Natalia Millman was born in Ukraine and came to England in her twenties. Her father’s dementia and subsequent death had a profound effect on her both personally and artistically. In this episode she talks about her Ukrainian background, how she pursued an art career after moving to the UK, how her father’s demise led to a refocus of her art towards expressing grief and life’s fragility, how research and experimentation became a key part of her practice, how she invited people to share their experience of personal loss through sending her letters, some examples of moving expressions of grief, and how she developed the idea into a multi-media and sensory exhibition entitled Letters to Forever.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Natalia Millman, multi-media conceptual artist”Considering Art Podcast – Britt Boutros-Ghali, painter
Britt Boutros-Ghali was born in Norway but for the past five decades has lived in Egypt having married into one of the country’s foremost families. Her emotional abstracts and figurative expressionism are much sought after and she has been awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Women in the Arts by the Egyptian government. In this episode, she talks about her upbringing in Norway, how a move to Paris kickstarted her artistic career, her relocation to Egypt, how she paints every day with no plan and with many layers, how an exhibition in Norway in 2005 was marred by an unfortunate incident, and how she is striving to paint a masterpiece.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Britt Boutros-Ghali, painter”Considering Art Podcast – Hannah Gibson, glass artist
Hannah Gibson has held a passion for glass since childhood and is now a multi-award winning glass artist. In this episode, she talks about how her upbringing inspired her love for the material and for geology, how she has studied and practised many of the techniques for making glass and artworks from it, how sustainability is her other passion and how she casts from recycled glass using her geological background to analyse it, where she sources her glass, how she likes to share her passion with the public and some of the extraordinary reactions she receives as a result.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Hannah Gibson, glass artist”Considering Art Podcast – Raewyn Harrison, ceramicist
London-based, New Zealand-born ceramicist Raewyn Harrison has made the River Thames the focus of her practice. In this episode, she talks about the hobby of mud larking in which people discover all manner of everyday objects from centuries past in the Thames mud at low tide and how her own discoveries are made into ceramics, how she photographs old maps and de-commissioned installations in the Thames estuary and transfers them on to porcelain, her involvement in public projects and workshops around the Thames, her “protest” bottles, and about her latest work for the Museum of London’s mud larking exhibition.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Raewyn Harrison, ceramicist”Considering Art Podcast – Deborah Grice, painter
Deborah Grice is a prize-winning British painter of atmospheric landscapes with a contemporary twist. In this episode, she talks about how she had ambitions to become a war artist, how moving from Glasgow to London to study art changed her practice, how ill health stifled many an interesting occupation, the origins of her geometric lines and forms in her work, how Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year reinvigorated her art career and how early feelings of emotional deprivation and her concerns for the future manifest themselves in the “visual dissonance” in her paintings.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Deborah Grice, painter”Considering Art Podcast – Brian Sayers, painter
Brian Sayers paints remarkable still life paintings that are often cluttered with all manner of everyday objects and implements. In this episode, he talks about how he got into The Slade art school and meeting Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, the difficulties of finding a “style”, teaching at Eton College to help earn a living, what influenced his well-known table-top still life works, how he plans them, what they mean to him and in what direction his paintings might be heading.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Brian Sayers, painter”Considering Art Podcast – Jonathan O’Dea, Sculptor
Jonathan O’Dea creates abstract sculptures out of waste material from construction sites. In so doing, he makes art in a sustainable way. In this episode, he talks about his Irish background in which he was making objects from an early age, how working on building sites as a young man inspired his future art, how he discovered sculpture after studying painting at Central St Martins, the kind of materials he takes from construction sites such as Crossrail and the Olympic Park, how he puts them to use in his sculptures and how his artworks offer a metaphor for the human condition.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Jonathan O’Dea, Sculptor”Considering Art Podcast – Su Richardson, textile artist
Su Richardson became a pioneer of feminist art in the 1970s through her crocheted and other works which focused on domesticity and feminine issues such as motherhood, PMS, menopause and so on. In this episode she talks about reactions to her art which challenged views in a male-dominated arts establishment at that time, how she studied graphic design and became an art teacher before making soft sculptures at home, the postal art project she co-founded and the Fenix Collective, her work in sexual health. how she joined a “cow punk” band as a percussionist, her history of self-portraits and her current exhibition on the theme of ultra-processed food.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Su Richardson, textile artist”Considering Art Podcast – Jerry Buhari, Nigerian mixed media artist
Jerry Buhari is a renowned artist whose works reflect themes of the environment and the political and social woes of his native Nigeria. In this episode, he talks about how human development has affected his place of birth in the rural north of the country, how ethnic tensions and political repression affected him and his art, his obsession with miniature paintings and micro objects within his larger works, the spectre of oil pollution and the presence of the Boko Haram insurgency, why he began using fabric as his “canvas”, his use of unusual materials and collaborators, and about his latest exhibition on the subject of African migration.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Jerry Buhari, Nigerian mixed media artist”Considering Art Podcast – Hannah Thomas, abstract painter
Hannah Thomas paints dreamlike, abstract landscapes full of weird biomorphic shapes, hybrid creatures and visceral body parts full of symbols and metaphor. In this episode, she talks about her previous career as a photographer shooting rock musicians, why she gave up photography for painting, her instinctive process often inspired by music, her interest in Absurdism, how restraints on personal freedom have inspired various series of her works, and how her art is evolving.
Continue reading “Considering Art Podcast – Hannah Thomas, abstract painter”