Q&A with Edwina

Where are you from? 

I grew up in Sydney, Australia, originally I lived in Birchgrove and then my family moved closer to Bondi Beach. I left Sydney when I was 24 after studying Fine Arts at the National Art School and the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. I lived in London and other parts of England for over a decade, including the Chiltern Hills and Devon. I was fortunate to experience the best of the cosmopolitan city life of London and the beautiful English countryside. I was also lucky to spend a lot of time in Europe observing the various cultures that sit side by side each other. I moved back to Australia last year, before exploring the Daintree rainforest and living in the Gold Coast for now. 

For how long have you been practising? 

 I practiced constantly as a child and into my teenage years, as what society does it pushed me down a more corporate path and I stopped creating all together for a longtime. I have had a burning desire in my heart to create since covid and I started drawing with pastel and crayon, before picking up the paintbrush again with more gusto in the last two years. I am now happily creating in my studio at M-Arts in Murwillimbah. I am currently working my way through The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and I recommend it to anyone who is looking to pursue creativity in any form. 

Tell us a bit about what you do? 

I currently paint mainly in oils, I also like playing with acrylics, oil stick and ink and seeing how I can play with the texture of paint. I am fascinated by colour and this really is my passion when it comes to painting. I paint fairly small scale pieces which sit nicely in groups and enjoy painting in an alla prima technique when it comes to portraits. Capturing a likeness or trying to make the painting feel alive is important to me. I know when I am onto something when the brush starts moving almost without me thinking. I have been lucky to be on a remote island over the past week and I have been watching sunbirds, butterflies, parrots and trying to capture their energy and life in watercolours and gouache.  

What inspires your creative practice?  

My creaitve practice is inspired by primarily colour, second to this is people and faces. I love capturing expressions and composing a painting as a drawing before trying the compostition on a larger canvas. I am influenced by photography a great deal and I find a lot of my references in magazines, pinterest etc. I really am drawn to strong characters, interiors and fashion. I am about to start a series of people in in rooms. I have been painting a lot of cropped portraits and I am interested in playing with figures in a larger space now. I also love animals and especially Australian parrots. They have such amazing colours. Nature makes the most amazing colour palettes. 

Who is an artist that inspires you to create? 

I am inspired by numerous artists, this is a small list, but from abstract to expressionists, I would say my favourite group of artists are the fauves, of course Matisse if the master of colour and I reference his work a great deal. I like Degas, Raoul Dufy and De Kooning, Dorothea Tanning, Suzanne Valadon and Lee Krasner, plus Rothko for his pure colour theory. I am really into Van Dongen another Fauvist painter who captured portraits brilliantly. I also have a big soft spot for the Dutch still life masters. I am really in awe of realism even though its not what I create. I am inspired by contemporary female painters including Tracey Emin, Danielle Mckinney and Sally Gabori. 

What’s one quote or saying that you live by? 

I have a couple, but if there was one it would be from a speech that Theodore Roosevelt the former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. The essence of the verse is that it is important to try in life at something regardless of the outcome, than criticising someone from the sidelines. 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.