Evoke autumn with pastel, watercolour and acrylic
Fresh faces
New ways with portraits, styles and techniques
Make it personal
Create your own greeting cards
WIN! £1,000 CASH PRIZE ENTER YOUR ARTWORK TODAY
How to master one painting from two photographs
The family dynamic
As shown in paintings through the years
Jayne Perkins discovered her love for painting at age six, when her parents’ good friend and artist Ronald Jesty gifted her a Paint by Numbers set including oil paints, brushes and a Peter Scott painting of two swans.
“My parents were great supporters of the arts in general and my father did a lot of research into art colleges on my behalf,” says Jayne. “It was due to him that I found myself going to the Bath Academy of Art where I was exposed to and influenced by the incredible artists who taught at the college.”
At art college, the only medium available was oil, which Jayne used for several years until she followed her husband to Saudi Arabia. “It was here that I was asked to teach watercolour workshops at a Ladies Further Education Academy. Having no experience with the medium and no access to computers or books – as art books were heavily censored at the time – I was forced to explore the medium by myself, developing my own techniques and terminology.”
She continued to teach watercolour painting on their return to the UK and still does, to this day. “However, a few years ago, I discovered pastels when my husband surprised me with a beautiful box of Sennelier Pastels. It is now my favourite medium.
“I am generally a landscape artist, but I do deviate when the urge takes me. As I teach watercolour and am called on to demonstrate various techniques, it is necessary to be flexible with subject matter. I am presently working on a double dog commission with another to follow; these will be painted in watercolour.
“Being primarily a landscape artist, I spend a lot of time sketching and photographing my favourite parts of the country – namely Devon, Cornwall and Cumbria – and usually paint from these sketches or photographs.”
There are various artists whose work Jayne admires and who naturally influence her approach to different subjects.
“For example, I have long been an admirer of Kurt Jackson and the way he recreates not only a momentary snapshot of a particular landscape, but goes beyond and actually takes you with him, creating texture and atmosphere. This is what I try to emulate in my work and hope to achieve a story that’s worth exploring at the end of each of my paintings.”
britishartclub.co.uk/profile/jayne-perkins
Dartmoor Walk, pastel, 50x60cm This month’s spotlight on a British Art Club memberThis month’s cover artist interprets beautiful landscapes, both on her doorstep and beyond
This Sussex-based artist’s paintings are laced with a touch of mystery, which he creates from a studio nestled in the roof of his 19th-century home, finds Ramsha Vistro ▸
Ghost Station, oil on linen, 56x41cm
Roxana Halls grew up wanting to be an actress, and her love of drama is obvious in the theatricality of much of her work. She did a foundation course in art, but spent most of her time at home, painting by herself. Fellow students probably suspected she’d dropped out until she turned up at the end-of-year show with a haul of work she’d created.
At the age of 17, she moved alone from Devon to London and established her first studio in a former theatre in south London. Her work is now in many private and public collections, in the UK and abroad, and she was featured in the BBC’s Extraordinary Portraits, painting twin sisters who survived a crocodile attack in Mexico. She was also commissioned by Disney to create the Stretching Room paintings for the film Haunted Mansion, realeased earlier this year. Roxana is one of the co-founders of InFems, a dynamic all-women art collective with a mission to empower women and girls from diverse backgrounds. roxanahalls.com ▸
parents and mainly selftaught, ROXANA HALLS tells Niki Browes why the feeling of performance is so important in the act of painting
FRANS HALS was a Baroque painter who practised intimate realism and was one of the most sought-after painters of his generation. Now, a new exhibition – the first major retrospective of Hals in more than 30 years – means a new generation can discover why he deserves his place as one of the greatest painters in Western art.
By Adrian Mourby
Frans Hals The Elder is one of the reasons we know what the Dutch Golden Age looked like. This famous trading era began in 1588, when the free Dutch Republic was established, and ended in 1672 with the Rampjaar (Disaster Year) when France and its allies overran the most prosperous and advanced country in Europe.
By this time Hals (1582-1666) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) were dead. Vermeer would die three years later. Between them, these men – and a few others – left behind a detailed visual account of how the wealthy Dutch middle classes lived, and looked, at a
time when their trade, science and art dominated Europe.
Frans Hals was born in Antwerp when it was still part of the Spanish Netherlands. Six years later, the Dutch Republic was declared. By the time Hals was a young adult, the occupation of a painter in Holland had changed radically. Historical canvases had fallen out of fashion and, with the departure of the Catholic Spanish, so had religious art.
The National Gallery’s new exhibition concentrates on Hals as a portraitist and recorder of domestic life. Among the self-confident middle-class Dutch there was a huge market for art that held up a mirror to
their daily lives.
“Hals was one of the greatest portrait painters of all time,” says Bart Cornelis, Curator of this Credit Suisse Exhibition. It is very exciting to be able to present the first major monographic show devoted to him in the past 30 years. No museum has, during that time, attempted to present a survey of his work. This means that no one under the age of 40 has been able to acquaint themselves with his genius.”
Like Rembrandt, his junior by 24 years, Hals was often commissioned to paint groups of gentlemen. In 1627 his Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard captures 11 ▶
