ARTIST INTERVIEW: Laura Hope
Please can you give me an introduction about yourself.
I’m a figurative artist with a background in illustration. I studied illustration at Cardiff School of Art and Design, before getting a job as a memorial artist with one of the largest gravestone manufacturers in the country. I was trained to sandblast and etch designs directly onto the gravestones - my favourite jobs were always the ones that featured portraits or figures. I’ve loved drawing and painting people ever since I was a little girl, but my time as a memorial artist really cemented that love and taught me about how to capture a likeness. After a few years there, I decided I wanted to get back to illustration so I began freelancing on the side and eventually left to go full time. I worked on all sorts of projects; from editorial to social media content. However, I made most of my income from live events, where I would be hired to draw quick 10 minute portraits at parties and brand events. Meanwhile, during lockdown the event side of my income went very quiet and I begun painting and drawing for myself again. Through all the commercial work, I’d sort of lost my creativity and totally fallen out of love with what I was making. That was the start of the work I’m doing now...
Christina, Let's Cross Over Together
What inspired you to make art?
It’s not really something I’m inspired to do, it’s sort of innate and like a compulsion. I can’t imagine not making art... lockdown definitely kickstarted something new for me. Although I’d been making art for years in lots of different capacities (school, university, memorial artist, commercial illustration), I’d never made work just for me. The work I started making was much more colourful than anything I’d made in the past and it sparked a real passion for conveying narrative and emotion through portraiture.
Tell me about your painting ‘Micheal’
My piece ‘Micheal’, which won the de Laszlo Foundation Award at the Royal Society of Portrait Painter’s Exhibition 2022, is based on a photograph I took of my neighbour. He’s a portrait artist too and had asked me to model for him so I got him to ‘pay me back’ by sitting for me! He doesn’t like being photographed, so the piece ended up having quite an uncomfortable feel to it which was perfect. At the time I made it, I wasn’t really thinking too much about any meaning behind it, sometimes things just seem to channel through me and onto the board but looking at it now, I think I’ve subconsciously captured a lot of those ‘lost’ feelings I’m trying to express in some of my newer pieces.
Micheal
What materials do you use? Do you have a favourite art tool?
I use a mixture of coloured pencils, oil sticks and wax crayons on gessoed board to create my pieces. My work now has a signature red colour which comes from the Koh-i-noor Gioconda Red Chalk pencil that I always use. I can’t live without that pencil and I haven’t found any others that quite live up to it, so I would have to say that’s my favourite art tool.
Creature
Describe your creative process; from start to finish of one of your works. Where do you find your inspiration?
My inspiration usually comes from a feeling or idea I want to convey. A lot of it comes from memories of my own life. I let those feelings circle around my mind for a while before the ideas turn into visual form. Then, I stage and photograph models in various poses for reference. I sit with these reference photos for weeks or months sometimes, cropping and editing them until I find an image that I’m really in love with. Then the sketching begins. From then on it’s all pretty intuitive and things start appearing on my gessoed board.
Henri's Girl in Toulouse
What is your favourite piece of work that you have created and why?
It changes all the time but at the moment I’m really proud of my piece ‘You Lost Me At Blue’ because it’s part of a really vulnerable series of work that I’m currently trying to wade through. It’s a piece that expresses a multitude of emotions – anger, disassociation, love, suffocation, numbness and drowning. All feelings that I was experiencing in my early twenties when my boyfriend (now husband) was going through a mental health crisis. There were times when I sort of felt like I was drifting, floating, sinking under the weight of everything - but not in a dark way, more of a lost way. Its hard to explain in words, which is why I was so proud of this piece because it perfectly captured everything I could never quite express.
You Lost Me At Blue
Who is your favourite artist and why? Do they have an influence on your work?
My three favourite artists are Paula Rego, Euan Uglow and Andrew Wyeth but Paula Rego is the most influential artist on my work by far. Her ability to express complex emotions through figurative work is incredible. Her work moves me to tears because not only is it so beautiful to look at, but it’s also so viscerally painful. It’s all well and good throwing paint around angrily to express anger or disgust, but when you can do it subtly without throwing anything around – that’s real magic to me.
Self Portrait
What has been your biggest achievement so far?
My biggest achievement is working with models and photographing my own reference material. For years I wanted to do it but felt too intimidated by the whole process, however it’s been so liberating. Don’t get me wrong, its really hard work because I’m not a photographer so it’s basically like learning a whole new skill, but the feeling I get when I’ve finished a piece of work that’s 100% mine is second to none.
Are you currently working on any new exciting projects?
I’m working on a very exciting project at the moment with a client I’ve wanted to work with for years but unfortunately I can’t talk about it yet so you’ll have to keep an eye on my Instagram for that! It’s taking up quite a lot of my time so I haven’t really been doing much else but as soon as it’s finished, I will be going back to the series that started with ‘You Lost Me At Blue’. I’ve got a whole load of reference photos and ideas for new pieces, all centred around some of those really uncomfortable times in my early twenties. It’s very scary work as it’s so vulnerable, but I’ve learnt that the best work comes from those places.
Why do you think art is important in society?
I think it’s important tool to express things that can’t be expressed in words. Sometimes you need to personally work those things through on the paper/canvas/board or sometimes you need to use a finished piece to tell the world something. I’ve bottled a lot of things up over the years, things I didn’t even know I’d bottled up, but I’m learning to talk to myself about these things through my art. It’s another form of therapy, one that can then be shared with others too.
