Art is the Beauty of Life

Draw, paint, pastel and sculpt. This artist has found her love of art to be the one constant in her life.

- Cilinda Atkins

My earliest memory of gaining great satisfaction from art was at the age of five when I won my first drawing competition with a drawing of a tulip flower in the local newspaper. I was born in Victoria but now live in beautiful Hervey Bay, Queensland. As a teenager I spent most of my spare time escaping into a drawing. At age 15 I applied for and was accepted into a commercial art course, but as with many budding artists, I was discouraged from pursuing a career in art. At the age of 40 my love for art was renewed when I decided to experiment with painting and discovered I could not stop. Within weeks I was commissioned to produce some large works for a display centre and received lots of positive feedback. This led me to study a Diploma of Visual Art and attend several workshops.

I find my freehand drawing ability is the basis for most of my art, especially my representational work. The freehand drawing workshop by Brett A Jones really helped to hone my drawing skills and provided me with techniques to achieve greater results in both my drawings and pastel works. I love to work with a variety of media and subject matter as I tend to get bored with just one. So I draw, paint, pastel and sculpt. Each media has its own challenges as does each new subject and more often than not the subject determines which medium is appropriate. I have only been working with pastels for a couple of years but have won awards for some of my work. I believe this is because of the drawing skills that come into play with using this media. I never grid any of my work and believe the highest skill any artist can have is the ability to draw freehand.