Fresh Paint
ABOVE Sally Muir,
Freida and Biscuit,
oil on canvas,
200x150cm
Sally Muir
There are lessons in the art of perseverance to be learnt
from the career of Sally Muir, whose first step towards a
career in painting began with her acceptance into an art
school that previously rejected her. The preoccupation with
canine subjects began much earlier, however, when as a
child Sally set to work with a prized set of Derwent pencils,
making illustrations of the dogs she grew up with,
“alongside cats, gerbils, guinea pigs and chickens.”
Today, the artist remains an avid lover of animal subjects
and she is the proud parent of two whippets, Lily and Peggy.
“Lily is a brilliant model,” says Sally. “I teach workshops and
she very much enjoys receiving all the attention.”
In 2013, the artist challenged herself to craft A Dog A
Day, posting 365 sketches, lithographs, paintings and
potato prints onto her Facebook page that were eventually
compiled in a book. The project was picked up by the
clothing and homeware chain Anthropologie, which
commissioned the artist to collaborate on popular
collection of crockery and textiles.Freida and Biscuit was a recent painting commissioned
to commemorate the namesake pets by their owner, Paola,
a whippet enthusiast who Sally met online. “I felt an affinity
for the elderly whippet as my Lily is 12,” she explains.
“It was a huge painting, taller than me, so I drew it out, but
found that it was hard to keep track of it. I’d draw a head
and the feet ended up in the wrong place.” To overcome
this challenge of proportion, the artist gridded up the
canvas to keep the figures on track.
In her work, Sally captures the character of her subjects
through loose and expressive brushstrokes, and she was
eager not to lose this quality when working on such a large
scale. “As [the canvas] was much bigger than usual, I had
to use much bigger brushes to keep the brush marks lively
and spontaneous,” she explains. “Generally, I would paint
a flat background, but when I was painting the darker blue
here, I liked the way it broke up the flatness and gave the
painting a ‘horizon’, so I decided to embrace the accident.”
Sally Muir: The Dog Show runs until 9 February 2020 at the
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. http://www.victoriagal.org.uksally’s
toptiP
“Capturethe movement
of canine subjects by
limiting your sketching
time and employing a
looser approach”Artists & Illustrators 19