Congratulations to Claire McCall for earning her place as a Finalist in the Boynes Emerging Artist Award 7th Edition!

Claire McCall is also a previous finalist of our 3rd Edition and has been interviewed before. Click here to view her previous interview.

Who are you?

I am a self taught artist from Melbourne Australia. I am strongly influenced by impressionist art and paint light filled images of beach scenes.

How would you describe your work?

Modern impressionism, painting almost exclusively using a palette knife, freely capturing light, movement and the interplay between abstraction and realism with layers of rich colour and texture.

Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind "Mother and Daughters"?

‘Mother and Daughters’ captures another everyday moment with the viewer invited to fill in the blanks of time, place, thoughts and emotions. The initial source image that inspired this painting was quite simple but I imagined and created texture in the ocean and surrounding landscape with the palette knife to create interest and keep the viewer’s eye moving around the work.

Can you walk us through the technical steps of creating "Mother and Daughters"?

I paint a tonal ground of Burnt Sienna on the canvas before painting the background freehand with the palette knife. The backgrounds of my paintings are fairly unplanned allowing the knife to create unexpected textures and effects. The figures are added at the end and integrated into the textured background.

What do you hope to communicate to an audience with your work?

The greatest compliment someone can pay me is to genuinely stop in their tracks. They may want to take the time to study the range of values and textures of my paintings. Or they study the drama of abstraction vs realism that is my style. Or perhaps just because it captures their eye and holds their attention. This is when I feel that I have really made an impact on the viewer.

Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?

My greatest success in my artistic journey was making the leap to become an artist in the first place considering I had not studied art at school or had any formal art education. I was so inspired by the works of other impressionist artists and decided with blissful ignorance, that painting would be my second career path, even though I had never tried my hand with a paintbrush. In fact, throw in some flawless optimism as I thought not of how I might learn to paint, but dreamed of my first solo exhibition. It has been said that “you don’t find art, it finds you.” Well, art found me, just a little later than most. I achieved success by sheer persistence, painting miles and not being deterred by rejection from exhibitions in the early days.

As a finalist, do you have any advice for artists who want to submit to awards, competitions, residencies, etc.?

Take up as many opportunities to expose your art to new audiences and awards/competitions are a great avenue to do this.

Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?

Pursuing a career in art is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t focus so much on the destination but the path. Stay true to your personal style, stick with it, find your audience and sell to them. Be prepared to work as hard on marketing your art as creating it.

To view more of Claire McCall’s work

Website

Instagram