Talking with Karen Wilcox (Venue: Beehive Tearooms)
Another of the newcomers to the 2015 Trail
https://www.artfinder.com/karen-
Rochford Life: Having been on the web (do go to the above site!) to see your work and seeing the work around your studio, you appear one of the most prolific and varied painters I have had the privilege to cover. How long have you been painting?
Karen: Well I went to art college in what must have been the early eighties and did a degree in fine art and then I went and trained as an art therapist. Although I kept drawing and doing small things I was working full time as an art therapist so didn’t have a lot of time to paint but recently decided to go for it and do what I’ve always wanted to do which was concentrate on my art work, so it’s probably taken thirty years from when I went to college to get to the point where I could concentrate all day and paint, so it’s quite new in some respects but it’s always been there.
RL: Looking at the sheer volume of your work I can’t help but ask, how long does it take to paint a piece of work?
Karen: My personal ones may take anything from two or three weeks to a month. Some of my work that I’ve put on Artfinder is actually from my college days because I had never tried to sell any of my work and just kept it, so I put a lot of my old work as well as my new work online, so it looks more than it is. I am quite slow because it is quite detailed work mostly but I also enjoy doing something very quick to have a break from the painstaking work, so for this one it was just a case of a couple of hours. I enjoy doing the landscapes and seascapes a lot, and my personal work I do in the evening, and I sit with a folder that is full of sketches and ideas which become either that or something bigger.
RL: You distinguish some of your painting as ‘your personal work’. What do you mean by that?
Karen: It’s more expressive, and comes from my imagination, it’s original and I’m not inspired by anything apart from myself and my feelings and experiences as a therapist. It’s really suffering and hope together, a lot of it.
RL: I can see that, but you do other work as well.
Karen: Oh yes, that over there of the boats is down at Old Leigh. As well as doing the expressive work that I really love doing, I thought I should do a few that are more local and shall we call them more commercial. I’ve been surprised that my personal work has sold quite well on the Artfinder and that has delighted me more than when I’ve sold something like a dog’s portrait for a commission. I don’t mind doing them but it is not my passion. The thing that made me happiest, I think, was when I had some work up at the Mill in Rayleigh and it was at the time of the Holocaust anniversary and the next day I was told that there were two holocaust survivors who wanted one of my pieces of work which was called ‘Hope through Suffering’ and this ninety year old lady bought it and it was a highlight for me because it went to someone who really knew what it meant.
RL: (After an hour of talking) Well, Karen, this is supposed to be a brief article so I’m going to limit it to some of the basics of what we’ve been saying to keep it sharp. Your work online is so good and so plentiful and so varied that I hope we can get some representation of it all on the Trail and if not, why not come back afterwards and see if the library will display an even greater range of your work. I look forward to seeing some of it at least in the Beehive Tearooms and would say to all our readers – get along and see this amazing range of work! Thank you so much for sharing.
Introducing some more of the newcomers to the Rochford Art Trail
Boats at Old Leigh
A quick couple of hours of enjoyment
Karen’s ‘personal’ style
Dogs are often a favourite….. ……as are human portraits
