Posts Tagged ‘Kaitlin Beckett’

Carmine Magazine: What drives you to create? Also, what inspires you and your work?
Kaitlin Beckett: I’ve always had an overactive imagination! It’s important to express yourself creatively, no matter what your method might be, or risk frustrating yourself because your imagination is not finding an outlet. I find I’m inspired a lot by dreams, some of them can get pretty weird – the beakface concept came from a very strange dream. The animal kingdom is also an endless source of inspiration – how incredible some of the creatures are, that we share our world with.

CM: Were you formally trained in art or self taught? Do you think it has helped you or hindered you?
KB: I had a small amount of training in graphic design which I think has helped me when it comes to composition, colour use, and general mental organisation of the idea you’re trying to express. Fine art training – well, a year of art education while at school had a devastating effect and virtually put me off art entirely! As a child I had drawn and doodled a lot. So I decided to take it up as a high school subject, thinking I’d be at least OK at it. But my art teacher’s idea of ‘learning art’ was to force us to choose one of 2 artists, and then basically just copy their style. We were marked on how well we could copy them – how ridiculous! I didn’t even like the artists she chose, and back
then the fashion was all big expressive brushstrokes (which is the polar opposite of my own style!), so I didn’t do very well at all – my confidence was shot to pieces and I decided art just wasn’t for me, and stopped for many years. It took a long time to overcome that hurdle, and the journey since then has been all my own, making my own mistakes, so I consider myself a self-taught artist. I’ve been asked a few times where I studied art, so I guess that’s a compliment?
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