becoming an artist

by Victoria K Frances

As I have developed as a serious artist over the last few years, different strands of my creative life are weaving together and informing the work.

It’s not only my mentorship with artist, Julian Vilarrubi, but also my history as a poet and lifelong love of visual art which are finding expression in my abstract paintings.

The mentoring has increased my dexterity and sense of adventure as an artist. Through a wide exploration of materials, techniques and examples, I have found a way into a kind of ongoing renewal. One of Julian’s favourite maxims, “There are no rules”, inspires me on a daily basis to take risks and to pursue what truly interests me.

But I wouldn’t be the artist that I am without the poetry that has been a creative expression for much of my life. Writing poetry has been another way that I have learnt to get to the heart of the matter without being trammelled by convention. In both poetry and painting, you make new language: one is made of words; the other is made of paint.

And one of the other elements which feeds subconsciously into painting is a deep-rooted experience of visual art. Early in my adult life, Jim Ede’s sensitivities to form and texture at Kettle’s Yard influenced me powerfully, as well as his understanding of the physical relationship between a person, an artwork and the light of a room. Picasso’s sketches of a bull (seen at London’s Gagosian) taught me the beauty of simplicity. And I have grown my sensory lexicon through photography, exploring the curves of Bilbao’s Guggenheim gallery, for example.

Each of my paintings is an unfinished fabric made of different threads.