MUNTHE ART MONDAY:
ROMY ELLIOT

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

I am a British artist, living and working in London. Trained in classical sculpture and drawing, my work today, is predominantly acrylic paintings on canvas or board.

Animals are the great love of my life and my work explores daily interactions between us and them. After many years of painting commissioned portraits of dogs and horses, my aim now is to depict these animals and their relationship with us in a more painterly and contemporary way with a focus on feeling and emotion.

Using spontaneous but intentional mark making and occasionally steering towards abstraction through palette, pattern, proportions or composition, I hope to make art that isn’t solely representational but prioritises evoking a recognisable feeling, depicting everyday, familiar moments that resonate with others who share a life with animals.

Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?

I have delighted in connecting with woman from around the world with whom my work has resonated. While not always artists themselves, it’s exciting when intelligent, creative women with careers in animal science, philosophy, writing and equine or canine psychology have reached out to me to express an appreciation and understanding of my work and the message I am trying to get across.

Women who live alongside and study these animals daily, recognising body language or expressions that I am striving to capture in my paintings is an enormous compliment and deeply rewarding.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?

Helen Sshjerfbeck, Elizabeth Frink , Helen Frankenthaler, Rosa Bonheur, Tracy Emin, Anne Magil.

Helen Shjerfbeck (1862-1946) was a phenomenal Finnish painter whose work I adore. Her paintings, especially in later years are expressive rather than literal representations and this is something I too am trying to achieve. She was ahead of her time, stylistically, but her paintings still feel relevant and contemporary today. In her later years, her work became increasingly bold and simplified and they were groundbreaking in the sense that her paintings probed in to the soul with layers of meaning and a focus on mental state.

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

I hope it takes you into my self-invoked "female chimerical house", a contradictory escape and slightly hypnagogic experience, something to stand still by, to laugh, to dream, to make curious, to do nothing else but light a little fire in your heart.

Romy is wearing our CHAPTER and BAYNOR tops.