HERE'S WHAT VALERIE HAS TO SAY

Who are my favourite contemporary artists?
I have plenty of UNfavourite fine artists who are not yet dead, (mostly the ones who seem to think they'd be better off if they were). That doesn't leave too many, but my choice will have to wait while I digest a recent online course in Modern and Contemporary Art from London's Tate Modern gallery.

My favourites from history?
Vary daily. Currently Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Turner, Monet, Chagall, Kandinsky and Andre Francois.

My favourite or most inspirational Painter Artist?
I see so many inspiring and wonderful Painter works, particularly here at Painter Talk that once again my verdict varies. Among the examples given in my Painter IX manual, Don Seegmiller's hunchback wins.

My favourite Painter Brushes?
Currently Den's Oil Funky Chunky from Jeremy Sutton. My mother was a fashion designer and taught me to draw in the intricate, linear style of Aubrey Beardsley. Oil, chalk and chunky brushes help to prevent me from going back to that early hard line style. I love the ethereal effects of watercolour, but prefer modelling from dark to light with oils. This feels like a totally different process from drawing with lines. It's even controlled by a different part of the brain.

Where do I want to go with my painting?
Where no-one has been before. Is that possible? Probably not.

Art and my Life

"Leave a note for the milkman," said my mother, shortly after I had learned to write. "Ask for an extra pint."

Some while later, the milkman having been, gone and failed to leave the said pint, my mother set out on the war path. She found me still putting the finishing touches to a fancy border of milk bottles around the carefully lettered message.

The conflict between words and pictures continued. I wanted to go to art school, but ended up reading English at Oxford University. I went into advertising, thinking that here was a chance to combine both writing and drawing, but was sadly mistaken. The studio jealously guarded their right to control the artwork.

I won't deny I had some exciting jobs as a copywriter. I had a brief run in the rat race in 'Ulcer Gully' - Madison Avenue, New York. I wrote travel literature for British Airways. A passion for photography stilled my itchy paintbrush fingers, but it was only when I left the airline that I was able really to return to my love for drawing.

"Aha," I thought. "I'll be a cartoonist." That way I could draw while using my experience of writing snappy captions. I had two disadvantages. The first was that I am not a satirical, politically-minded male beer-drinker. This I partly counteracted by editing and producing a professional cartoonists' newsletter for two years. The second drawback was that I am not a trained artist. (See above.)

I took local life classes, but the frozen models weren't much use for the lively interactions I wanted to show. I needed to go out and draw people in the street, shops, pubs and trains. The trouble was, I'm an out-and-out introvert. (Should that be an in-and-in... Anyway, I'm shy.) "Don't stare. It's rude." I was always told.

Have you ever pondered on the fact that one of the blessings of the silver screen is that it allows you to STARE at people just as hard as you like? Could you do that in a restaurant? I evolved a method of drawing from TV. I tried to snatch an expression, a character, an attitude before the action moved on. Freeze frame and slow motion were forbidden, just as in life. I called these sketches of mine 'expressograms'.

In spite of that, cartooning never really took off for me. I prefer to celebrate rather than satirise life. Come the internet, I plunged in enthusiastically, writing and designing my own website, Purple-Owl.com.

Then I discovered Painter and here I am.

Valerie Beeby

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