Considering Art Podcast – Liza Giles, abstract painter

In this episode, Liza Giles talks about her previous career as an art director and interior designer, how she always painted concurrently, how her use of colour transferred to her fine art practice, how the artist Sean Scully helped raise her profile, the influence of the urban skyline and architecture on her work, how she experiments with collage in preparation of her large-scale paintings and how she balances hard lines and edges with intuitive painterly mark making.

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February 13, 2023 2

Considering Art Podcast – Steph Goodger, expressionist painter

In this episode, Steph Goodger talks about how childhood memories near the River Medway came to take on a symbolic significance, how social history, architecture and literature influence her works with particular reference to World War I, the Paris Commune and the sinking of the Lusitania. Steph talks about the tension between containment and release in both her subjects and her process and how researching historical archives is often the starting point for a project.

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February 6, 2023 2

Considering Art Podcast – Frances Bell, portrait and landscape painter

In this episode, this multi-award-winning artist talks about her classical training at the Charles H. Cecil School in Florence, how she creates atmosphere in her portraits, the importance of draftsmanship, how painting children requires different skills, the challenge of painting self-portraits and the joy of painting water.

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January 30, 2023 2

Considering Art Podcast – Leah Gordon, photographer and filmmaker

In this episode, Leah talks about her background in photography, her interest in the interconnectivity of folk traditions, the Enclosure Acts, the Industrial Revolution and the transatlantic slave trade. She recalls her time in a folk punk band, and discusses her passion for Haiti, a country she says has been unfairly demonised. In particular, she talks about decades photographing in the country and how and why she came to make her award-nominated documentary Kanaval: A People’s History of Haiti in Six Chapters, in which the performers tell their version of their history and the difficulties and responsibilities this entailed for her.

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January 16, 2023 0

Considering Art Podcast – Ross Gillespie and Tricia Malley aka broad daylight, photographers

In this latest episode, the two Scottish photographers discuss their creative partnership, and some of their photographic projects including As Others See Us in which celebrities such as actor Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Peter Howson and Nicola Benedetti are photographed after selecting their favourite Robert Burns poems, and Building Sights in which celebrities such as painter Alison Watt and Travis bassist Dougie Payne are photographed in their favourite Scottish locations. The pair discuss the thoughts behind the treatment and settings.

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December 19, 2022 0

Considering Art Podcast – Beth Carter, sculptor

In the latest of my series of audio interviews with contemporary artists, sculptor Beth Carter talks about the symbolic significance of her bronze sculptures of animals and hybrid animals, how the minotaur became an obsessive subject of her work as she explores ideas of power, vulnerability, and grief, how the theme of duality in her sculptures references part of the human condition, and how one particular charcoal drawing became a way to help process a dark incident in her past.

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December 12, 2022 0

Considering Art Podcast – Johan van Mullem, painter

In this episode, Belgian artist Johan van Mullem talks about his haunting, introspective faces created with etching ink, his peripatetic childhood, how his art has evolved to being more about humanity and less introspective, how his colour palette has widened, and how lockdown opened up new horizons.

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December 5, 2022 0

Considering Art Podcast – Annie Nicholson aka The Fandangoe Kid, multi-media artist

In this episode, Annie talks about how a family tragedy changed her life and her practice to create platforms for dialogue on mental health issues, how her public art installations became bright, brash and colourful, and how ice cream, a skip and dancing have all contributed to her aim of breaking the taboo around grief.

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November 28, 2022 0

Considering Art Podcast – Jana Nicole, collage artist

In this episode, UK-based American artist Jana Nicole talks about her roots in the Hollywood film industry, how she studied art in the UK and took to collage after moving permanently, her winning of the prestigious Puvis de Chavannes Award by the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris, her fascination with flora and fauna especially fungi, and her collage portraits of figures in the music business.

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November 21, 2022 0

Considering Art Podcast – Eugene Palmer, painter

One of Britain’s leading black artists, Eugene Palmer, talks about his childhood in Jamaica, how a school teacher inspired him to become an artist, how he evolved from abstract to figuration, the influence of black history and politics on his work, his innovative series of placing black figures in rural landscapes and his recent works of repeated images and portraits of family members that pose questions about race and identity.

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November 14, 2022 0