INTERVIEW:

Patrick: Who are you and what is your art-style?

 

Sharon: I’m Sharon Woolfe, and my art-style as I’m a new artist, I haven’t quite worked that out yet. Because as you can see behind me, I have quite a few art-styles that I like, as I like all art-styles so I’m still trying to work out exactly what I like. I’ve done a bit of all of it, but I think I like animal portraits at this point in pastels.

 

Patrick: When did you start doing art?

 

Sharon: I started doing art, roughly around 2 years ago, which was my first drawing lesson and I’ve gone from there.

 

Patrick: How did you get involved into the art community?

 

Sharon: I’ve always been interested in art, so how I started to get involved into the art community was through a friend that was doing an art class on a Friday morning and I would see her work, got to know her through family, so a couple of times a year I’d see her and ask her what she’s been doing and then have a look at her stuff and get very excited about it. Then I started going to her art classes at a private ladies house on a Friday morning when my youngest was only a baby for a couple of hours so it was a get out of the house card. I went from there and became addicted very quickly.

 

Patrick: Have you or do you have any formal arts training?

 

Sharon: No, not formal arts training. I do art classes with a private lady, who’s an artist but not university art classes or formal study of such.

 

Patrick: How important is art to you?

 

Sharon: It is very important. It’s my going to a nice place, doing art. It’s almost like meditation. It’s relaxing, it’s inspiring and motivating. I get very excited about it, and also get excited about looking at other people’s art. I like looking at art, talking about art, and I like how you can express yourself. It’s a huge importance to me, I would like to do a little bit everyday – I don’t, but I’d like to.

 

Patrick: How important do you think art is for society?

 

Sharon: The importance of art in our society I think would be huge. It would be a good program to run for all sorts of people, people with disabilities, people with mental illness, people that have been abused somehow, anyone that needs to escape their thoughts or find their calm place. You hear people say that they’re not artistic, or that they don’t have an artistic bone in their body, but I think anyone could do art if you wanted to do it. Because there is so many different styles and it doesn’t matter what it looks like, so I think it would be very good for a lot of people that have a lot of different issues.

 

Patrick: How long do you spend on your art each week approximately?

 

Sharon: Approximately 5 hours, sometimes more. I’ve probably done 5 hours today off and on, but that doesn’t happen every day.

 

Patrick: Are your friends and family supportive of your art ventures?

 

Sharon: Yes, they are, some more than others. Some aren’t that interested, it’s like everybody, some people are interested in music. So the amount of interest my friends and family show in my artwork varies. Some people walk in the door and see something they like and they’re very interested, and some people walk in the door and don’t see anything they like and they don’t say anything and you can see the look on their face, which is quite interesting. I think it depends on what captures somebody as to how supportive they are.

 

Patrick: Do you need a job to help supplement your art?

 

Sharon: At this time in my life, I would benefit from a job to supplement my artwork. I’m a hairdresser, so I’ve been an artist of some sort since I was 18. I’m 42 now, so it’s been a few years, I’ve been colouring and cutting and I haven’t been able to do as much of that lately because of my physical condition that I have. Yes I would like to earn more money so I can buy more pastels and more paper and stuff like that. That’s where it comes difficult I think for a lot of people in society that don’t have jobs, that can’t get jobs. It’s hard to buy art equipment or even know where to start.

 

Patrick: How do you get an audience to your work?

 

Sharon: I suppose getting an audience to my work is a lot easier nowadays than it used to be, with social media – it’s huge, the internet – it’s huge. Being in the art class I’m in, I’m going to have opportunities to submit work in to art exhibitions as a student and as an artist a bit further down the track, there’s already talk of that. I’ve got 14 months to get as many pieces together as I can with a theme and that exhibition will be displayed at the Victorian arts society, which is quite an honour. That will probably be my first art exhibition – that’s my first aim for an art exhibition, which is pretty ambitious. Yeah social media and word of mouth is huge. A lot of friends at my age aren’t big on social media, so its word of mouth and giving things to my friends that they love, that they see that might not have taken me too long to do. There have been some water paintings that I have done that are basic and very “now”, so they’re a bit commercial really I suppose, which I know many real artists don’t like to do commercial work too much. I like it; I get excited by staying on the trend. So I’ve got some stuff hanging up in my friends’ houses that other friends have seen and have wanted my details. You’ve just got to talk about it and tell people what you’re doing, tell as many people as you can and let them know that they can tell as many people as they can.

 

Patrick: Do you have any art career aspirations, in maybe the 5 to 10 year range?

 

Sharon: My art career aspirations would be that I’d like to sell some work, any would be good. But I would like to get into pet portraiture, I really enjoy painting animals. So I think I would really enjoy doing people’s pets, rather than portraits of people. I think that is the line I’m going to go down, I’ve started a Facebook page in order to start getting the word out there and hopefully that takes off.

 

Patrick: Do you have any advice for new students or other people who want to get into the art scene?

 

Sharon: My advice would be to just do it and don’t be scared. Just start, if you don’t think you’ve got any idea, have a look in your local paper or the internet or ask around and see if anyone’s doing private art classes out of their home. They can vary, my first one was $15 for 2 and a half hours once a week, and everything was supplied so it wasn’t a big investment which meant that I didn’t feel like I had a lot of pressure on me either and I was very relaxed at doing it and it was really enjoyable. You’ve just got to have a go, go on the internet and there’s lots of tutorials online – they’re not all good, they’re not all easy to follow, I’ve tried a few of them and some of them can make you quite frustrated. But you’ll be surprised if you get to talking about what you want to do to friends and family, and about who might be doing it and it’s amazing who comes out of the woodwork. So yeah, just talk and tell people what you want to do if you want to get into art and find out who’s doing it if you don’t want to go to Uni if you haven’t got that time or if it’s something you want to do as a hobby. Just follow your dreams.

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Interviewed and writtten by Patrick Lunney(2016)

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