The Show

Meet the Artists

Your Portraits

Pauline Bradshaw discusses with Star Portraits her work as a professional artist, teaching and provides some tips to artist starting their career.

SP: Tell us about yourself.

PB: I'm an artist (laughs)... doing this professionally for about 15 years. I live in Barrie, but used to live in Toronto. I'm just struggling to be an artist, painting everyday. I'm represented by Gallery 133 in Toronto, Woodstock Gallery in Vermont, Lakefield Gallery in Lakefield, and a few others. This year I'm doing Kempenfest in Barrie. Every year I usually do the “Artist Project” in Toronto, it's a big art show. Usually, I paint everything in oil or I might do charcoal drawings. My work is portraits, landscapes, and still life. I am probably best known for still life, but I do a lot of commissioned portraits, among other work.

SP: Tell us about the workshops you teach.

PB: I have studios in Barrie and Peterborough and teach student workshops once a week at either studio. These student workshops are a continuation of a student's training - making copies of old master paintings, still life or anything interesting. I usually don't take students I have not trained because I think they would find the workshops too difficult unless, of course, those students had some sort of classical training in their backgrounds that I could evaluate.

SP: How would you describe your work to someone that has never seen it before?

PB: I would say it's worth while for them to buy... get their bucket of money out. It is classical, very classical - it is from the old masters’ kind of style.

SP: Which artists have been your biggest inspirations?

PB: Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Bougeureau.

SP: Do you have any advice for artists starting out in their career?

PB: Save your money. Try not to spend your money. Just enjoy yourself and have fun. It's great and it's very stressful. You have to work very hard. You have to have the discipline to paint “all” the time.

SP: Can you explain what it means to be represented by a gallery?

PB: It means you pay them a lot of money when they sell something, but, you know what, it's worth it when you have an art show, since they cost an awful lot of money... so it’s a trade off. The buying public generally takes you more seriously if you have gallery representation. You need to do both: you need to do shows, and you need to do galleries. You just need to be active and market yourself continuously.

SP: Do you market for yourself?

PB: I do my own marketing. I got involved with Star Portraits, which is part of my marketing. I try to get involved with as many things as possible, so I'm doing local shows this year. I join art clubs. I just get myself out there as often as possible.

SP: What were you thoughts about painting on Star Portraits before filming?

PB: I didn't know there would be so many takes. Unless you are an actor, you are not used to repeating yourself all the time, so that was interesting. Having a camera sitting on your shoulder while your trying to paint or draw that was also quite interesting (laughs).

SP: Was two weeks enough time to finish the portrait?

PB: Yeah, it was fine. I would have done a painting if i had more time, but I was really really busy during the film shoot so I couldn't do any more than a drawing. One of my workshops was going on in the middle of the film shoot.

SP: Wow, you were pretty busy.

PB: I was very busy. The drawing was the only thing I could pull off... I didn't have my glasses! My dog ate my glasses the night before the film shoot, so I had to use my old glasses and couldn't see. I didn't take enough photographs. I'm not really good photographer, and my photographs didn't turn out so well, so i just had to work with what I had.

SP: What was like to paint Marry Walsh?

PB: It was a lot of fun, she is so entertaining, she just walks in the room and all the focus is on her. You can tell she was meant to be in the film business, and she was just phenomenal.

SP: You are part of a collective called the Group of 12, what is the collective about?

PB: This might end up being quite an important group of artists; that's their ambition anyways. I'm just sort of along for the ride, I'm not really managing the project. There is a fellow named Gabriel Greck who's really leading the whole thing. Robert Bateman's son is one of the artists now, so they're hoping to get a little more marketing and advertising based on his name. We're going to have our inaugural exhibition in Belleville this November at the Joseph Parrot Art Gallery. They're producing books and calendars, and they have corporate sponsorship - all kinds of stuff.

SP: Where do you see yourself and your art in the future?

PB: I don't know sometimes. I'm just along for the ride you know? Sometimes the best-laid plans just don't work out, but other things happen and you end up going on different paths. You end up doing things you didn't know you would be doing. For instance, one show I did in Ottawa a few years ago, one of the curators from the National Gallery was there and I ended up talking to him for a couple of hours. He asked me finally, if I would be interested in teaching at the National Gallery… so you never know what's going to happen.

SP: The National Gallery of Canada?

PB: Yeah, they've called me ever since. I usually teach there whenever they have one of those big blockbuster shows, you know the big Renaissance shows, like Michaelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael. During those different shows I teach a workshop and they let me bring my drawings for their galleries - its just fantastic.

Artist Stats

Following the pictorial traditions of generations of great painters, Pauline Bradshaw dedicated many years to the intensive study of old master drawings, paintings, plaster casts of antique sculpture, anatomy and the nude model. Bradshaw passes along her extensive knowledge of academic techniques in private studio classes and workshops including teaching master classes in drawing at the National Gallery of Canada.

www.paulinebradshaw.com