I started sketching during my holidays then progressed to painting. I had some very good tutors at the art classes workshops that I attended. Further to this I was impressed by the abilities and techniques of amateur artists on a UK Television program ‘Watercolour Challenge’.
Wallace studied with a professional painter for the Duke of Edinburgh Gold award at age 17 and has always been interested in art. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1979 and started painting seriously in 1997 after taking some stress leave from a full time job in the transport industry. Commissions started almost immediately.
My family arrived in New Zealand when I was a child and we lived by the sea, so I was surrounded by all forms of nature; which fascinated me so much that it seemed a natural progression to recreate the detail and colours of the natural world. I don’t remember any point in my life when I stopped and said to myself that I want to be an artist, it was there in me all the time.
I paint and create because of a great inner desire to do so. When I paint I feel happy, free and connected! It allows me to choose a lifestyle of freedom, expression, travel and happiness which I cherish above all. The motivation comes from many avenues but is mainly an internal drive to achieve the very best I can be and to attain this lifestyle I have created for myself.
It wasn’t until I was older with a young family, that I took up painting seriously. I began in watercolour and painted scene after scene - ‘stiffies’ I called them, painting exactly what I saw, with little fluidity or deviation from what lay in front of me.
Qualifying from The Learning Connection with honours in art and creativity, Cherol studied part-time, starting in 2010.
Awarded a scholarship for every year but one, she explains that simply drawing has become the basis of all her work. “I love faces and like to portray them as portraits or caricature in 2D and 3D. Cats have also featured quite a lot in my work. I like to challenge myself and work from life rather than a photo reference.”
PHOTOGRAPHIC SURREALISMI opted for photography due to lack of other options as despite being a high scoring student, my almost illegible hand writing caused me to achieve less than favourable scores in classical studies.
CHALLENGING COLOURIt certainly didn’t put him off painting and drawing and why should it have? Some famous artists such as Constable, Picasso and van Gogh are thought to have been colour blind and they did well. It is, after all, a simple matter of perception, not skill or technique.
I was one of four daughters and we lived in semi rural Ireland, in picturesque countryside. I remember a couple of faded prints on our living room wall. They were of ballet dancers, and I used to gaze at them and wonder at the delicate tutus and gracious poses. I spent hours drawing dancers. My favourite birthday or Christmas gift would be colouring books, crayons and paints.
Sue is inspired by life: “Living and the crazy things that send you to places you either never want to go again or where the intrigue is too enormous to resist,” she says adding: “I did quite a bit of travel in my twenties and those times showed me a fairly full spectrum of what life is all about.”
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