Rebecca & her pets Dog & Cat
Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.
I’m
a painter, visual artist. Just finished a degree in the stuff last year, now
I’m testing the water of the galleries and commissions shtick, doing okay. I do
paintings mingling total abstraction with detailed, obsessive classical
realism, sometimes master copies with heavy modification. I love ‘fixing’
pictures that are ostensibly too easy to get a handle on.
Who (or what)
inspires you to do what you love in your own creative business?
Hah,
my parents. They’ve never told me to get a real degree or get a real job.
Where do you get
your inspiration from when you paint?
I
get inspiration especially from a very discombobulated collection of sources.
Sometimes an image will stick with me mercilessly, until I’ve put it in every
painting for a couple of months. This happened to me last with pickle-jars, for
a while everything I drew was floating in the murky stuff in the bottom of
pickle jars. Sport, people, the landscape, it’s all good.
Napoleon in his study
What are the five
words that people who know you would use to describe you?
Carefree,
loopy, shy, dopey, creative
Tell us about your
very first job and what path have you taken since then?
My
first, almost-unpaid job was scooping horse poop and carrying buckets of water
at a stable. Fun times. Nothing I’ve done since has been vaguely related, but I
still draw a lot of horses, I like how alien they are. A horse isn’t at all like
most animals we interact with as humans. They’re prey animals, they constantly
hover between being frightened of you and treating you like a herd-mate.
Describe a typical
day in your studio space?
Chat
to your friends on the Internet, play with ideas and doodle and do some studies
until about 1pm, suddenly realise you haven’t worked at all on your main
project yet, work furiously on that for a few hours, forget to eat lunch until
about 4pm when you’re really hungry, make yourself coffee while you’re thinking
about the lunch you’ll eat, take the coffee back to the studio and forget lunch
again. Fantasise often about the paintings you’ll do after the current five are
finished.
Studio
As an Artist, what
is your biggest frustration?
That
I sometimes have a mind like a butterfly, always drifting between ideas and
becoming briefly fascinated by things. Mostly I do eventually finish work, but
I wish I could just lock myself onto something and not stop until it’s done.
Tell us about how
you prioritise your work.
Hah,
not sure. Commissions first, then everything else in order of how interesting
it is at the time.
Can you please
tell us about how do you connect with other artists, and your customers (i.e.
how do you network)?
I
connect with other artists through going to openings, talking to my artsy
friends and being members of millions of online communities. Conceptart.org is
smashing if you want to make friends with illustrators and serious industry
types. Customers often find me through my online presence in forums etc, or
through the galleries my work is in.
Rebecca & Zacc -
at Tokyo Disneyland.
What advice can
you offer other creative people who are just starting out and following their
passions?
That
you think there’s no opportunities, but really all you need is dedication and a
willingness to put yourself out there, and things will appear.
What dreams do you still want to achieve or fulfil in your life?
I
still haven’t done a big solo show, that’s next. Must do.
What is your
proudest moment so far?
Selling
a painting I thought was too weird for anyone to want- ‘Napoleon crossing the
Alps’. It’s a big pink blob and Napoleon’s horse. There’ve been other things,
but I’m proudest of that because it’s a painting I really wanted to do.
Who do you most
want to meet and why?
Can’t
pick one person! Maybe Robert Crumb...
Napoleon
What is the most
important lesson in life that you have learned?
Pasta
is always delicious, and should be cooked whenever you are sad or hungry.
What book are you
reading right now, and do you have a book you would like to recommend?
The
last novel I read was A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin. Fifth of the
Song of Ice and Fire. Sounds pulpy, but it’s actually incredible – HBO’s doing
a TV show of it now. Game of Thrones.
Where do we find
you and your artworks?
My
website: www.rebecca-hartstein.com
My
deviantart gallery, for sketches, illustration and chatting online:
xinsha.deviantart.com
Kaleidoscope
Gallery in Waterloo: www.kaleidoscope-gallery.com
Contemplation of sublime nature beauty
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