Interview Victoria Randall - Fine Art

At GIITTV we like to feature up and coming artists, and we look forward to seeing where the future may take them.

Victoria Randall is an aspiring painter working and living in Bath, UK. She started her full-time practice 3 years ago…at Bath Artists’ Studios.

Her subjects are quite eclectic – in the past year she has painted mainly landscapes…long thin scapes about ice and water. More recently her work has become more figurative.

All links to her work are at the bottom of this piece.

Featured Image – Hexham

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Close To You

You only ‘officially’ started your art career 3 years ago at Bath Artists Studio, what made you take the plunge?

I’ve been meaning to since graduation many years ago…other aspirations took over for too long and came to nothing – one day I just thought, what the hell am I doing, I’d ignored the one thing that gave me passion and I was the most happiest doing, so that the seed was sown, encouraged by others I went for it hired a studio and started to work again.

Were you painting from an early age, what and who inspired you?

I’ve been drawing since I can remember, my mother and grandfather encouraged me the most; from an early age granddad encouraged me to look at his art library (which could have been quite dangerous as I was 5 at the time), I remember leafing through his books on Velasquez, Goya and Rembrandt and being fascinated with the imagery. My mum used to do a lot of oil painting in the kitchen and I could watch for hours, eventually she gave me my first oil painting lesson and an oil paints set…it all sort of started from there.

You’ve only recently decided to make your art ‘public’ – Why is this?

I was just too scared to show my paintings at first…but realised if I was to attempt to make a living with my work I’d have to. In 2010 I took part in a group show and went onto to organise a couple of group exhibitions for the Bath Fringe, along with an exhibition of just my work at the end of last year. That helped my confidence levels, an so I started to add new work online as well to draw more attention to what I was doing.

Describe your own personal definition of ‘Fine Art’

A record, object or thing created from the results of a process in an attempt to express an idea or experiment.

Suspend Balance

Your pieces of people seem to be quite dark and haunting. Many of them seem to be pained in some way, is there a reason behind this….or is it just an innate way of expressing yourself?

It’s partly to do with the colour; I found that mixing raw umber with georgian blue gave a lovely dark colour that I could work with…I’ve always had an eye for the gothic, and gravitate toward darker things, as well as liking the look. My earlier work was a lot brighter but I didn’t get on with it, and was unwilling to show as I didn’t feel it was ‘me’. I’m not a dark person and always seeking the light that lurks somewhere and I think my work reflects this.

Your Supplico series is fascinating, can you tell me where the influence for this set came from?

It started as series of drawings (originally intended for livelier paintings about the circus); based on imagery I’ve taken of aerial artists, fire eaters, acrobats and other circus performers, that I’ve taken over the past few years… A bout of mild depression and an upset occurred while I was working on the drawings and a catharsis started to feed into the drawings that morphed into ideas for a series of paintings that moved away from the original intention. I’ve never really worked on such a personal level before, so was quite alarmed at first but decided to continue to see how they would work out. The first ‘The fire eater’ is Supplico with partly means ‘I beseech you’ in Latin. The feeling didn’t last long and the next ‘Balance and Suspend’ where I started to heal and ‘get over it’; I feel this is a far better and stronger image, because I was moving on. The third painting which I’ve almost finished is still nicknamed ‘Hooping Hell’, is about strength and rolling with the changes. I think ultimately the work could service as document of how to cope with the disappointments of life, or how to live and work in the moment, we’ll see…

What inspires you to sit down and draw/paint these days? Is it a fleeting thought, sound or vision…or does it build over time?

It’s a series of things. Drive, if I don’t do anything for a couple of days I get withdrawal symptoms and feel tetchy. When I’m working music helps a lot…the shoe drawing titles came from lyrics of songs that would pop up in my headphones at the time of drawing, and would match or even influence the theme of the drawing e.g. It is you, (Pressure Drop by The Maytals). Along with feelings and thoughts and objects I see…I think everything just sort of builds at different levels until at some point they converge.

Supplico

Are there any modern day artists that particularly grab your attention at the moment?

Yes Guy Denning and CKirk are two artists whose work I love looking at right now. Their style and ways of working have had a positive influence on me…Guy Denning was originally a local boy from Bristol who did good and moved to France – his style and technique has inspired me over the past few years, particularly his portraits. CKirk lives and works in Texas. I love his exuberance and passion for creating, if you follow him on Facebook he regularly updates with his work day…he’s bam straight in there, starting with ‘warm up’ pictures, before going on the main stuff. I forget we all have our own working styles and regularly chastise myself for not being more like that.

Apart from online, where can people see your work…are you exhibiting at the moment?

I’ve been invited to show some work at the next Artolo Art party at Bath Artists’ studios Gallery on 25 April. It’s not been confirmed yet I’m still waiting to hear back from the organisers…but it will be all over my Facebook, blog and twitter pages when official. After that I have to start looking further afield to show work, I’m keeping my options open but aiming for London.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve nearly finished the third painting in the Supplico series, I’m working towards two more paintings to complete the series; hopefully the whole lot will be finished by late Spring. I’m also going to go back to my shoe drawings and see where they take me.

Heaven Scent