Steve Nayar has been a nine times finalist for the Wildlife Artist of the Year competition and focuses on portraying endangered species. In this episode, he talks about his family’s lineage, what he learnt during his career in design and advertising, how painting a domestic cat sparked a change in direction, how a way of seeing is the key to his paintings, how horrified he was at the knowledge that so much of our wildlife is endangered, how photography aids his process, how he aims to paint the soul of his subjects and how his paintings can in some ways act as mirrors.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Steve Nayar, wildlife painter”Considering Art Podcast – Meredith Owen, landscape painter
Meredith Owen explores our relationship with nature in her oil paintings. In this episode, she talks about how nature was important in her childhood, studying Fine Art photography, fulfilling a childhood obsession by travelling to Mongolia, how walking informs her art practice, how her landscapes are based on feeling rather than representation, how literature has influenced her work, how she enjoys creating ambiguity in her paintings and what she hopes the viewer will take from her art.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Meredith Owen, landscape painter”Considering Art Podcast – Caro Williams, sculptor
Caro Williams has earned a worldwide reputation for sculptures that are transformations into solid form of lines from books and poems as well as sound, particularly birdsong. In this episode, she talks about her fascinating family background involving Wales, France, China, Hong Kong and England, her school days in Hong Kong, her career in the British travel industry, her art education in England and New Zealand, how she began transforming text and sounds into solid sculptures, excerpts from poems that have inspired her, her process of making, and her plans to introduce Cantonese characters into her work.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Caro Williams, sculptor”Considering Art Podcast – Simon Casson, painter
Simon Casson is internationally acclaimed for his meticulous paintings based on the Renaissance style but with a modern twist. In this episode, he talks about his African upbringing, how seeing a Renaissance work in the National Gallery as a child had a profound impact upon him, where his style of adapting the Renaissance style originated, how he tries to create a modern narrative and to build up fragments of time in his works, his strange titles, how he employs mathematical principles in his process, how his paintings have evolved over time and how he tackles commissions.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Simon Casson, painter”Considering Art Podcast – Esther Neslen, multi-disciplinary
Esther Neslen is a sculptor, ceramicist and educator in London who works both figuratively and in abstraction. In this episode, she talks about how art was a way of easing anxiety as a child, her early fascination with the human form, how sculpture and clay didn’t mix at art college, working as a graphic designer and then as an animator before returning to sculpture, how she placed human form sculptures in public places in London, her depiction of human relationships in abstract forms and how she has turned national and global events that have affected her personally into her art.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Esther Neslen, multi-disciplinary”Considering Art Podcast – Louise Pragnell, portrait artist
For 20 years, Louise Pragnell has made a speciality of painting the portraits of members of royal families and military top brass. In this episode, she talks about drawing her mother as a child, her years of studying art before turning to portraiture, what she defines as modern sensibility in her paintings, how she strives to capture the essence of her sitters, the decisions over the details and poses in her portraits, how she started painting the royals and military, her recent commission to paint the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg and what she paints for fun.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Louise Pragnell, portrait artist”Considering Art Podcast – Graham Crowley, painter
Graham Crowley has had a long and distinguished career as a painter and teacher, won the John Moores Painting Prize in 2023 and holds strong views on what he believes painting is and should be. In this episode, he talks about his lack of cultural beginnings, his experience of conceptualism at art school and how it strengthened his belief in painting, the influence of the French painter Fernand Leger, his views on illustration, why he painted landscapes in the 1990s, how he’s attracted by luminosity in paintings, why he dislikes being called an artist, and about his prize-winning work Light Industry.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Graham Crowley, painter”Considering Art Podcast – Annemarieke Kloosterhof, multi-media
Annemarieke Kloosterhof is a London-based Dutch artist who works in painting, collage, design and particularly in all things paper including single or multi-layered paper-cut illustrations, paper props, film sets and large-scale installations. In this episode, she talks about how her passion for paper first began, how nostalgia has been a theme in her work, the importance of experimentation, how she made a spectacular paper installation for the Bridgerton TV series, making three West-end theatres from paper, her use of recycled paper, how her paintings deal with issues such as female sexuality and how she has made paper versions of classic furniture for London’s Leighton House museum.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Annemarieke Kloosterhof, multi-media”Considering Art Podcast – Reena Saini Kallat, multi-media
Reena Saini Kallat is an Indian artist who has gained international recognition for works that focus on aspects of global conflicts, injustices, inequalities, and climate catastrophes. In this episode, she talks about her family story of Partition and the legacy of it that remains in her home city of Mumbai, how she expresses the issue of global boundaries and frontiers that cause dissension, how the inter-dependence of species inspires her, how she uses legal documents in her work to represent ideas of responsibility and freedom, how people who have disappeared are another source of influence, and about her current sculpture at Frieze London that features the bird calls of extinct species.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Reena Saini Kallat, multi-media”Considering Art Podcast – Raghav Babbar, painter
Raghav Babbar is a young Indian artist who paints everyday people in a sensitive and empathetic way. His subjects reflect his Indian heritage and his works are highly sought after. In this episode, he talks about his upbringing in a family of businesspeople, travelling in the northern Indian states, the influence of British artists such as Lucian Freud whose work he came across when studying at the Royal College of Art in London, his love of painting self-portraits, his experience of witnessing the Hindu pilgrimage of Maha Kumbh and his process of putting paint on canvas.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Raghav Babbar, painter”