Artist of the Month January 2024

Claudia Newman

London, England, UK

Claudia, born and raised in former East Germany, discovered her love for art already in the early stage of her childhood. Always interested in expressing herself, whether it was through being part of a theatre group or in a local orchestra or just sitting quietly in her room and painting. However, she decided later to take another professional path and let the creativity slip aside, but never let it completely go. Self-taught in many different media, and constantly in search of her own voice, she produced some marvelous landscape paintings in oil and watercolor, expanding later also to digital media where she worked as an illustrator for a brief moment and now is totally focused on working on her art collections.

Claudia's paintings reflect her own deep thoughts and feelings within her personal development. Her paintings are eye-catching and moving. Her curiosity for the world around her can be found through her work and mirrors her own interpretation and perception of it. The beauty of her work is a compliment to the variety of all human conditions, the challenges we face every day, and also to the manifold forms of the universe we live in.

How and when did you start creating art?

I have always been creative, but came back more focused on it, after I painted some paintings for my flat and then got asked from friends to paint paintings for their flats.

Thats now roughly 15 years ago, since then I didn’t stop to learn.

What media and genres do you work in?

As I’m selftaught I gave myself the freedom to experiment with whatever I wanted to try out. Same for the genre, I wanted to try out many different things and paint and draw freely. Now I’m mostly down to oil paint and charcoal, and working on my surrealistim / romanticism paintings.

Who or what are your influences?

I get influenced by literally everything and anything, it starts from my surrounding, to my daily life and to a really good museum tour.

If I would have to put down some artists, there would be Max Ernst, Salvatore Dali, John William Godward, Rubens, but also some amazing artists from today, like Glenn Brown.

What was your inspiration for

Avaricious

?

This question goes hand in hand with my process.

Honestly, I’m not planning anything when I start a new painting and the inspiration is being present in the moment. And then I just let it go.

The sketch starts out in an automatic manner and I let the brush glide and wander over the canvas. After that I let the painting sit for a few days and come back to the sketch, from then on, the painting just grows from within as its on entity.

So I never have a real plan or a direct inspiration. My canvas is my only limit.

Describe your creative process?

If I plan to paint I do sometimes some exercises and drawings beforehand, just to free up my hand. As mentioned nothing is planned, it is just to free my mind from any clotted thoughts.

Usually I got a few ready to go canvases, so if I feel the urge, I just can sketch out a new painting. This process of sketching out usually doesn’t take me longer than 10 minutes. But most of the time I spend a while sitting in front of the empty canvas and let the thoughts come and go.

After it is sketched out, I leave it, I don’t try to analyze or judge it.

When I come back, I’m just watching it. Again without judgment. Then I usually come in with just 3 colors and start with an underpainting. From that, everything seems very rhythmical and I introduce more and more colors. And it just grows. It is like an interplay from my subconscious and my imagination, with my imagination slowly taking over. Thats when I know it comes slowly to an end.

What are you working on currently?

All my paintings are at the moment in smaller and have a similar sizes, so my plan for the next months is to create a few bigger sizes and different formats. Everything goes into the direction of my collection, which is called „Organic Shapes of Nature“.

This collection emphasizes, on forms and shapes, which could be easily creatures living around and between us. With feelings and emotions, with futures and pasts, but all born where imagination and fantasy crosses over to reality or vis versa.

What are your near/long term goals as an artist?

A bigger goal is to find representation as an artist and to grow within the artworld.

But I’m also not in hurry, as it has to sit and fit for both sides.

And I’m always happy to try and learn new things as an artist. So maybe at some point it would be interesting to see what I could create maybe as a sculpture within my process.

Where can people view/purchase your work (gallery, website, etc)?

My artwork can be viewed on my website (https://www.claudianewman.art/) and on instagram claudianewman_art, where I’m also able to share a little bit more about the process of my creations.

And at the moment some of my paintings are listed on Saatchiart for sale, and others I put on on my website.