You may remember Carolyn Bew from the Brighton Street Style feature a few weeks ago. As well as being a fabulous fashionista she is also a very talented artist and will be doing a weekly bespoke cartoon especially for Bjournal.
Having been an artist for over 20 years, Carolyn began her career in art by studying at Central St Martins, in the days where smoking in the university library was perfectly acceptable and legal. Since graduating Carolyn has had a variety of jobs teaching art at the likes of Chelsea College of Arts and the University of Brighton amongst other places. Her life has always been immersed and consumed with art and so a few years ago Carolyn resigned from teaching to work as a full-time artist and now has a studio in Phoenix Brighton.
Carolyn is a figurative artist meaning that her artwork is derived from real object sources. She also recommends that if you’re thinking of getting in to figurative art you should try painting trees as they’re ‘a great transition between figurative and abstract art and also offer a fantastic way of getting used to the feel of the paint’.
She publishes a ‘Cartoon of the Day’ on twitter and this came about because she loves to doodle and enjoys sitting in cafes, drawing for pleasure. Each cartoon is drawn on her iPad completely free hand without the use of a stylus, requiring a lot of focus and of course a very steady hand.
Her cartoons are influenced by news stories, offering a satirical commentary on commentary, usually featuring a lady offering ‘wise’ words of wisdom and a cheekily crude punch line from the little black cat. The cartoons have cleverly been named Grace which is both a name and adverb – it’s up to you which character you decide to call Grace as ironically both characters are amusingly far from it!
Brighton is renowned for its host of creative, unique and interesting people and Carolyn is certainly one of those. Although she is not a native Brightonian, Carolyn migrated from London to Brighton due to her admiration for the sea. She loves the fact that Brighton is liberal, free thinking and most importantly allows you to be yourself.
Carolyn is showing an exhibition of her art on the 7th-8th May at Phoenix Brighton.
Photographs: Carolyn Bew and Kamilah McInnis
Kamilah McInnis
