Denise Johns - Artist of the Month
"my aim when I began painting portraits, was to paint 500 paintings and put them in a book for my family"
Denise's garden studio
My aim at retirement from the commercial world, was to find a creative outlet to keep myself entertained in the 3rd phase of my life and something that would meld with downsizing.
I have been creative with crafts and pottery all my life but when I saw a TV show on portrait painting, I found I had my challenge.
I just happened to drive pass the Society of Artist’s building in Lambton Park a few days later and went in to enquire. They had a portrait drawing/painting class!
I am a self-taught artist and have been attending the Monday morning portrait sessions at the Society for 10 years and have hardly missed a Monday. The class is untutored but with the help of art magazines, books, DVDs, you seem to absorb the vibes and the other artists, being like-minded, help out when you enquire ‘how did you do that?’ I thoroughly agree with the adage of ‘you learn by the miles of brush-stokes you put down.’
I have been creative with crafts and pottery all my life but when I saw a TV show on portrait painting, I found I had my challenge.
I just happened to drive pass the Society of Artist’s building in Lambton Park a few days later and went in to enquire. They had a portrait drawing/painting class!
I am a self-taught artist and have been attending the Monday morning portrait sessions at the Society for 10 years and have hardly missed a Monday. The class is untutored but with the help of art magazines, books, DVDs, you seem to absorb the vibes and the other artists, being like-minded, help out when you enquire ‘how did you do that?’ I thoroughly agree with the adage of ‘you learn by the miles of brush-stokes you put down.’
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At the Monday sessions we have ‘live’ models for 3 hours, from all walks of life, be it family, friends, uni students, people walking by the Society’s building in Lambton Park, people you spot in cafes, people from other cultures.
We paint weekly mainly to get a likeness and once a year, we hold an exhibition of portraits we do at home as a project, where we select, compose and paint a person of our choice, any medium and any size. My style is contemporary realism and I like to paint a narrative (their story) in my portraits, so I have been going outside and painting ‘plein air’ around Newcastle and Lake Macquarie twice a week for an hour or so for a few years, to be able to paint my subjects in their environments, be it a landscape or interior scene. My aim when I began painting portraits, was to paint 500 paintings and put them in a book for my family to see. I am nearly there and have enough for 4 books but have no intention to stop painting. Now the more I learn, the more I want to know. Denise |
click on images to enlarge
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