Chris Rowe, Mixed Media Artist, Shares Her Story

From early childhood my artistic voice fought to let itself be heard, I wallowed in the pleasure of my first collage of Cinderella going to the ball which was a large mural created jointly with a few other classmates. I still remember the magical feeling of seeing it transform into a thing of beauty before my eyes. At the age of 12 I won a county art competition by designing a Save Energy poster and art continued to be my favourite lesson throughout my school years.  

However, as time went on my creativeness took other avenues. I was passionate about hair design and became a hairdresser. While raising my daughter, I indulged in sewing and home decor, mostly from necessity. Creating art just for it's own sake just didn't seem a priority.

Everything changed when I obtained my first computer, the web offered me a virtual classroom for art. Suffering from debilitating depression all of my adult life, losing myself in art became my escape when everything else was too difficult.  At the ripe old age of 50 I swallowed every bit of information I could and my pencil became my new best friend. 

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My favourite way of expressing myself is by drawing imaginary faces and indulging in my old passion for hairstyles but now by means of a pencil.

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Using my computer means I now have the ability to go a step further and paint some of my artwork digitally. 

​My passion for collage has also been rekindled and I use printouts of some of my hand drawn faces to create new artworks.

I print out previously painted backgrounds and elements, combining everything on paper or canvas board and then I hand paint simple hairstyles.

​Occasionally, I also use acrylic paint pens to add smaller detail.

There are so many variations that I can create using collage and a graphics program that I often combine the two by scanning in a hand collaged piece and then going on to further manipulate the image to create something new.

I don't know where my artistic journey will take me in the future, all I know is that it makes me happy. I hope you have enjoyed a little peek and if you would like to see more and sample some of my other creative pursuits please feel free to visit my blog.

This is Week 24 of 52 Artists in 52 Weeks. Chris lives in County Durham in the Northeast of England. Thank you for reading and sharing Chris' story today!