Work-Life-Artist #1: Catherine Ingleby

This is the first in what I hope will become a series of interviews with professional artists about the reality of their working lives.

The aim is to build up a series of reference points for those who contemplate a career as a professional artist - and need to know more about what life as a professional artist is really like.

I'm developing a page on my Art Business Info. for Artists About the Working Lives of Professional Artists and these interviews will also be listed on that page as a resource.

If you're interested in participating in the exercise see my note at the end about what to do.

Below my questions are in bold and Catherine's answers are not!

About the working life of Catherine Ingleby

Catherine Ingleby in her studio

A really useful exercise to do, I keep being asked similar questions so great to formulate ideas into some form of clarity! Hope this is ok.

You can:

• see Catherine's artwork on her website www.catherineingleby.com and in this post 
• find her on social media at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inglebyart (2,377 people followers)| Twitter @inglebyart | Instagram @inglebyart

What is reality for a working professional artist?

What does the "real life" of being an artist actually involve?

The reality is, and perhaps partly because I have children, that it is a structured job, I have a strict weekly routine and generally take weekends off.

Is it like what you expected?

I have found I spend much more time dealing with business aspect of my art than I perhaps would have predicted. I employ someone to do some of my invoicing, accounts, and liaising with galleries and clients, but at the end of the day probably spend as much time in the office as I do in the studio. I also pay an accountant and lawyer for financial support and advice - something I wish I’d started a lot earlier!

Where/who did you get your ideas of what "real life as an artist" was going to be like from? Were they right?

I envisaged a much more sociable, interactive (fun?!) lifestyle whereas the reality of life as an artist is that is largely quite solitary.

I think that art school created a false impression that working life would be much the same as school studio life, just better funded!

Kwande Quartet by Catherine Ingleby

Making a living

How do you actually "make a living" (e.g. keep a roof over your head / pay the bills / have a studio / plan for retirement)?

I paint full time, and the income divides roughly into thirds between original sales, commissioned work and reproductions sales.

What percentage of your income (roughly) do you generate from making art? 

90%

What percentage of your income (roughly) derives from being involved with art? 

10% from teaching/lecturing

(Catherine lectures at schools and colleges on developing a theme for a series and a career in the arts; and to adults on the business of selling art.)

How do you aim to be making a living in future?

I enjoy the lectures as they provide a break from the solitary studio, and also give me the opportunity to build my client list, but I do not want to do more than I am doing now.

At the moment I am restricted by school age children, however I can see in the future I may wish to expand in that area. I also plan to increase my sales of prints, and related merchandising.

Time allocation

What percentage of time do you have each week for actually making art? (Is this more or less than you expected?)

I work approximately 6-8 hours a day, and occasional weekends when under deadline. It is a lot less than I would like, but I found that having restricted hours makes me far more focused and productive than pre children. I probably spend two or three evenings working too.

How do you typically spend your time each day or week or month?

Review: Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2018

I went to see the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2018 Exhibition at the Mall Galleries yesterday. I always like it because of its emphasis on draughtsmanship which can sometimes be in short supply in other exhibitions.

Lynn Painter-Stainer Prizes - Left to right:
Young Artist Prize | Second Prize | First prize

It's also an exhibition I've been visiting every year since its third year (in 2007) when Ben Sullivan won (Ben is last year's BP Portrait Award Winner).  This year he selected artwork as a Judge along with Artist and Educator - Robin Mason - Head of Fine Art at the City & Guilds London Art School; Art Gallery Owner - Johnny Messum - Founder and Director of Messums, Wiltshire and Daphne Todd OBE PPRP NEAC - Past President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, BP Portrait Award winner in 2010 (and second prize winner in 1983) and latterly a television celebrity as a judge in the BBC's The Big Painting Challenge.

So 2018 starts the second decade of visits to this exhibition! If you can't visit the Mall Galleries to see it you can view all the selected artworks online - in a rather curious slideshow.

It got me reflecting on how the exhibition has changed.

View of the Lynn Painter-Stainer Exhibition 2018

The most obvious change is the move from the Painter-Stainers' Hall in the City of London to the Mall Galleries.  

I think I preferred the earlier exhibitions more - which is in no way a reflection on the Mall Galleries (the lighting is much better at the Mall even if they can't compete on the chadelier front!)

I decided in the end that I think it's because I maybe liked the art more in the earlier exhibitions - and you can see the artwork from 10 years ago in the 2008 exhibition in my post Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2008 and Exhibition (with others listed at the end of this post - all of which come with images of artwork in the exhibitions.

Some of the better representational paintings with an emphasis on draughtsmanship in the show

For example, this is supposed to be an exhibition which is supposed to represent

the best of contemporary representational painting and drawing

and yet two other major changes I noticed are that:

• There is no drawing in the exhibition. At least no drawings in the conventional sense. There are one or two paintings where the painter has drawn...  
• Not all the artwork is representational. For me representational painting is supposed to be painting which relates to and represents a real object. As opposed to painting which represents a fantasy of objects which exist only within the artist's imagination. Yet a number of the paintings were quite clearly fantastical and/or included representations of real objects but that these had been distorted in a fantastical way

A prime example of the fantasy present in the exhibition is the artwork which won the First Prize - which is both real and not real. I think it was the innovation in painting which won it the first prize - it certainly wasn't innovation in the subject matter (see below to see what I mean).

About the reality of working lives of professional artists

I'm trying to develop a page about the REALITY of working life for professional artists for my website.

The purpose of Art Business Info for Artists is to provide - for free - information of relevance to artists beyond the technical and creative aspects of making art. (See the Index of what's on the site). 

In other words, all that other 'art business' stuff you have to deal with!

I'd very much like to

• link to anything anybody has written in the past with a view to providing an insight into what life is really like for you.
• highlight any books you have found particularly useful in dealing with real challenges of "being an artist" beyond the art-making.
• highlight any web pages or online articles / blog posts you have found useful

The idea is to provide a compendium on one page of resources which would-be professional artists might find useful

For example, you might find this interesting Researching Artists' Working Lives - IFACCA

So any suggestions for contributions that you have found helpful are most welcome!

You can:

• EITHER leave a comment below (eg re a link or a book)
• OR contact me - see the side column re contact details or use the Contact Form on the website

Maybe you'd like to write something to help other artists

If you would like to write something as a contribution.....

For anybody who would like to write something going forward I've jotted down some questions below of the sort of things I'd like to know about

• If you'd like to be anonymous - that's absolutely fine by me and I will respect that - just so long as I know who you are and that you are a real artist. 
• Your contribution can be as short or as long as you like. 
• You can answer as many or as few question as you like
• It can be published on your website or blog - or sent to me for anonymous publication on my website.

What I'd like to know

Please touch on and/or answer as many or as few of the following as you are comfortable writing about.

What is reality for a working professional artist?

• What does the "real life" of being an artist actually involve?
• Is it like what you expected?
• Where/who did you get your ideas of what "real life as an artist" was going to be like from? Were they right?

Making a living

• How do you actually "make a living" (e.g. keep a roof over your head / pay the bills / have  a studio / plan for retirement)? 
• What percentage of your income (roughly) do you generate from making art?
• What percentage of your income (roughly) derives from being involved with art?
• How do you aim to be making a living in future?

Time allocation

• What percentage of time do you have each week for actually making art? (Is this more or less than you expected?)
• How do you typically spend your time each  day or week or month?

Challenges and surprises

• How difficult is the real life of "being an artist"?
• In terms of the reality of working as a professional artist:
• What do you find your biggest challenge?
• What has been your biggest surprise?
• What are you much better at doing that you expected to be?

Improving and succeeding

• Do you work on yourself to improve or do you work at your job to improve?
• Beyond the art, what do you think makes an artist successful today?
• What do you wish you had known at the beginning of becoming a professional artist that nobody told you about?
• What was the best bit of advice that anybody ever gave you about  "real life" as a working artist?

and finally......

What do you think of the idea of trying to create a free resource online?

Review: Episode 8 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018

At last we've got to Heat 8 of The Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - which I watched during the afternoon at the Wallace Collection!

This is a long one. You'll need a comfy seat and a hot drink!

Portrait Artist of the Year 2018 - Entrance to the Wallace Collection

I've been sitting on lots and lots of photos for the last 11 months!. I've now released most of them in an album on Flickr - essentially for the benefit of all those contemplating having a go at applying for 2019 - see Call for Entries - Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2019

They include

• photos of ALL the art materials and palettes that each artist was working with - which is interesting of itself!
• plus what it really looks like when everything is 'happening'.

My photos of the Heat - see the link to it above if you want to view them

Plus you get to see what the environment is really like - once you take into account all the cameramen and the production team. (They're mostly people dressed in black!)

Tom surrounded by cameras and sound mikes
- not a lot of space should you want to stand back from your portrait!

The Artists, Self-portraits and Sitters

This Heat included six professional artists and three amateur artists (for a discussion of 'professional;' and 'amateur' see my last blog post about this series Review: Episode 7 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2018)

In the listing below:

• a link to the the artist's website is embedded in their name - for those wanting to know the standard of work by artists who get selected
• links to their social media follows - should you wish to follow them

Professional Artists

The six professional artists were - in alphabetical order:

• Frances Bell (Facebook | Instagram) - Trained in a traditional sight size drawing (no painting for a year while you learn to draw ) and painting from life in Florence at the Charles H Cecil School. Frances has been a regular exhibitor at the annual exhibitions of a number of the national art societies and she has also won a number of awards. The judges very much liked her self-portrait because it did NOT look like a typical traditional pose. She'd in effect painted herself from head to toe sat on the ground with an element of foreshortening - and on top of a rather nice carpet. It took 20 hours. 
• Christabel Blackburn (private Instagram | Twitter) - She originally studied the foundations of figurative drawing and sculpture - also at Charles Cecil Studios in Florence - but just for one year. She then completed her training in figurative drawing, painting and sculpting at The London Atelier of Representational Art. This is her profile on LARA's website
• Tom Croft (Instagram) - professional portrait painter who works in oils from his garden studio based in Wolvercote, Oxford. He spent three years producing work for Manchester Football Club and has painted footballers Wayne Rooney, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs. He's also a a member of the Oxford Art Society and opens his studio to the public during Oxfordshire Artweeks. He kept us biting our nails until the end - and pulled it out of the bag!  
• Beverley Fry - professional artist from Shropshire who has sold and exhibited for 35 years, with over 10 solo exhibitions and also ran a studio gallery for 13 years. This was the self-portrait she painted - the judges liked the composition.
• Michelle Ives (Instagram) - a professional n artist and illustrator living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Originally from South Africa, she trained in graphic design and illustration before moving to the UK and gaining further qualifications in the field of animation.  She mostly paints landscapes and has also been in “Sky Landscape Artist of the Year” competition 2016. Very fond of green!
• Jonathan Luxon (Facebook) Based in North East Scotland. Former music teacher who did a Joint Honours degree in Fine Art and Music at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has been been working as a professional artist in North East Scotland since 2009.  He started painting landscapes at the start of 2016, exploring his local area of Findhorn Bay and the Highlands. His self portrait was 'eyeballed' from life and painted in 35 hours and the inclusion of himself in the mirror was an afterthought. He paints with an acrylic underpainting - and then oils on top and he had a planned timeline - but didn't quite manage to keep to it.

Jonathan Luxon - with a few other subjects in his eyeline

Amateur Artists

The three amateur artists were:

• Rebecca Bright (Instagram) - Graduated from Cambridge with a degree in medieval and modern languages and last April was an Account Director working in Advertising. She takes on commissions in her spare time and would like to become a professional artist - and it looks as if she might have taken the plunge!
• Alastair Faulkner (Facebook | Instagram | Twitter)- I don't think Alastair will mind if I say he looked to me like he might be very young. Then we found out he is training as an orthopaedic surgeon in Dundee! He graduated with a degree in Medicine from The University of Edinburgh in 2012 and currently works for NHS Highland. He paints in his spare time as a hobby. He was also taught drawing by a plastic surgeon in Cambridge re. how to draw anatomically. He  is very much a self-taught artist and painted his large self-portrait "Self Portrait in Green Scrubs" over several months. He has a blog called Bones and Brushes.
• Pal Kumar (Instagram | Twitter) Grew up in India and is now an 18 year old A Level Student who lives in London. He like drawing in a mix of graphite and charcoal and had a drawing in Wildlife Artist of the Year 2017

Pal - totally unfazed by the cameraman and sound man!

Survey of the Self Portraits

San Geremia by John Singer Sargent

This is a painting of Venice by John Singer Sargent which I saw at the preview exhibition of the Rockefeller Collection Auction at Christies in London (until 8 March). I highly recommend a visit!

It's worth taking a close look at how Singer Sargent conveys people in this paintings of Venice.

So here's the painting - and the details.

San Geremia (1913) by John Singer Sargent

Details of the painting

This is a side long look at the bottom left corner where the three gondolas are the foreground one is moving away from our view towards the left. The two behind are moving parallel towards the right.

The painting photographed from the side - focusing on the gondolas

Then close ups of what the brush work is actually doing to convey both gondola and the people in it

This is the left hand gondola which we see moving away from our perspective

just a very few strokes to indicate both gondola and gondalier

....and these are two parallel running gondolas moving left to right

suddenly the gondolas which are so clear at 3-4 feet have started to disappear at 3-4 inches

Interesting isn't it?