Cluny MCR

Recently I was contacted through instagram by a publication called 'Cluny MCR'! I actually already followed them on there as I noticed their profile a few weeks ago while they were open for submissions! but after a quick bit of research I noticed that it was exclusively for artists from Manchester or living & working in Manchester, and as I wasn't either of these I thought it wouldn't be worth submitting. 

So I was really excited when they contacted me, and this is how the first part of the conversation went:

At first when they asked me what my work was 'about' I panicked a bit cos I didn't really know what it was about, it almost felt like it wasn't really about a whole lot. But then I thought about it a bit more and realised there were themes I tended to stick to, and especially as I use characters and figures I definitely seem to base them around themes of friendships and relationships, and just people in general. Anyway, this is what I replied to them:

Good question! A lot of my work is about people and I guess relationships/friendships etc as you can see it's predominantly figure based and a lot of my illustrations include more than one figure, so I think this is something I'm subconsciously thinking about when i'm creating work. Also, it's weird cos I've actually recently totally changed the way I work, my practise used to be completely different, quite neat and a lot of line drawings with a lot more detail, but I slowly realised I really didn't like working like that at all! I was uninspired and it was really putting me off illustration. So I just decided to stop and try something totally different, which is the work I create now!

Shape and colour are the two most important aspects of my practise for sure, and I've started to LOVE making work again!! I think it's quite ambiguous, I like the fact someone might look at it differently to how someone else might look at it, if that makes sense? I want my work to make people smile and feel happy so thats also something I try and aim for!

Their reply:

I was really excited at the prospect of an instagram takeover, it seemed like a fun little idea; also, a perfect way to get some of my work and my illustration instagram acc out there, & to a creative audience, as I noticed as they had much more followers than I did! I also noticed an illustrator I love the work of (@waldemar_st) had done one before so this made me even keener! I was a bit nervous though they said they'd give me a quick run down on what to do etc, so this made me feel more confident about it!