Featured Artist Gill Bustamante

Artist Gill Bustamante’s landscapes with animals are filled with a shimmering, otherworldly light and dreamlike colors. View more of her work by visiting her website.

 

 

Hello! I am an artist based in Sussex and I paint large landscape paintings and seascape paintings in oil on canvas. My painting style does change, but is most often described as semi-abstract, Impressionist, Expressionist and sometimes slightly Art Nouveau or Art Deco, as it tends to reflect the curving organic forms of those movements.

 

 

For many years, I painted animal portraits but finally realised I was having to repress my urge to experiment a bit too much – as people did not seem to appreciate their Labrador being experimented with. So, in the year 2012, I stopped painting commissions altogether and set myself free to try new techniques and painting styles and on much bigger canvases so that I would have more room to play.

 

 

I also stopped copying so much from photos and took up walking in the country and painting from memory. This allowed my impressions of a place to come out on the canvas in strange and interesting ways.

 

 

Only one in five of my paintings see the light of the internet (where I sell them) but the disasters do get painted over. I get a little depressed when something does not work, but that just motivates me to work harder on the next attempt.

 

 

As with most artists older than twenty, the internet has been a curse and a blessing. In the old days I had to have gallery representation in order to make any money, and had to rely on the industriousness of others to sell for me.

 

 

Now though, with the advent of the online options, I sell quite regularly without needing this and I love the independence of it. I can paint how I wish and I no longer have to slant my art to the taste or opinion of an agent.

 

 

I am simply developing as I want to under my own counsel entirely, for better or for worse. This is something which keeps me evolving and innovating.

 

 

I teach, as most artists do, and I love it as it gives the chance to help others realise some of their creative potential.

 

 

Mostly this is about removing the lies and fixed opinions other people have instilled in them over the years. It’s amazing how many people will say, “I can’t draw” when the reality is that no one ever actually taught them how to.

 

 

Everyone can draw and everyone can paint and if more people had a creative outlet this world would be considerably saner. Making something you are proud of allows you to direct the proceeding as you choose–not as someone else does.

 

 

I am an artist, and I love it. I will never be rich or famous, but that was never my goal. I want the world to be beautiful and people to be happier. Art makes that happen–in all its forms.

 

Artist Gill Bustamante invites you to follow her on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest.

 

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