I like to ask questions through my art... I’ll have a thought and I will really want to unpick it When I was three, I drew my mother. She was pregnant with my younger brother and I stuck a piece of paper that was concave out from the page to show the bump. All my work has stemmed from that drawing, they all have sculptural effects. I like to answer questions through my art. I’ll have a thought, and I will really want to unpick it. I don’t think I’ve actually managed to answer a single question, but I have been led to ask more interesting questions.
LilyLEWIS MEET THE ARTIST
The portrait artist takes on tarot cards and Hollywood glamour in her latest projects. Interview: REBECCA BRADBURY
Portraiture should be more accessible. I think it should be both an actual representation of the day-to-day and available to everyone. My recent exhibition, Safe Places, featured actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Their lives were presented as perfect, just like they are in today’s Instagram culture. I wanted to show the reality is far more interesting. The colour in the Safe Places portraits is on the inside of the glass. It’s make-up pigment, suspended in medium. Straight on, it looks as if the colour is on the canvas, married to the graphite. But if you look at an angle, the colour actually throws a shadow. For me, sitters need to have a presence outside of the physical – something that I wouldn’t be able to capture just by painting what they look like. It would take a nuance and a sensitivity of my skill to capture that thing that isn’t so obvious. My tip for portraiture is paint the background first. It helps put the subject in context. Then start on the eyes. The Fool’s Journey is the name of my new book, out later this year. It will include a set of tarot cards I designed for an exhibition and I’m halfway through writing poems to accompany each card. Tate Britain is my favourite art gallery. It’s quietly magnificent. It’s got a foot in the past, but also a foot in the future. The most important thing is not your materials, it’s your mindset. If you get to a point where you feel frustrated and angry, that’s actually not a bad thing. It’s part of the process. www.lily-lewis.com
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