Patricia Mansell
Medium: Acrylic
Location: My apartment/home studio in Nanaimo
Website: www.patriciamansell.ca
Bio:
Born in Kent, England, Patricia moved to Canada in 1981 and resided for many years in Alberta. She now lives in Nanaimo.
She has a special interest in painting endangered wildlife. Often something unique about the animal will inspire a painting. She develops her paintings from research and photographing animals in the wild and enjoys bringing out each animal’s character.
Patricia was Ducks Unlimited Sponsor Print Artist for Alberta in 2011 and is a Signature Member of Artists for Conservation.
“One of the strengths of wildlife art is its ability tell stories. In my paintings I try to bring out the individuality of each animal as it goes about its everyday life.
I portray many endangered animals, hoping that bringing them to life in my art will raise awareness of how close we are to losing them.”
Q & A
1) Have you had to adapt your studio/home/space to be more suitable to your practice during this time?
I have not had to make any changes to my studio as it works well for me, but I am feeling the change to my day to day life as my schedule is usually so crammed that it only allows me blocks of limited time to paint. Now I seem to have enough time to explore new subjects and techniques that I have been wanting to try but no time to do so.
2) Can you describe your daily/weekly art practice, anything that you do differently because your studio is in such proximity?
I am a little strict with myself to make sure I preserve my time for painting – Monday to Friday (I take the weekend off). My day starts with getting up into exercise clothes and hitting the gym (only now I go for a long walk, use my weights that I have at home and my newest piece of fitness equipment – the hoola hoop. Then I change into painting clothes and am in the studio for the day. At the end of the day, at about 4.30 I go for another long walk out in nature.
3) Has this time of self-isolation changed your practice in any way. I know a lot of artists are missing things (materials, space, etc). Has this time pushed you to be more creative or think outside the box in your practice and can you give us an example?
As a Wildlife Artist and with zoos, wildlife parks and centres closed for the foreseeable future, I have had to get creative in getting to experience animals to watch, sketch, photograph and decide what I want to paint. I am for example making use of webcams that places like Vancouver Aquarium have to see their latest marine animals. All major zoos and centres have them, even Stanley Park where you can see the Herons nesting and raising their young – these are a great resource for me.
4) What is your favourite part about your home-studio?
I live in a one bedroom apartment and my studio is a space 7ft square right next to my bed. Being very tight on space has made me adapt to using every square inch of space. I like that everything is within easy reach (even if I do keep banging into things every time I turn around). Also, I CANNOT ALLOW clutter as there is simply no room to hoard it. Most of my extensive photo reference is luckily digital now, everything else I keep has to really be important to me. The view out of my window where I paint is my favourite part – I back onto a beautiful pond where I see Heron, Raccoons, Belted Kingfisher, Canada Geese & assorted ducks and River Otter – great outlook for a wildlife artist.
5) Do you have any goals of creativity for this time?
The extra time at home is being well spent as I am currently doing an on-line art course which is stretching me to learn to use Instagram for posting photos of my work, writing a newsletter to send out via mail chimp and making my website as professional as it can be – I am using this opportunity to learn and improve in many ways.
6) Any messages you would like to share with everyone during this time?
As the daily news up-dates remind us, what our tomorrow will look like is uncertain. We must make maximum use of each day as there is no certainty, especially at this time.
As Artists we have a gift of being able to interpret our world visually. I can think of no better way of getting through this time than to bring into life a beautiful painting.
I wish everyone good health, good fortune and to stay safe.