Claire Beattie - visiting artist

Claire Beattie got an arts degree from Edinburgh in the 1990's and is now making a living from her art. She works in oil paint and tends to do a single motif e.g. tree, Bass rock, in an abstracted background and her style is fairly minimalistic.
While she does take lots of photos and does a little sketching, her paintings are mostly about colour and they can take months to complete. She can have up to 15 paintings on the go at one time, moving around them when the oil paint is dry.
She feels success as an artist is partly due to luck however you can make your own luck by establishing  a routine of observing and drawing and developing your own style and flair in order to stand out. She herself put her work forward to open exhibitions and got a couple of pieces accepted. A gallery owner saw them, liked them and approached her and a long term arrangement has been made between her and this Brighton gallery. They will show and sell her work at affordable art fairs and that gallery takes a 50% commission. In return, Claire shows this gallery commitment.
Claire's advice to us was:-
- develop a thick skin, not everyone will like your work
- target galleries which fit your style
- see lots of exhibitions, see what your contemporaries are doing
- remember galleries are businesses
- you need an additional income stream
- you need to be good at self promotion and enter competitions
- get a good web site
- keep an up to date artistic CV of what you have done
- keep good quality photographs of your work
- say yes to all opportunities that come your way
- take yourself seriously, call yourself an artist
 - remember what Grayson Perry said - an art career is a marathon, not a sprint
A piece of advice Victoria Crowe gave to her was the need to consider changing the surface to work on. Claire uses fine textured primed cotton, Arches paper and aluminium.
I though Claire was very human and was able to relate to her audience well. I found her presentation very helpful and I quite liked her paintings too!


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