Featured Artists

Artsy Shark presents the stunning mixed media portfolio of British artist Cathy Read. Find out more about her work by visiting her website.

What are your goals?

The first goal for any artist is to create art like life depends on it. My goal is to create beautiful, unique art with depth. And that involves regular studio time. I plan to do a lot more of that this year.

But, as any professional  artist knows, the next goal is to reach more people and be seen in more galleries. And that’s where it gets interesting.

I have some exhibitions planned but I intend to arrange more. Somethings in London and Manchester are my priority. But any major UK city or even abroad would be a bonus.

I’m in a temporary studio until the end of January. Being part of Fringe MK has been a great experience and I plan to return later in the year and increase my involvement there.

I have an idea for a large performance/conceptual piece which I want to get started with a view to completion in 2013. I don’t want to give too much away at the moment, especially as I need to figure out the details. But it will involve vast quantities of wool and sporty people!

And finally, it’s a perennial battle but I should add … Avoid procrastination!

What are you working on now?

Creatively I’m continuing to produce more mixed media Abstracts. One series is Contemporary City Scenes inspired by recent architecture in Manchester and London. My main focus is on buildings displaying optimism. Either through ambitious design or height – often both! The other group is called Circles and Psychology and is a fuse of social comment with diagrammatic content.

These are keeping me very busy but I believe it’s important to experiment with new ideas and direction. I’m exploring the properties of self levelling gel and texture paste. There have been some technical issues which I’m trying to resolve. So far the results are promising, I just need to do lots more!

I’m producing work for exhibitions in May and June. As well as all the planning and promoting. Nomads- a group exhibiting as part of Oxford Artweeks, and a solo show as part of Bucks Open Studios.

What inspires you?

So many things inspire me, it’s difficult to summarise. I think artists are inspired by a mix of things. We take different elements we love, mixing them together to create our unique style. But if I had to be brief I’d say simple, intelligent, elegant and clever design.

As a very tactile person, I love sculptures with texture and clean lines. Works of art I can handle and interact with. And I especially love architecture.

I’m drawn to the natural beauty of shapes and structure. To the rhythms and patterns they create. I love extremes from contemporary, cutting edge design to the old and decaying. Also anything that makes me question what I know or shows a new perspective. Particularly if done with humour.

Individual pieces and elements inspire me more than specific artists. Like Anish Kapoor’s sensual shapes and Van Gogh’s fluid brush strokes and texture. Or the use of new media or challenges to scale, like in Jeff Koons’ work.

Many other people inspire me in different ways. Intelligent, successful, glamorous women like Goldie Hawn and Bette Davies. Helen Keller’s determination, Victoria Wood’s observational, down to earth humour. Storm Thorgerson’s surreal photography.

I need music when I’m working. Especially Kate Bush’s. Music helps my work flow and sparks ideas.

As I get older I’m increasingly aware of change. It’s both distressing and exciting! I want to record it and reflect on its effects.

Artsy Shark presents the whimsical and somewhat eccentric portfolio of featured artist Desarae Lee.  See more of her work here.

I was born in Whittier, California in the same year that Michael Jackson adopted the Moonwalk.  I was raised in a conservative Mormon household and was a very obedient child.  As a result, a large part of my self-perception became based on obedience and self-control.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve adopted a different belief system and learned the virtues of rule-breaking, but that obsession with self-control that I espoused as a child is still apparent in most of my work today.

At an early point in my professional life I realized that I was going to have to make the choice between having a dependable source of income and doing what I loved.  After determining that money meant less to me than happiness, I settled in Salt Lake City, Utah , chose to pursue illustration and have yet to regret it.

It is hard to put your inspiration into words when you yourself do not even know where it comes from.  Mormons call it the Spirit, Romantic poets called it the “divine winds,” Freud called it the subconscious, but anyone who’s ever been touched by it knows that there really are no words for it.  Rather than look for inspiration, I look for avenues through which I can connect to that it; things that remind me of lives I may have lived or people I may have been.  Most reliably, I find that connection through things like taxidermied animals, traveling carnivals, and vintage photographs from the turn of the century.

My work is largely based on narrative.  Each piece is a short story told through various subconscious symbols, some more obvious than others.  A lot of the thematic elements in my illustrations come from personal experience but I try not to make a conscious connection until the piece is complete, otherwise I find myself forcing the drawing and it becomes difficult to find the inspirational space for it to fully develop.

My training as a photographer heavily influences my creative process.  Once I’ve discovered a theme, I immediately start constructing the scene as if it was a photograph.  I mentally configure light sources, composition, and angles until the three-dimensional idea translates into a two-dimensional drawing.  I think in values and layers, using detailed cross-hatching to block out light from the shadows.

I am currently working on a multitude of projects for upcoming shows, including a collaborative project with photographer Gregory Shearer.  Greg’s work focuses very heavily on place so together he and I create pieces that inhabit his carefully constructed spaces with my somewhat somber characters.

I don’t really set specific artistic goals for myself outside of just meeting deadlines, but if I had to put my motivation into words, I would say my goal is to create a connection.  There are places inside of a person that no one else can possibly understand and about which I could never communicate with words.  But I believe my drawings are an attempt to connect those hidden places in myself to the hidden places in the viewer, to somehow create a bridge of communication over the immense expanse of our differing perceptions, languages, and experiences.