Featured Artist of the Week: Joslyn Wilson
Name: Joslyn Wilson
Age: 44
Medium: Acrylic paintings.
Joslyn Wilson's background is a lot of science-y stuff, especially considering she was working in the medical field before taking a break and discovering her love for acrylic painting. Though it was originally just a hobby to relieve some stress, Wilson soon had a house full of paintings and recently decided – with some encouragement from friends – to start selling her work. She now has a business website and Facebook page and will also be selling her paintings at the new Portsmouth Art Market August 12 and 26. She says painting has become a great creative outlet as well as a wonderful way to bond with her daughter, who helps her do the base coats sometimes. Her husband has also been supportive of her new craft and she says he won't mind if her artwork doesn't sell and ends up on all of the walls of their home.
How did you originally get into your craft?
I started taking some on-line classes on Craftsy. It’s an on-line website: they offer classes in all sorts of things. And it’s a really interesting website because you can watch videos – which, once you buy them you own them – but you can also ask questions so it’s very interactive. And I learnt to quilt that way… and then they also had some painting classes. And I just sort of felt inspired I guess to learn to paint. And one of the classes on there I took – and it’s the acrylic painter’s toolbox, is what it was called – and the teacher, it turns out, is actually from Kingston. Her name is Rheni Tauchid… they now run Art Noise in Kingston – the store downtown. But it turns out this teacher who I really really liked, I asked her if she was offering classes in Kingston. She said: 'yeah, come on over’... So she was really my first introduction to actually painting.
How long have you been doing it?
Two years.
What artists inspire you?
Certainly Rheni does. I like her use of texture and the way she uses a lot of the different acrylic mediums. And the other person would be a lady named Flora Bowley and she is an artist out of Portland who I have watched some of her on-line videos and taken a couple of her on-line courses. And she has a method called brave intuitive painting and that’s pretty well the method that I follow when I paint.
What is your creative process?
It is a very intuitive process, meaning that I don’t go into any of the paintings with any pre-conceived ideas of what it’s going to look like in the end. Really, it’s just – the first many layers are just having fun and exploring different ways to make marks and use tools and use colours. And so my paintings end up having a lot of textures to them and a lot of depth because you can see the other layers behind it… and eventually you end up with something emerging from the painting that tells you what it’s going to be. I guess that sounds really hokey, but it’s true. It just sort of develops into something.
Describe what your workspace looks like.
It’s what I was using as my office in the house before. And it’s a room with some shelves in it. No, I have my easel set up and usually when I’m painting I’ll have covered the wood floors and most of the walls too because it can get sort of messy.
What part of your style makes you stand out as an artist?
I like to paint a lot of big paintings, although I have done some of the smaller paintings as well just to get me out of any patterns that I may be developing. Changing up the size of the painting is always good, but I really like to paint really big paintings. I like a lot of colour with my paintings and a lot of texture.
Do you have a favourite piece you’ve made?
I have a couple favourite ones. One of them ended up looking sort of like a close up of a landscape. And I can’t remember what I called it. And the other one turned out looking like a birch tree.
And that was a funny one because it was a lot less layers than I normally put in and then the birch trees just sort of emerged and stayed and that was the end of that one.
What is the best part about doing what you do?
I started for stress relief and anxiety relief and it really helps to calm me down. It helps me to relax. When I’m painting I sort of go into my own world and it just ends up making me feel happy, I guess. It’s sort of corny... And then in the end it’s something that I have that I’m proud of doing. It’s certainly something I can share with my daughter. She enjoys it.
What is the most challenging?
Not getting too hung up on the final result. And I found since I decided to try selling some of my paintings, I think about: 'oh would someone like this or not?' And I have to get that out of my head and just paint... if people buy them they do and if not we just cover our walls with them I guess.
The other challenging part would be just knowing when a painting is finished.
What is something people don’t realize about what you do?
Some of them possibly just how many layers of paint there is.
What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want them to get some joy out of the paintings. I think the colour – and I hope they invoke positive, happy emotions to people.