Lorrie Whittington talks about her art

Our next fea­tured artist hails from the UK, I found Lor­rie while search­ing through art and art related forums and groups and was imme­di­ately struck by her diver­sity and depth. As I dug deeper I was reminded of my posts in early 2009 around right and left brain inte­gra­tion. Not only is Lor­rie a pro­lific visual artist she inte­grates her visual abil­ity with her exper­tise in com­puter lan­guages giv­ing her a very ver­sa­tile skill set pro­vid­ing her with a unique advan­tage in the 21st cen­tury market.

As a pho­tog­ra­pher, I was also struck by Lorrie’s pho­to­graphic skills, from the start, her designer’s eye was evi­dent through out her pho­tographs. As I col­lected images for this series I couldn’t help but notice her pho­to­graphic vision went far beyond the tech­ni­cal skills needed to cap­ture excel­lent images. It was very clear that the cam­era was an inspi­ra­tional tool in her cre­ative tool bag, the link between her graphic illus­tra­tions and paint­ings and her pho­tographs was obvious.

I hope you enjoy this series and find Lorrie’s expe­ri­ence as full of insight and inspi­ra­tion as I did.

You can find Lor­rie on line at the fol­low­ing hang outs:

Web site | blog | shop | face­book | twit­ter | flickr | deviantart

 

Tell us about your roots.…

I cur­rently live in a vil­lage just out­side Chich­ester, on the south coast of the UK with my hus­band Luke and our small daugh­ter Orla. We live within the South Downs, a very beau­ti­ful and ver­dant part of the UK, and just a stones throw from the beach. I was raised in Ayles­bury in Buck­ing­hamshire, one of the ‘home counties’.North of London.

From a very early age I was draw­ing and paint­ing, and every Christ­mas and for every Birth­day I was given pens, pen­cils, paints, paper. I learnt to sew also when I was very young, and my Grand­mother taught me how to do embroi­dery. She had a very old Singer sewing machine, not an elec­tric, you had to turn the han­dle.  I learnt how to use it when I was a lit­tle girl. I always enjoyed art and craft at school, cre­at­ing shapes, pat­terns and loved exper­i­ment­ing with color the most.  My par­ents always expected I would go to art school and I trained in the early 1980’s, under­tak­ing a Foun­da­tion Pro­gramme in Art & Design for one year, then a two year Diploma at Amer­sham Col­lege of Art, and from there stud­ied BA Fashion/Textile Design + Women’s Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of East Lon­don, though I dropped out at the end of my sec­ond year. I had been at art school five years at this point and decided I had had enough, prob­a­bly not a good deci­sion, but still.  How­ever, I plan to do a Mas­ters at some point if I can raise the fund­ing.  In the late 90’s, and early 2000, I stud­ied again, and gained an Inter­na­tional Diploma in Admin­is­tra­tive Man­age­ment and an HNC in Busi­ness Stud­ies. I also hold var­i­ous voca­tional qual­i­fi­ca­tions and awards.

What is your artis­tic vision?

Dif­fi­cult ques­tion. Like most artists I want to be suc­cess­ful, sell my art and make a liv­ing doing so. But, I cre­ate art very much to please myself, and hope that oth­ers like it. How­ever, I feel that if one becomes too dri­ven by mar­ket trends and fash­ion, try­ing  to cre­ate art that ‘sells’,  it can make the whole artis­tic process a hol­low one, and it tends to show in the work.  So, I try to achieve a happy medium. Cre­ate art that makes me feel happy and ful­filled, that is enjoy­able to do, but that will appeal to peo­ple enough to want to buy it.

You are a very diverse and pro­lific artist please tell us about what dri­ves your choice of medium, and focus.

I am excited about every­thing, I really am. I love using dif­fer­ent medi­ums, and just wish I had more hours in the day to exper­i­ment more. I find it impos­si­ble to con­fine myself to one or two medi­ums and styles, I always have. I get so much enjoy­ment from paint­ing, draw­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, sewing, sculp­ture, etc.  Being a mother makes it dif­fi­cult to achieve as much as I would like, my win­dows of cre­ativ­ity are pretty small, so I have to be judi­cious in my choices of tools and medi­ums. I do as much as I can. Also, my head is so con­stantly burst­ing with ideas and visions, that I strug­gle to keep up and realise them all. That’s why I have so many projects on the go at once, and move from one to the other as the mood takes me. I know that many artists feel it is impor­tant to have a ‘style’ or ‘voice’ that is rec­og­niz­able, that has a ‘sig­na­ture’ so to speak, but I feel that can be inher­ently dan­ger­ous, and can lead the artist’s work to become too for­mu­laic and ulti­mately, boring.

Who and what influ­enced you the most in devel­op­ing your vision and voice?

My work is mostly abstract in nature and includes many influ­ences and move­ments, from the Baroque, Renais­sance and Rococo, to Pop Art, Impres­sion­ism, Bauhaus, Cubism etc. I take my inspi­ra­tion mostly from nature; sea, coun­try­side, flora and fauna etc. I am very drawn to bold and dynamic colours, form, tex­ture and pat­terns. I love tex­tile art, Japan­ese prints and embroi­dery, east­ern weaves, the colour and pat­terns of the Indus in par­tic­u­lar. Also, given my immense love of his­tory (almost as pas­sion­ate as my love of art), there are many La Tene Celtic influ­ences in my work for instance.

I have no inter­est in tra­di­tional sub­ject mat­ter, like life draw­ing and still life, I had enough of that at col­lege.  I take some inspi­ra­tion from con­tem­po­rary art and other artists. How­ever, I am care­ful not to pla­gia­rise other artists work as I see too much of it going on, and have had my own work copied and in fact, stolen before now.  As I orig­i­nally stud­ied fash­ion and tex­tile design, one of the pre­cepts drummed into me at art school, was the use of resources, sourc­ing ideas and inspi­ra­tion. I have spent count­less hours at muse­ums and gal­leries. My first visit to the V&A in Lon­don in fact, took place when I was 15, and I can safely say I have been there a hun­dred times or more over the years. When I lived in Lon­don, I would go every week. I have hun­dreds of books, many of them about art, design, his­tory etc, and I reg­u­larly con­sult them for inspi­ra­tion and ideas.

You are quite com­fort­able in sev­eral medi­ums and styles…What is your favorite medium or style?

Draw­ing, plain old fash­ioned draw­ing, with pen­cil, pen, ink and paint.