Art by Mary Van Gils

• Tell me a bit about yourself

My name is Mary Van Gils, I live in a tiny, isolated mining town in Western Australia, though I am originally from Canada. I’m a passionate artist, musician and writer who is planning to study art in university next year.

• What is the name of your Shop?

The name of my shop is ‘Beautiful Imperfections’

• Please describe your creative process

My creative process tends to begin in front of the computer; I’ll just be browsing pictures of people and bands I like and then an idea for how I can alter those pictures and give them my own meanings starts to form. At this point I will hurredly grab a pen or pencil along with one of my many sketch books and start drawing the idea. Most of the time this sketch doesn’t go any further, but when I make one that I really like or believe in than I start to evolve the idea. Eventually the sketch will move onto canvas, during the transfer from sketch to painting, the desgine tends to change slightly, this can sometimes be frustrating for me, but I keep working on the piece until I’m happy with it. I cannot call a painting ‘finished’ until I am personally pleased with it.

I generally use acrylic or gouache paints along with fineliner pens and coloured pastels to create my work. Normally, I will produce at least three paintings a week, I don’t put myself on a schedule as the inspiration for art comes at random intervals.

• Where do your ideas come from?

My ideas mainly come from pictures I see of people, or objects and situations I see in everyday life. Music is also a huge inspiration to me, whenever I create I have to listen to music as it helps my imagination expand and gives me a certain to work into the piece. Sometimes I’ll go through stages where I’m not feeling artistic at all, in these cases I tend to browse other artists work on sites like deviant art and myspace, seeing amazing work really inspires me to try and create some more of my own and gives me more ideas for techniques and subject matter.

• How did you get into your craft?

I’ve been drawing since I was able to pick up a crayon! I remember as a child I would always draw horses or mountains, they were my favorite subjects until I got into portraiture during my early teenage years. I developed my art through lots of practice and taking art classes in school. The TEE art course I studied in grade 11 and 12 pushed me really hard and benefited me so much, I shall be eternally grateful to my teachers for helping me grow so much as an artist in just two years!

• Apart from creating things, what do you do?

I’ve just graduated from high school and am currently looking for a job in my town, at the moment I mostly occupy myself with writing music and stories when I’m not painting or sketching new ideas.

• How do you promote your work?

I’ve been promoting my work mostly through networking in forums, lievjournal and on myspace as well as using the Etsy forums to expose myself to other artists and create contacts. I keep a blog which doubles as an art blog and I also take part in lots of artistic communties on livejournal to try and ‘get my work out there’. I’m soom going to start advertising off of the internet as well with fliers and business cards.

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