Tell All Tuesday ~ Featured Artist: Miss Petra

Hello!

Toosday = TAT Artist Interview Day

...so here is one

Enjoy =D

Tell us a little bit about yourself & what kind of artist you are.
Hi, I’m Petra and I’m 47 years. I live in the Netherlands and I’m married for almost 28 years now. I have 3 children, 27, 24 and 23 years old. I've painted for about 7 years now but the last 2,5 years it became serious. The first 5 years I painted abstract, once a week just for fun. But then I got sick, COPD ( lung disease ) and I could not work anymore. As I had worked from the age of 16 I had a really difficult time with the not working part in my life. I felt really lost and didn’t know what to do with my time. Then the magic came into my life, I was surfing the internet/YouTube and I found the very first Art video, Mixed Media Art and it was from you Jenny… I immediately was so inspired by what I saw. From that day on I was totally obsessed ;-) . It really helped me psychologically to overcome the depressed feelings I had over the not be able to work in my life. It brought me a lot of beautiful artsy friends online.. and I love it. I did a couple Art courses and I painted every day. I learned a lot! I still don’t know exactly what kind of artist I am. I love to work with different supplies, paper etc. I most certainly are a Mixed Media artist. My biggest passion Is to paint faces, I really love to do the girls! I guess I’m still not sure what kind of artist I am ;-)

What is the biggest challenge you personally face as an artist and how do you overcome it?
The biggest challenge I face is without a doubt my perfectionism. When I do faces I really are a perfectionist… How do I overcome it: I do 2 different kind of faces, 1, the really beautiful ones, the ones that I work on for hours and hours. For those faces I did not find a way yet to overcome my perfectionism. I really love this Asian girl above ( I did make her during a course I did with Christy Sobolewski, painted faces 2. She is one of my favorite teachers) The second type of faces I do are Whimsy faces. I really like to do the Whimsy girls because everything is allowed.. nothing can go wrong! This kind of faces I learned by following a course was the Whimsy girl face from Tamara Laporte and I love it! What really helps is that I do Life Book this year and I really learned a lot especially to loose up! I still need to learn a lot to overcome my perfectionism but that’s OK. Another challenge for me is to find my own style, what do I like, What is it that gives me a great feeling… I’m truly having a difficult time finding my own style. I love to do so many styles, so many MM things and I find so many thing very great to do. What I do know is that painting faces is the thing that I really like, I really like the Mixed Media style, to be able to work with lots of different stuff and colors. But I don’t know MY style yet. I just keep on painting and I trust that my style will come my way.

What advice would you offer to any perspective new artist?
As I’m myself are a reasonably new artist, I really overcome a lot of fear of not being good enough. I’m a perfectionist so I do know how difficult it is to not tell yourself that you are not good enough.. but please, lovely artist, you are good enough, all the great artist where ones beginners! Just keep on practice and share your work in really great and supporting groups on Facebook or any other Social Media. Try to have fun in what you do, don’t stress about it. Just keep on playing and the more you practice and share the more you overcome fears. Here’s one of my very first faces ( 2.5 years ago ). I’m so glad that I didn’t throw these away

This is one of the girls I painted recent :

What is your heart’s greatest desire for your life as an artist?
My hearts greatest desire for my life as a artist is that I find my own style.. I really want that. I hope that I can paint faces and Mixed Media Art for the rest of my life. I hope that it will gives me always the relaxed feeling that it gives me today.I hope that I can inspire people with my art. I hope that one day I can create a course to help “ Newbie Artist “ . I hope that Art always makes me happy. I’m really proud of what I have achieve the last 2 years. I hope to develop and grow as an artist the next years. I can’t imagine a life without Art any more!

Tell us where can we find out more about you & your art?
Let’s be Friends. Here's my Facebook, International Facebook group for Artsy friends around the world:  My good Art friend Juna Biagioni started this group and I’m one of the administrators of this wonderful supporting international group. Love to see you there. I also have a new Youtube channel. I just published my first 2 videos about how I shade my Whimsy girls & finally my Blog (still working on it.. but i love to you there)

Hi Petra, thank you for sharing your journey and your art. I like the fact that you are proud of what you have achieved in two years. Rather than always being focused on where we are going, I think we all need a dose in remembering (and precisely for the purpose of reveling in...) how far we have come. For myself I just a shot of this and created a new video (I'll insert it below) for Journal Workshops as that has come SO far in only year I felt I needed to update the welcome message to reflect where we are now; that feeling of change and growth is just *pure awesome*, and should be reveled in.

It's always the journeys that are the cool part, 
never the destination. 

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