July - Karin Taylor

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1. Your work is so colourful and vibrant! Can you tell us a little about your process, and what medium you use?

Well, sure tbo…but it’s not a little it’s a lot!!!

I guess the ideas begin as a little inspirational thought at first…sometimes the thought just stays with me and plagues me until I give it more attention. These little ideas then continue to develop there in my head for a long time. But usually I don’t act on the idea, or create any drawings until I get 3 or 4 ‘grip points’ or ‘join the dots’ ideas that I think are going to hold the whole idea/concept together and make it worthwhile, by that I mean something that people can warm to, love or relate to in some way.

For inspiration I read a lot, I look a lot, absorbing visuals and text, I love the library as a main source, but magazines, internet, books, how other artists depict similar subjects and learning about the subject through lots of research play a huge part in the inspiration process for me.

The other thing I love to do, is go for a drive out to Bangalow and just go window shopping all day long. A lot of the shops there have an asian influence and it’s a very enjoyable outing. I usually come home feeling refreshed and full of ideas for new work. There is a little shop there I love called http://www.littlepeach.com.au full of wonderful kokeshi dolls, for which I have the greatest affection.

After the inspirational period, I become ready to draw……and this is the part where I like to use a mechanical pencil with very fine tip and I so enjoy the drawing process more than any other part.

I would like to mention where I always begin….the face…yep, I always draw the face right where it should be on the paper, and everything else falls into line after that….i love drawing the face, the big round arcs, that anchors the drawing.

Then moving on to the hair, outfit, face, and I usually do the other embellishments and background elements last of all. I have to be so careful with this. If I do the background first, I tend to overdo it and then the outfit has to be plain and simple….as well as the other adornments….so because I love fabric and creating designs, I tend to work on the outfit first (after much trial and error) so that it gets the most attention to detail….then the background falls in afterwards.

Also, before I begin drawing I must have plenty of energy and not feel tired…so when I’m leading up to drawing from the inspiration, I must be well rested and stop wearing myself out for a while, so that my energy is reserved for this special task, which is sort of a reverential time for me, almost spiritual….it’s when the spirit, the flow, the energy, the chi….are going to come out and meet with the paper, and the world for the first time, and it’s very important that it comes out right the first time or I can get very discouraged.

Once my picture is drawn and I’m happy with it (I do lots and lots of rubbing out by the way, I’m very heavy handed….and the mechanical pencils help me not to make such deep impressions on the paper)….I then start to figure out colour schemes……sometimes I go to the paint shop (house paint) and pick up catalogues of paint charts….i snip them all up into little swatches and put them in a lucky dip….then I start laying them out and seeing what goes with what….I have this intuition about how to mix colours, I’m untrained but my hand just reaches out for the colours that need to be mixed….this amazes me that I can do this….i can’t explain it!!
I generally outline my work with a thick black outline (noticing any similarities here tbo lol) using a long thin brush and black ink….but lately I use a lovely Faber Castelle black felt tip pen…much easier and less messy! And you don’t have to wait for the ink to dry :D

Then I begin to ‘colour in’ my design/drawing….usually I colour in the hair first, I love to fill in large spaces with thick black ink….it’s a delightful process…….then I move on to the face, sometimes using skin coloured inks mixed with acrylics and mediums…..always, I return to the face with pastels for warmth, blending and shading……plumping them up with rubbings of rouge and shadow……I love to mix in blends of yellow and red to pretty up my babies, as though they had a rosy glow from the sun or applied a little makeup blush.

My designs on their clothing are intuitive, I don’t spend hours thinking about it at all…I just start drawing from one point and finish at the other end….i should give it much more thought and attention, but some things I just feel lazy about…because I’m so intense with everything else.

At the end of the painting, I return to shading, highlighting, embellishing and adornments, and checking and rechecking by having the painting on display in the house….i call on everyone for remarks, and honestly, heaven help them if they are not positive, it will be a miserable household until I get the painting just right and plenty of praise in all the right places!!!! lol

2. I’d say Geisha Girl Print, is a more traditional looking Japanese piece in your collection of work, do you like to look at a lot of reference for a traditional style, or do you like to put a bit of yourself (and own interpretation) in these pieces?

Oh, I definitely love to look at references and try to ‘get it right’…but I’m always a little ‘left-field’ if you like. I always like to put my own interpretation or something of me into them somehow….i can’t quite explain this…..it was important for me with Geisha Girl painting to get this just right, because I was paying homage to the art of the Geisha, and wished to be very respectful of their role. It is such a calling or vocation, and I admire them, the Maiko, the Geisha…..for what they do.

It’s strange to me, why they do choose this lifestyle, it’s restrictive and they cannot marry, etc,....other cultures really do fascinate me….i love to try and understand why people do the things they do, and a lot of that just revolves around culture, religion, and social pleasantries……i love to watch programs on tv, like the ones they show kids at school about other countries…their typical diet, population, statistics, religion….a bit like how the World Book Encyclopedia goes about it, I could sit and read Wikepedia online all day long….i just love information FULLSTOP!!

I’m going off on a tangent here, but that’s my father’s fault, he encouraged me to research……and I absolutely love it, had I not become an artist, I would definitely go down the road of ‘research assistant’ because I enjoy to research everything and anything, and find it a worthy challenge.

Getting back to Geisha Girl, sometimes, because my art is very stylised, I also like to show that I can actually draw quite well …. :D Like Ken Done (he can draw beautifully but you wouldn’t know it to look at his work) So that was part of why I did her too, not just to show others I can draw, but to check whether I still ‘had the drawing gene’ present after so much of my stylised asia drawings and paintings….. So I was resetting my ‘drawing gene’ so to speak.

3. There is a lot of almost a folklore feel to a lot of your asian inspired pieces (Maiden Voyage, Girl on Redwall, Pearl of the Sea, Sea Poppy, Two Asian Dolls to name a Few) are these based on any stories, or are you inspired by your own story?

Gee, that’s such a good question….well, I just love stories …..my father and grandfather have a great tradition of telling stories around the dinner table…and we are always enthralled by the comedic overtones….very often a sense of wisdom and understanding flows from these, and I little ‘aha!’ moments transpire.

I love fairy tales, so yes, a lot of them have been inspired by heroines and heroes from asian folk tales which I haven’t really spoken about before. I bought little books filled with asian folk tales, but no one tale was responsible for any particular painting, it’s just a mixture of ideas.

I think that I find a real romanticism in these tales, and lashings of courage and wisdom also. I know Maiden Voyage came from such beginnings, but to round that out, I had also been reading James Michener’s Hawaii at the time and was exceptionally moved by the tale.

I love to read about how the islanders of old (ie tahitions, Polynesian, etc) peopled the islands, there are terrible terrifying tales of bravery and heroic wartime vigilance…I think I’ve tied my little asian folks in with these other brave islanders to create my own little heroes and heroines…..I have such admiration for the first peoples, especially theislanders, that moved out from their first island homes sometimes due to famine and war, and travelled by canoe in order to found other societies, and am quite fascinated by how the different races ended up mixing with one another. I find it amazing that a lot of islanders are mixed races…which I learned whilst reading Michener’s account.

I also love to go out on boats fishing with my dad…we have always been ‘boat’ people and my ancestors who were jewish fisherman came from England to New Zealand many years ago, so I think the sea is very much in my blood and this is why it appears as a common theme throughout my work.

4. Little Green Teapot is my all time favourite piece of yours, I especially love the pallet, but also the way you do fabrics its amazingly detailed! Is this a secret love (for fabrics) you have that we don’t know about? Is this something you come up with first and build a piece around, or does each subject call for something in particular?

Now I wish to goodness I knew how I came up with ‘Little Green Teapot’ and it’s a little known fact that I didn’t like her at all much…and was going to ditch her….poor little doll!!!

Initially I thought, nah, this one’s just too amateurish, no-one’s gonna like her…until I showed my hippy sister Missy, who was gushing about it all over the place like a crazy woman……I thought, is she having me on or what?

So, I’ve always kept Little Green Teapot together with all the other ones, as part of the mix, and I’ve been truly surprised at how well she has been received…and how she sifted herself right to the top and seems now to be the little ‘golden nugget’ of all my asian designs put together.

Suffice to say, she has now won a spot in my heart too, and I do feel a special affection for her now and happy that she has found a place in the hearts of others.

She is so shy and sweet, I think I was trying to impart the role of the geisha to others, that this is part of their job…nothing more nothing less, than making their host feel comfortable, and to look their very best so that they are admired. The trouble for me was that she looked so very young, and a girl of this age, would not really be in training yet for Geisha duties I thought….so I worried about this….a lot!! Because I am a born worrier…that wrings my hands constantly worrying over silly little details that no-one else ever thinks about.

I am the greatest lover of fabric and texture.. if it were edible, that would be my diet of choice…I would feast on all the wonderful fabrics of the world. When I was a little girl I loved to dance in the ballet.. I began at the age of 4 dancing to The Blue Danube and Johanne Strauss in my loungeroom!!! and starting lessons soon after…..i soon graduated by the age of 10 to toe shoes, that was the best!

But my own family were very poor. Our car had a big hole under my feet where I would watch the road pass under on drives. One time we had no windscreen for a long time, that was fun! so why is this a big deal…well, getting back to dancing, I would enter in the eisteddfords and you must have a special tutu to be involved at all.

Of course, all the other girls had a beautiful tutu they would bring from home, a new one no doubt each year…but I had none. I would rock up and then realise I didn’t have a costume, and just hoped with all my heart that my dance teacher “Glynn Parry” from “The Parry School of Dancing” at Port Macquarie had remembered to bring the ‘spare one I loved’ that belonged to the Dance School and was the one you could borrow….. anyway, it was the softest apricot, and had a stretchy satin bodice, the skirt was apricot tulle with many fluffy layers, there were tiny sparkles and sequins, and truly it was just my colour….I felt like I was transformed into something rather special on these occasions and I would dance the improvisation as though I were a real fairy, swept up into another world.

I also had various pieces of clothing at home which were very important to me. One of these was my ‘Georgie Girl’ jumper…. A blue and white fairaisle knit which when I wore it, I became the girl in that song by The Seekers that went like this:

‘hey there, georgie girl, walking down the street so fancy free, nobody you meet, could ever see the loneliness, there inside you”

I also had a beautiful silk chinese outfit (like pyjamas with a little mandarin collar) and it had those beautiful silk knot buttons….I felt amazing wearing this, and even dressed up in it with a funny straw Vietnamese hat and a long black plait to wear to a school social (or frolicks as we called them back in my primary school days)…

My fascination with fabric, seems to stem from the fact that when I look at texture or fabrics with designs/adornments/embellishments I just feel really really good…..so I like to try and create that for myself when I paint the outfits on ‘my girls’….

I also adore paper cut out dolls and kokeshi dolls….from a little girl I was simply fascinated and kept happy for hours drawing little asian princesses and playing games with paper cut out dolls…. Weird?

The asian connection was there a long time before I even met anyone asian, in fact I would only ever have had the reference of my outfit brought to me via a neighbour who was an airline pilot after he’d been to Singapore….the rest would have germinated purely from my own vivid imagination. As far as I recall, I had never in my life seen an asian person before….and yet, I have always had this growing affinity for all things asian….hmmm go figure…I can’t work it out myself.

Now as a ‘grown up’ I have thought for many years, I would love to adopt an asian baby, or ‘why don’t my babies come out looking asian darnit’ would be another way to look at it….although my children are absolutely gorgeous, I still always long for the asian factor.

This has somewhat been satiated by the fact that my sister Melissa has had two beautiful half Indonesian children (my nieces Maya and Indiana) whose faces absolutely light up my world… I adore them…….almost as much as Sarah and Ben. I call Indi my little Indonesian princess…and Maya is much much like the cute little chunky kid/girl out of an Hawaiian movie animation “Lilo & Stitch” with the personality to match!

5. Your folio is so extensive, and you do other items such as your necklaces. Where might we see your work and what sort of things would you like to explore next with it?

Um, another great question…wow!! Hmmmm, this one requires a bit more thought…

1. I’d like to see my art signed up with manufacturers and getting out there more into the international market place…..I feel that my work will be well received in other countries, but it’s a matter of getting it seen by the people that really matter.

One way of doing this is having an agent, an art licensing agent. And I have been contracted by one who now does all the footwork on my behalf and takes a percentage of any deals we sign with manufacturers who wish to print my designs on things.

This is a 2-3 year contract, and it will take time to present the work to manufacturers through personal contact and trade shows, most recently, this agent travelled to New York for a big trade show there, and my art was well received.

My art is currently being reviewed by a card company, I just have to be patient and learn how to wait!!

2. I want to be recognised and represented by influential galleries in Australia. My goal is to earn money from Red Bubble sales to frame my original paintings and enter them in exhibitions. My hope is to raise my profile through exhibitions so that directors of galleries might see or notice my work and invite me to exhibit with them.

I believe in mentors also, and would love to have a mentor in whom I could trust….so far I’ve haven’t found anyone to fill this role, but have had the greatest encouragement from Frozenfa, and people like Jan Landers and Karen Cook, Midori Furze, your kind self, Muscular Teeth, Pinkyjain, AffectMachine, Samedog, etc…and the list just goes on, that i feel rather like Red Bubble is taking the place of just one personal mentor and I am receiving a lot of encouragement for many people, which is something I don’t question anymore, I do need it, and I gratefully accept it. I know it must mean I’m not whole in many ways, but hell, it’s a long journey, and I don’t think I’ll ever be wholely whole or fully self sufficient or full enough of self belief as not to desire encouragement from my friends, family and mentors.

It is always my intention to raise my profile, and I am a big thinker and daydreamer and believer in ‘dreams really do come true’ if you apply yourself to your goals and preservere with all your heart and do the very best work that you can do….there just has to be a reward at the end of it….a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow….i refuse to believe it’s over til I’m dead and buried…even then, I still have hope (on a good day that is) …..on a bad day, don’t ask me that question tho…because I’m prone to depression and extreme mood swings….and can get very morbid and disenchanted all too easily….it is these times I go into my cave, and not many people see me around until the bubbles come back :D

3. The jewellery came about because I’d always desired to see my art as wearable, and eventually came up with this idea to make baby giclee prints of them and learned how to pour resin…a most time consuming and backbreaking business…extremely unpleasant whilst exceedingly rewarding with the end product….needless to say, I don’t make the jewellery often, and it’s hard to sell them wholesale, because I can’t make them as fast as they sell in the shops…..and if I made the jewellery I have to stop the art, and really, the art is where my heart truly is. But I need and we all need to make these realisations for ourselves, through trial and error.

4. I would one day love a solo exhibition, but perhaps it will be a “retrospective” when I finally do…I would like to invite all the people throughout my life that contributed to making me who I am today, and those that encouraged me all the way with my art, and to just be myself……this is enough for me.

I would also love to create a few little books in each series with little stories or poems to accompany the images…this will probably be an attempt to self-publish as i would love to give them as presents to my nieces and family at christmas time and birthdays and such…..i am also thinking about calenders too.

And the most special thing of all would be if i were ever asked to illustrate a book.
I’ve been asked before, but I would love to be asked by someone who is already a published children’s book author…that would be the cream on top of the cake for me!!!

Japanfluence

July - Karin Taylor