishing, a collection that I am incredibly   excited about. It has been a lot of fun to work on and showcases a lot of what I have learnt in the last few years as a professional artist. But above that I have injected mainly what I enjoy within this collection, the learning curve is palpable in the application and I love that it is raw and exposed in these original oil paintings. My work as always is selfishly about my process, my work thrives when my heart is fully engaged and I do not stop until the atmosphere is intimate and blatant. The success of my last collection was immensely unexpected and I am incredibly grateful to anyone who has supported my work over the last couple of years as I have found my feet. What I took from working solely on a full body of work is that your headspace during this period of creating can be temporary and down to circumstance. The …

First Collection with Wishbone Publishing released tomorrow!

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I am incredibly excited that tomorrow my first collection with Wishbone Publishing is released! I have worked incredibly hard on the pieces that will be available as a set of originals, and limited edition prints. Some originals have already sold with the Cloud Gallery at Buy Art Fair in Manchester where I had a couple of pieces up for a first look. The paintings are all oil on wood panel where I have worked hard to focus on attentional to detail juxtaposed with negative space, embellishments and an abundance of kaleidoscopic colours! It is a collection where my love for wildlife meets my traditional draftsman practice, and my obsession with opulent jewel toned colour bursts. I have mentioned numerous times how difficult it has been to not post updates on the progress of my paintings, for the past 12 months I have posted every development I had recorded of my work, and whilst creating some of my best work yet I had not shown as much as a close up of a  piece in this collection. …