Artist Statement
Artist Statement: Donna VokesI was born deaf 24 years ago and raised in Hampshire, UK along with 3 siblings, an assortment of animals and a wealth of creativity, colour and imagination. I have always painted, first with watercolours and then with Acrylic paint, preferring it’s plastic like finish and ease of control. I love to create texture which I can easily achieve by laying thick paint onto canvas or by ‘painting’ with various objects such as the back of a dinner knife or a twig. As a child we are told not to touch paintings so I attempt make mine irresistible to touch! And happily let people do so whilst watching their faces and fingers treating the painting as an object as fragile as a newborn baby, or even the thinnest of glass!
……..Our days during the summer holidays were spent on the farm with our Granddad George. We picked strawberries in the strawberry fields with Grandma Teddy, filling up our tummies rather than our plastic blue buckets. Fond memories we have of Granddad Charlie wheeling us about in the garden in his treasured wheelbarrow and sloppy wet kisses from Nanny Connie. My mother introduced me to a world of art and colour, showing me how to draw and paint. (on paper she meant, rather than the wall!) Dad let us drive the small tractor that was used to cut the grass. Ooh the fear we gave him when we nearly knocked down each and every one of the trees at the village manor, turning him prematurely grey!.....................
I studied ND Fine Art at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College (Now the University College for the Creative Arts) and finished in 2005 with x3 distinctions when I decided to follow the family footsteps to immigrate to Australia. Even though the last foot steps were treaded almost 50 years ago.
It was during art school I discovered travelling and really got to know Australia. I visited Queensland and Victoria (Giving my parents only 4 days notice! And now dad is nearly bald!) A country I had always dreamed of visiting after growing up to the stories of my Nanny Connie’s family emigrating there. After I completed my studies, I moved out again, but this time to the island of Tasmania (south of Melbourne.) Tasmania taught me all that I know about art now. I was submerged into its vibrant arts culture with no control. It was here I discovered and appreciated new art and gradually began to understand other peoples work. This may have been because I was stripped bare of my art materials and sketch pad at customs and the lack of money meant that paint and paper was a luxury I could no longer afford. It wouldn’t keep me warm in the winter months, but I learnt to be creative with ink with sticks, spoons – whatever I could find to ‘paint’ with.
I paint with rich colours, never afraid to mix and match. Colours I have adopted from Australia. I was struck by the vibrant colours of the landscape from the orange soil and red rocks to the sickly green rainforest to the almost white beaches with sand so soft and twice as hot!
I was also helped by the slower pace of Australian life and culture. I could easily find myself transported back in time in Tasmania, but longed to be mainland in a modern city with big art galleries and shopping centres! The slower pace of life was good for me. It taught me to be patient! Patience is what every painter must have.
My style is retro by accident. My work developed into an individual style that fits within the boundaries of retro art. On my return to the UK, the 60’s fashions had taken hold again and the high street had provided a market for my work, which sealed my style and made it come to life on canvas with acrylic paints and inks.
My paintings are mainly about my interpretations of what English summers are to me, through childhood, to my early adulthood and the contrast in summers I experienced in Australia from 2005 as well as a celebration of the summers to come and the delights to enjoy, but also a tribute and farewell to what English summers used to be and all its Britishness.
‘’Long English Summers with faeries at the bottom of the garden and catching butterflies with nets, Teddy bear picnics and tea parties on the front lawn. Mud pies and sunbathing with irritating younger brothers drenching my sister and I with the garden hose. Summer dresses, bikinis and watching the local lads playing cricket on lazy Sunday afternoons. The summer in Australia is where I first fell in love and then there were the rednecks and steaks on the Barbie. Sour faces when we won the ashes and empty pubs with not a soul on the streets. Burnt prawns and stubbies in hand. Searing heat with not one footstep on the beach as we all retreat inside, to the delights of air conditioning……………………….’’