MUNTHE ART MONDAY:
ROMY ELLIOTT
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.
Can you name some other female (artists, curators, gallery owners or women in the arts) that inspires you and explain why they do so?
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 has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?
Being a woman has not posed any major challenges for me or massively impacted my career to this point. I have definitely felt a pressure to be taken seriously at times with my art career but whether this is exclusive to being a woman, I’m not sure. We are fortunate that our society is moving in a direction where it is no longer as fixated with gender and we are heading towards a place where the work is able to speak for itself.
I am expecting a baby in early April and it will be interesting to see how my work might be influenced by becoming a mother. This will mean an inevitable professional pause. For many women this impacts a career in terms of promotion or progression, for all women undoubtedly a shift in the mind and body, but as an artist it will be interesting to see the creative effect of this pause and the changes it’ll make to how I see and depict my shifted world. Perhaps profoundly, perhaps not at all. It will certainly signal the start of a new normal for me with regard to a work life balance.
What would you like people to notice in your artwork?
My intention when painting is to transmit an emotion or a feeling that I get when I’m with an animal. To be able to depict an expression through a dogs body language or a recognizable movement from a horse and have people read that without being completely representational, is very rewarding. Abstracting the pieces via pattern, palette or proportions allows the viewer to focus on the feeling and apply it to their own experience, using memory and imagination. If an encounter with an animal can make me feel something powerful and I am able to share that through my art, it feels like a success. Ultimately I am painting what I know and love and to be able to share a familiar or moving moment with someone through paint is a real privilege.
