Featured Artist Connie Vickers

UK-based painter Connie Vickers embraces the joy of creating art, both representational and abstract. Enjoy her portfolio and visit her website to see more.

 

 

Nature is awesome! It is abundant in its variety of colours, patterns, textures and shapes. My artworks are based on and inspired by nature, whether the painting is abstract or realistic.

 

 

From a very young age, a favourite  pastime was drawing and colouring in. I loved to cross stitch, knit, crochet and make things, also reading and solving jigsaw puzzles. I especially delighted in colourful, fragrant flowers and was intrigued by patterns.

 

 

In my teens, although I enjoyed art at school, my career ended up in the administrative field. It was only when I moved from Australia to the United Kingdom that my creative spark was once more ignited. Over 20 years ago, I joined a leisure painting class just so I could make new friends.

 

 

This has led to a never-ending love and pursuit of anything art related, from the study of Art History and Modern Art with the Open University to embarking on a BA Fine Art Degree with Oxford Brookes University. I bought many books to learn techniques and attended workshops with professional artists. To this day I am still wanting to make the best art that I can!

 

 

My favourite medium to use is either watercolour, acrylic, oil and more recently gouache. They each perform and need to be used differently as they have their own unique qualitie—and foibles too. When I “fall in love” with a subject, I decide which of these I feel would best express and bring out the characteristic of the subject that I was first attracted to.

 

 

With my realistic paintings, I am intrigued with the details, as I once was as a youngster. I love to ponder, scrutinise and absorb all the lines, shapes and patterns, but my artwork is not hyper-realistic. Instead, I would say it is painterly. I want to be able to take the viewer into the painting, having them imagine for example, being able to walk through the scene.

 

 

As much as I enjoy painting details, it is liberating to have times when I paint freely and expressively. I may remember my eyes streaming with the strong wind blowing while watching the waves, or the gorgeous shade of colour and pattern in a beautiful flower, seeing the stunning sunrise/sunset, or the pleasure of the sounds while walking in a woodland. All the emotions, sights, sounds and smells of interacting with nature come back to my memory and are interpreted into my paintings.

 

 

When painting abstractly, in spite of it being an expressive process, it is also non-stop assessing and thinking of things like composition, tone, shapes etc. It isn’t a piece of cake! What I do find a lot of fun is pure or blind contour drawing. This is a process where I draw by looking only at the subject and not the paper. The end result always surprises me and makes me smile. I used this method for some of my 100 cocktails series which were created to help raise funds for charity.

 

 

Our environment is changing dramatically and the force of nature can wreak havoc, yet nature can also be our solace. There is so much hardship, trauma and injustice for many worldwide. It is for that reason that I want to create beautiful art and focus on the positive.

 

 

The pleasure and love that I have when creating my art, which brings me much joy and calm, is what I hope others will also feel when seeing my paintings. Having a unique work of art in their home that will bring them good vibes, make them smile or inspire them in some way, for generations to come, is a worthwhile achievement in my life!

 

 Connie Vickers invites you to follow on Instagram.

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