12 minute read
Flying high
Clare Brownlow was our December 2023 front cover artist, we find out more about the talented creative who does it in her own unique way
WHEN TALENTED ARTIST Clare Brownlow is told that she has done a brilliant commercial job at promoting and selling her work, she refutes the thought with rapid shake of the head and replies that “it is just a lot of luck, really”.
The success that Brownlow has enjoyed as an artist is quite clearly not just down to luck, so when that line is tempered to a comment that perhaps she is good at making the most of her abilities and the opportunities that have come her way, the artist is prepared to accept that as a suitable compromise.
Through a range of chance meetings Brownlow has ensured that her artistic talent and, despite her denials, her commercial acumen, focused determination to develop her own unique way of working staying true to her own self, have taken the Norfolk-born from a returning-to-college 20-something mature art student to the realms of a professional artist,who creates beautiful paintings with headline pieces that achieve a five-figure demand.
She is also mum to two boys, and wife to Charlie, who runs the Game Train Scotland.
Brownlow rents an idyllic studio in a stable yard that has been converted to accommodate various creative businesses – Paul the Potter is based opposite. The creative environment is on the beautiful 3,000-acre Hirsel Estate, the Douglas-Hume family’s fertile land that straddles the EnglishScottish border, dominated by the giant River Tweed.
Art has always been a “thing” for 40-year-old Brownlow, even if on a professional basis it suffered a suspended start – her initial stint at art school far from what she’d envisioned.
“My parents have got pictures of me as a child painting with my Dad, who is really artistic,” she recalls.
“I was constantly with paints and being creative and had a little sketch book, even when I was as young as five I was always drawing.
“After leaving school, I went to art college at Edinburgh, but it just was not for me. The course would have us doing such ridiculous things as hanging condoms from the ceiling filled with pig eyeballs, glitter, passport photos.
“I actually quite wanted to learn how to paint, and the detail of using a palette and tones and colours and pigments. I did a year of the full creative course, and then just did a degree in History of Art.”
A whirlwind life in her 20s took over the following years, but, after marrying lifelong friend and love Charlie, Brownlow found it was the right time return to her first passion.
Second time around college was a more successful venture, the Leith School of Art answering her questions and provided the theoretical framework she was seeking.
“We had lectures about pigments and tones, we were told how to paint and about types of paints and it was just incredible,” she enthuses, adding: “It was all about understanding painting, the basics of how a colour wheel works, and what colours pop against each other, and that we shouldn’t paint the same strokes over the whole picture as it will become flat, have a quiet area in one place and a louder space elsewhere on the canvas.
“I learned about Leonardo’s Rule of Three and Fibonacci Sequences, it was brilliant. I painted landscapes and seascapes and nudes; it was all my kind of thing.”
Pregnancy and early motherhood came along as she was finishing college, and it was when the new-born Harry was taken on that first visit to see excited grandparents that Brownlow received her “feather” epiphany.
“Dad shoots, fishes, stalks, and he had a bunch of pheasant feathers in a jug on the kitchen table,” explains Brownlow. “He also writes and draws in a beautiful game journal with an old fountain pen and so always has a Quink ink pot on his desk, too.
“I just took out a feather and dipped the nib in the ink and started playing on the kitchen table and this amazing kind of process developed, these flicks of the paint splashed out, it was really cool and very messy!”
After tidying the kitchen table, Brownlow’s mother not so indulgent that she would allow her furniture to be left covered in ink splatters, a handful of feathers were taken back to Scotland where Brownlow started to hone her emerging technique.
The old saying that “necessity being the mother of invention” was borne true – using feathers for her work proved to be an ideal working medium for Brownlow in her new role as a busy working mum.
“When you make up a good palette for a painting it takes ages, and you need to use it up or else it dries,” she explains. “With the feathers and the ink, I could just pick them up, do some work, put them to one side and then put the lid back on the ink bottle – with a screaming baby alongside me, it was all quite doable.”
The feather art started to roll out of Brownlow’s studio, and a number of friends, noticing that they could be on to a good thing, asked if she would produce them pictures of their pets and wildlife. That early work led to a first range of Christmas cards described by the artist as “village hall type things.”
Her first real commercial break came when she was standing in a Scottish river.
“We were up north and salmon fishing with a friend of Dad’s called Johnny Gorman from Quantum Art. He asked if I could do some bits for an exhibition and he took my work out to New York, Singapore, and LA. That was cool and got me out there a bit.”
BROWNLOW then took herself out into the big wide world, going on tour with stands at country events where she worked and revealed her unique art in front of an amazed audience. The next big break came at the British Deer Society’s show.
“I think that is where Countryfile saw me – they called me up a year after and said they wanted me on the programme, which was amazing.
“It was really fun, and I had such a giggle with presenter Helen Skelton, who had a go with the feathers, it was really funny.
“In the end I only got a four-minute slot, the advent of bird flu’ dropping me from the scheduled nine, but overnight it changed my business.
“We were a bit sore-headed the next morning as we had watched my TV debut with friends, but when we logged on there were there 100s of emails with orders –I had to get another friend in to help deal with everything.”
The feathers then really started to fly.
Fairs, country shows, festivals and country events, big race days such as Cheltenham and horse sport highlights including Burghley, all found Brownlow showing off her wares as she took her work on tour with a fierce tenacity; she recognises now that life on the road “nearly killed” her.
When Covid hit in 2019, the global pandemic afforded Brownlow a very different experience than for most of the human population.
“It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me!” she laughs, smiling with the relief she evidently still feels when recalling those virus-affected travel enforcements, adding: “It also meant that people with spare money were sat in their houses and looking at their blank walls, and suddenly wanted to make everything look a lot better.”
The digital, creative and commercial worlds merged as we all stepped to up a newly required level of interactivity, and Brownlow made full use of the opportunities that emerged.
“A guy called Matthew Burrows started something called the Artist Support Pledge on Instagram – he invited artists to put their work online for sale at a maximum price of £200. Once an artist reached £1,000 in sales they had to pledge to buy another artist’s piece.
“So every day I produced a piece of art, and every evening at 6pm I uploaded to the site – by 6.03pm it would be sold! And the buyers got addictive, it was amazing.
“Although Burrows did so well, he put millions back into the industry, I also now have lots of lovely original work on my walls at home!”
She adds: “I was locked in my studio throughout, but every day I was painting and I loved it. It was incredible – thankfully Charlie took over the home schooling, which was a relief, I would never have been patient enough to do that!”
Since the end of the pandemic, Brownlow’s commercial world has experienced similar trends to those seen in the bloodstock market.
Immediately after restrictions were lifted she reports that trade was amazing, but this year, although her expensive work, the pieces priced at £10,000 and above, have been selling, it is the smaller items that have struggled as people without bundles of readily available cash have cut spending in order to stay afloat through the cost of living crisis. She describes the current trading environment as “just really weird”.
Not one to let the market beat her, Brownlow has been busy working on new plans and collaborations, and it is work that is seeing her develop new techniques alongside the feather art.
Although highly capable and able for self-determination and motivation, Brownlow does enjoy the chance to bounce around ideas and share concepts, something which the solo artist can struggle to access.
With friend and professional fisher lady Marina Gibson, the pair are launching a new project later this year that is aiming to bring together a shared love of wildlife and creative expression.
“Marina is an incredibly talented fisher woman and we’ve come up with an exciting plan for the autumn of this year, but I can’t say too much now,” teases the artist, adding: “It will be a collaboration, I’m going to paint ‘themes’, and we’re going to do something fun in London mid-to-late October.
“Beforehand, I am going to do some sketch work and prelim work, a few ‘trailers’, but we will not show off the pieces until the actual event itself – teasers will be online through social media and it will all come out through the autumn.
“It is really exciting and cool and I am buzzing about it. When you’re working by yourself you do get excited about things –I get inspired just driving here through this countryside and everyday I see something that could lead to a painting, which is amazing, but you are essentially by yourself in your own thoughts most of the time.
“So to be able to talk to a friend and to someone who is passionate about something – and she is so enthusiastic about fishing and Atlantic salmon – it’s so inspiring.
“Marina is who she is and she is so passionate about what she does, as I am with my art. When the two of us come together it is so inspiring and we can come up with ideas that we would not necessarily have thought of by ourselves.
“She gets excited, and then I get excited, and it is just thrilling.”
This joint-venture is not the only “new stuff” that Brownlow has planned for this year and the artist is embarking on a new line to add her own portfolio with plans to launch at Burghley in September.
“I’m launching another kind of another new aspect to my art. I’ve done a few teasers, but I haven’t shown exactly what I’ve been up to,” she again says cryptically. “I’m really nervous about it, because it’s so different and it is quite important. I am using feathers, but also other mediums, I am literally throwing everything at it.
“It has just been an emotional process. I’m nervous about sharing it, because it’s so different to what I normally do.”
Thankfully, the feathers are not going into the bin, but the new work is an exploration
of her own portfolio, and development of her skill set in order to take her journey as an artist forward.
“I have been working with the pheasant feathers for 14-odd years now. I love them, I will never move away from them and working with them is my favourite medium, but there comes a time when it is right to try something new.
“For instance, an athlete might like to change it up a bit and do a sprint, or the high jump or go swimming – and see if they are any good at it. If not, well then at least they have had a go and it is out of their system,” she laughs.
“So this is my change of discipline. It is a little like stretching different muscles, using the chance to play with different mediums and different techniques.
“I am seeing how I can use different colours, tones and pressure, lights and darks.”
Brownlow makes life work for her and as she moves into a next phase of her career, we look forward with anticipation to see what comes next.
