10
SPOTLIGHT ON THE ARTIST Artist: Minty Perkins-Ray
What’s your artistic background? I graduated Nottingham Trent University in June studying Fine Art for three years. Throughout school I was always very artistic. How are you finding Lyon as a place to live? I absolutely love living in Lyon, it’s such a beautiful city and is filled with arts, culture and music. And of course lots of cheese. What inspired this cover and what drives your art generally? I see my art as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, the colours and shapes all have to interlink and connect with one another. Music is a big inspiration in my work. It is another of my passions and I find it very important to work to music. It helps my creative flow and can also influence my decision making. At uni I incorporated music into my work by researching synaesthesia and how it affects certain people. I created pen drawings and then sang what I perceived my drawings would ‘sound like’. The final piece was a sensory experience involving both ‘listening’ and ‘seeing’ my art at the same time- so I
would say music is hugely influential in my work. It feels very embedded in nature. Is that something you generally like to explore? Nature is a very important aspect in my work. I often take photographs of interesting plants and flowers and work from those. I actually did this particular piece basking in a sunny garden, the perfect place for me to work as I am surrounded by influences and ideas. What’s your preferred medium? I’ve experimented a lot with different mediums such as paint, collage and ceramics. I then found pens and fell in love with using them. For my university degree show, I went an extra step further and had my pen drawings developed onto silk, hanging them from the ceiling. This encouraged the viewer to really feel the sensory experience I was attempting to create, with the flowing natural movement of the silk and my ‘ethereal’, ‘eerie’ voice alongside it. The colours are fabulous- why is colour important in your work? Colour has always been an important factor in my work! I’m very drawn to bold, vivid colours and when I go and see art in galleries it’s always the most colourful and vibrant works that attract me. I therefore want to create work that is just as bright and just as colourful; that I would like to see in a gallery. Anyone who knows me would describe me as a bright, colourful and loud person; I feel like this comes across in my art. Tell us about your time at art school. Art School was fantastic. When I first went to university, I had no idea who I was as an artist and what kind of art I wanted to make. But the three years that I was there gave me the space to discover and study my medium in detail. I had the time and freedom to test out so many ideas and to see my failures and successes in the comfort of the studio, surrounded by my friends. Sharing a studio space was great as we would always bounce
