CLAIRE WILTSHER LECTURE
Claire is a well-known artist who lives in Lyndhurst
and is influenced in her painting by local landscape( Forest
and the Coast), music and poetry.
She started the evening by playing music and getting
everyone to draw the image the music produced in our minds. She herself plays
music while she is painting. The poetry
eg of Ted Hughes will affect her thinking and is often used in her pictures or
she will write and include some of her
own poems. She started writing after attending Creative Writing classes and
finds it helps with her art. She then went on to mention the artists which had
influenced her such as Turner (expressing emotion), Pollack (structure) and
Gustave Moreau ( colours and symbolism). She has also travelled widely.
She then went on to describe her working methods. Claire
works from a variety if sources including sketches and photographs as well as
poetry and writing. She usually uses 4-7 colours and spends about 40 minutes
mixing them. Among the colours used are Lemon Yellow, Cerulean or Ultramarine
and Raw or Burnt Sienna A painting normally takes her a day but she will return
to it later. Working mainly in oils she uses techniques such as flicking with
fingers or brushes, using liquin to liquefy the paint or spraying with white
spirit and scraping with eg credit cards. Returning later, details are added
with many layers and textures and perhaps some collage. Often a wash is put on
first and the later layers of paint scraped back to show the original colour. The
base can be acrylic inks or watercolour and put on with a roller. The
background washes are bled into each other and then a dark foreground added. She
does a final glaze of liquin not varnish. Claire always has a wide tonal range
in each painting and uses complimentary colours such as red and green making
sure that there is a balance between the two. Most of her work is spontaneous
with only a small amount of planning involved.
Finally, in response to a question from the audience Claire
described how she does monoprinting. A photograph is placed under a sheet of
acetate and a painting done on the acetate using oil paint. Then a sheet of
paper is placed over the painting and so a print is produced. To get variety
try using acrylics and different types of paper or card.
The evening was very informative and entertaining and we
thank Claire for giving us the opportunity of seeing her beautiful paintings.
 Claire and her paintings |
