Innehållsförteckning för April 2023 från Artists & Illustrators

… in the April issue of Artists & Illustrators. First up is French ballpoint pen artist Louis Gibiard in our In the Studio slot. The Big Interview showcases the abstract, semi-abstract and realist work of Tazmanian coloured pencil artist Richard Klekociuk whilst we look into a retrospective of the Dutch Baroque Period painter Vermeer in a new exhibition that sold over 100,000 tickets before it even opened. On the practical side, we have Brazilian artist Fabio Cembranelli, who shows you how he painted one of his favourite flowers, the daffodil. Then, we whizz over to Uruguay, the home of watercolour master Alvaro Castagnet, who painted a street scene from one of his favourite cities in the world: London. Closing the issue is Pakistani artist, Zahra Azhar in the back page…

24 FEBRUARY Enter the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year for a chance to win a £10,000 prize and £500 of art materials. Filming begins in April 2023. Free to enter. skyartsartistoftheyear.tv 27 FEBRUARY Park Gallery and Cheltenham’s Christian Arts Festival invite artists to create art in any medium on the theme ‘New Life.’ Prize funds total £1,200. parkgallery.co.uk 1 MARCH Submit your 2D fine art works for the Jackson’s Painting Prize 2023. It costs £6 to enter and prize funds total £9,000 plus £8,500 of art materials. jacksonsart.com 1 MARCH Applications are open for The Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize 2023. All visual media accepted for the theme ‘Flourishing.’ It’s free to enter with a £5,000 prize fund. alpinefellowship.com…

A new collaborative exhibition drawing together works from the collections of MIMA and the David and Indrė Roberts Collection will be shaped by the knowledge and passion of a range of artists, academics and broadcasters. Working with curators at MIMA and the Roberts Institute of Art, these collaborators will draw upon their research and desire to interrogate ideas in selecting a range of works from the two collections. DEEP HORIZONS is on from 10 March to 18 June 2023 mima.art…

DRAWN TO PAPER: GIACOMETTI TO MOORE 23 March to 9 June 2023 Drawn to Paper showcases the versatility and quality of work on paper made in 20th-century Britain and beyond. This annual exhibition will include masterpieces of drawing, watercolour and oil painting by Paul Nash, Alberto Giacometti, Eduardo Paolozzi and Frank Auerbach, among others. Piano Nobile, 96 and 129 Portland Rd, London W11 4LW. piano-nobile.com EMPOWERING ART: INDIGENOUS CREATIVITY AND ACTIVISM FROM NORTH AMERICA’S NORTHWEST COAST 12 March to 10 July 2023 This is an exhibition of rich but rarely seen artworks bringing together exceptional contemporary and historical pieces. Empowering Art showcases the talent of their artistic and cultural creations on a scale unseen in the UK since the 1970s. Sainsbury Centre, Norfolk Rd, Norwich NR4 7TJ. sainsburycentre.ac.uk NIKOLETA SEKULOVIC:…

LOUIS GIBIARD’S LOVE FOR DRAWING began before the age of five, whilst living in a Russian orphanage. “It all started with this little toy car on the table. I saw a pen next to it and I felt an urge to draw.” But he quickly realised it was more difficult than he anticipated, describing it as a fun challenge. After being adopted by his French parents, it took him “about two years to start drawing more regularly. I remember that my friends and I used to create comics: drawing superheroes and sci-fi robots. When I turned 10, I started making more complex drawings, leaning towards realism and still life sketches; drawing different objects laying around my room. This is when I began to take it more seriously; I was drawing…

ART AND CREATIVITY are in Kate Corbett-Winder’s gene pool: her grandmother was an artist who trained at Slade and her grandfather, a writer, was also a keen painter who encouraged her to paint as she grew up. At her secondary school, she was lucky to find an incredibly inspiring art master, Robin Child, now an octogenarian, who is still teaching in Devon and whom she still tries to see once a year for a course. “It gives me a reboot and a fresh way of looking again. It’s like a blast of premium art petrol!” she laughs. Corbett-Winder initially studied fashion and journalism, working at Vogue in the eighties, before moving to her husband’s family estate – Vaynor Park – in mid-Wales where she began painting. “Unless the fashion is…

PAINTING IS THE GREAT PASSION in my life, and I love to try to produce much more than just beautiful paintings. I search for mood, atmosphere, balance, light, feelings and emotions. A painting is not just a representation of a scene; if that is what we want, we can use a camera. No, a work of art involves capturing the essence of a place, through the artist’s vision. A satisfying painting expresses a clear message, has a rhythm of movement and has perfect unity. Painting with watercolour is like a game of chess: you need to plan ahead, have a strategy, plan your approach and follow it all the way through, to convey your vision and feelings to the paper. The result should not only be a well-constructed painting but…

MESSAGE OF THE MONTH Katerina Balashova I see so many different artists who work in various styles in Artists & Illustrators magazine. I admire how you support artists and encourage them to express their thoughts. For me, paintings are a way to speak to people without words; through associations, to evoke feelings in them and convey ideas more subtly. I believe in the importance of beauty, by surrounding ourselves with good. My work best fits the definition of symbolism, which I technically combine with a fashion illustration style. I pay special attention to faces, emotions and key details in the image, leaving the rest of the details unsaid. I am interested in finding the essence of the story and focusing all attention on it. Kay Stewart As a self-taught artist,…

ROSALIND ORMISTON Rosalind’s career in art began working as a university lecturer in London, teaching art, architecture and design history. During this time she also began writing books on art and travel. The great pleasure for her is to research the lives of artists, past and present, and to visit the places they lived and worked. ALVARO CASTAGNET Alvaro is an internationally renowned watercolourist, lauded for his expressive style and ability to capture the very soul of the locations he paints. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Alvaro’s lively paintings grace the walls of many private and corporate collections across the globe. FABIO CEMBRANELLI A renowned Brazilian artist, Fabio started painting at university, where he studied architecture. His paintings have been featured in exhibitions and collections worldwide and his luminous floral watercolours…

Poor Things, an exhibition that has come out of conversations between artists Emma Hart and Dean Kenning about art and social class, features numerous artists. It is hoped the exhibition will ignite conversations about class through sculpture. Hart and Kenning have brought together what they consider to be some of the best ‘poor things’ made by UK-based contemporary artists. They will engage in a series of conversations with each of the artists in front of their sculptures and fire up the opportunity to talk directly about sculpture through the lens of class. From 4 March to 21 May 2023. fruitmarket.co.uk…

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The Rothschild Foundation has acquired both The Englishman’s Home by John Piper (1951) and The English Pub by Edward Bawden (1949-1951), and put the works by two of the most important artists and designers of the 20th-century on display together for the first time at Waddesdon Manor. It’s hoped that the monumental The Englishman’s Home – the largest surviving mural from the Festival of Britain 1951 – will be an inaugural loan to the new Museum of London Poultry Market building once it has opened. The Englishman’s Home consists of 42 painted plywood panels many of which have a complex surface with multiple finishes combining impasto with scumbled glazes and incised lines. The English Pub is a set of conjoined panels forming a screen which was commissioned in 1949 by…

IN AMSTERDAM, a very special ‘once in a lifetime’ exhibition Vermeer (10 February to 4 June 2023) is attracting artists and art lovers to the city. The Rijksmuseum is holding its first-ever solo show of works by the Delft-born, Dutch master Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) and a rare display of twenty-eight of the thirty-seven known paintings are shown together for the first time. Of the known works, twenty-four are signed, and four are dated. New research into the material creation of these artworks, and Vermeer’s life, has been carried out during the eight years undertaken to produce this show. Such is the demand for entry tickets that opening times have been extended to accommodate the volume of visitors with over 100,000 tickets sold weeks before its opening. The Rijksmuseum has never…

A RECENT PREOCCUPATION with A4 coloured pencil drawings has been making me itch for larger drawings. To avoid falling into the comforting embrace of charcoal, soft pastel seemed the perfect medium and gave me the opportunity to finally open the tantalising rainbow-in-a-box of my 40-colour set of Cass Art half-pastels. Looking through the pastel studies of Edgar Degas (they are composed like photographs or film stills) and the incomparable figure drawings of Paula Rego, I was reminded of the importance of an image containing a visual question. An image that ties up all its own loose ends can be enjoyable to look at, but the very fact that it is easy for the viewer to interpret can also make it easy to forget. Strange or surprising elements of imagery and…

The Bride is a part of a series entitled Zuria and her Peacocks, showing different stages of Zuria’s life. This painting shows her about to put on her mask for the first time: indicative of a transitional phase in her life, where she no longer feels like she’s in control and feels pressured to put up a performance. It’s a reflective piece, to show the masks we put on to protect ourselves and feel accepted in society. I want the viewer to understand that Zuria is dressing up as her jester persona and get a sense of vulnerability. This painting was done in oil, which is my favourite medium due to its forgiveness. It was also the medium my grandmother, Kishwar Rizvi, taught me to paint in. She was an…

Opening at Hastings Contemporary, Soutine/Kossoff pairs two major figures of 20th-century painting: one a master of the School of Paris, the other a master of the School of London. This is the first ever museum exhibition to explore the artistic relationship between British artist Leon Kossoff (1926-2019) and Belarus-born painter Chaim Soutine (1893-1943). On from 1 April 2023. hastingscontemporary.org…

Art & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn’t get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors’ own experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making art in the real world and shows how they can be overcome every day. Souvenir Press, £12.99…

Discover selected works from two celebrated portrait series of influential Britons, contrasting Victorian and contemporary notions of ‘greatness’. Running until 26 March 2023, Faces of Fame: G F Watts X Simon Frederick is a contemporary intervention that invites you to consider the similarities and differences between both artists’ selections of sitters and examine themes emerging from the two bodies of work. wattsgallery.org.uk…

1 Get your work out there I entered competitions galore when I was doing my MA. They are a great way of getting your work under the noses of commissioning editors and you never know you might even win (I didn’t but I did get noticed!). 2 Get an agent, they are worth their weight in gold Publishers rely on agents to provide them with new talent that they can pair with texts that need illustrating. The Children’s Artists and Writers Handbook is a great resource. 3 Use social media Twitter is great for making contacts in the industry. Often, agents and publishers looking for a certain style will use it. The children’s book world is a very friendly industry, so jump in!…

WHO IS SHE? This is the enduring question about one of the National Gallery’s most popular painting, beloved for being completely arresting every single time you look. But it’s not a goddess, queen or society beauty that has caught and kept the gaze for hundreds of years. An Old Woman (The Ugly Duchess circa 1513) by Flemish artist, Quinten Massys shows an elderly, seemingly toothless woman with almost comically grotesque features: sunken eyes; blemished, sagging skin; huge ears; a vast prominent forehead and the general impression of a monster (helped along by the horned headdress she wears which calls to mind both devil and beast). She is dressed luxuriously but revealingly in a way that is eye-popping – even to today’s audiences – so one can only imagine how scandalised…

THE WALK TO AND FROM MY studio along the Fife coastal path from Aberdour to Burntisland, and stretching further afield to Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, inspires my work. The beaches are strewn with seaweed and shells, teaming with nature. It is almost impossible not to pick something up to put in my pocket for drawing back in my studio. The view from the window of my studio faces Burntisland harbour. From there I can see ships passing through Fife Port and the dramatic light and weather coming across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh which has also been the subject of my work. Most recently, I have been using a variety of techniques in my studio. During lockdown, I was unable to visit the print studio to work on screen prints.…