When did you start your creative practice and why?
After taking early retirement from teaching, because of “a serious mental illness”, I was directed, by my wife to the Pete Spowage Studio Gallery and to the Manhattan Gallery, both in Nottingham and was, to my surprise, accepted by both, selling three pieces almost immediately via Pete Spowage.
How would you describe your artistic style to someone unfamiliar with your work?
Bright, colourful, challenging and eclectic.
What themes or ideas do you find yourself returning to most often?
Fields, trees, characterful buildings, The Peak District and the seaside.
What is your creative process from idea to finished piece is it always the same?
Usually, I work from my own carefully prepared photographs, enhanced through Photoshop etc., for my more realistic pieces. However, my more abstract or geometric pieces are created from purely mental impressions via a series of refining and defining sketches, enlarged and transferred to canvas.
NB Because of an amusing incident at a charity art show, where an outraged customer pulled one of my abstract pieces off the pegboard and remarked “Cor-Blimey! Who on earth would want THAT on their walls?!”, my abstract work, which used to be referred to as “Arwyn Quick’s OTHER style” is now commonly referred to as my “Cor-Blimey Series!”
Is there a particular piece of yours that feels especially meaningful?
My semi-abstract piece called “Tunnel Vision”
What do you find challenging as an artist, and how do you overcome these challenges?
Just getting started. I have plenty of ideas.
How does your immediate environment or location play in your work?
My walks around Newbold and Dunston and Barlow have provided most of the inspiration for both my realistic work and for my abstracted pieces.
Who are the artists (past or present) who have strongly influenced you?
Stanley Royle’s use of broad applications of strong colour, in depicting rural scenes in North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire have provided me with the impetus to pursue my personal style. We have two Royle lithographs in our sitting room.
How has your style or perspective evolved over time?
More of my work has become abstracted from nature or even purely geometric in nature, with a desire to create an immediate impact, which might be a rather synthesised rendition of an actual view, or a simple abstract construction.
What tools, materials, or techniques are essential to your practice? Is there a colour you just could not do without?
I use Winsor and Newton acrylics, and, latterly, some Posca paint pens, for more detailed work.
I always pursue a solid, contrasty base for most of my work, with a strong sense of
perspective or spaciousness and build up the colour to reinforce a feeling of “first
impressions” upon the viewer. I include a lot of yellow and contrasting blue in most of my work. I have written two articles, over a space of time, espousing the use of Lemon Yellow, both as an enlivening feature in itself, and as a means of adding impact to other colours and realism to shadows when glazed using acrylic medium. (Paint & Create Magazine).
How do you balance artistic expression with practical concerns like income or marketing, social media?
Since my reason for pursuing art was, first and foremost, to provide myself with a personal outlet and means of regulating my long-standing mental problems, and the fact that I am 79 next June, practical concerns as regards income, have not been a concern. Securing an enhanced teacher’s pension, at age 57 has kept me solvent. Finding outlets for my work at galleries and shops has not been a preoccupation of mine. Only latterly have I bothered to enter national competitions: with, surprisingly, two pieces shown, as finalists, in London galleries and one in Nottingham.
I have always been prolific, and have sold more than 125 pieces.
If you could give the younger you advice, what would it be?
Pursue your art for its own sake; do your own thing regardless.
If your work could evoke one feeling or reaction in viewers, what would it be?
An immediate wow factor, with a secondary feeling of “I know what that artist is driving at” or even (from an overheard remark at a gallery) “Even I can see that it is Stanage Edge!”
What is your website and how do we find you on social media?
Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, British Art Club,
SAA, www.asgard-arts.com
www.arwynquick.weebly.com
(NB Artists & Illustrators’ “British Art Club” and the SAA show most of my work)
