Tag Archives: Celtic Art Project

Portfolio Paula Kuitenbrouwer

A website requires often changing its ‘theme’ (i.e. lay out) for security reasons. And thus, through the years I have given my website different themes. It is always nice to see a revamped website, but in case you do not opt for a more expensive theme, you lose information. I thought why not present my portfolio? Most of it must have fallen off my website due to implemented changes. I invite you to enjoy my artwork and please feel free to ask all sort of questions should you like to ask me something.
I have painted butterflies, birds, and tulips so often, I can paint them now without reference photos. Every time a butterfly, tulip, or birds comes alive on my drawing pad, I feel joy.
It is very rare for me sauntering through a park or through woodlands, enjoying a holiday outside my home town without feeling hugely inspired. Although I have done Celtic art projects, prehistoric studies, architectural drawings, and bookplate commissions, most of my drawings and paintings are observational records of memorable nature experiences.
Autumn is my most inspiring season. Those beautiful, deep, and spiritual ochre colours never fail to make me grab for my sketchbook.
Working on commissions and being in contact with customers is important to me. The interaction between a customer who has a wish lingering in his or her mind and me trying to grasp that wish and transform it in to a painting of drawing is a wonderful task.
Architectural drawings of monuments or prehistoric studies, every project results into more knowledge and more joy in drawing and painting.
Of all the different themes and projects I have done over the years, mandarin ducks and book plate commissions are the most regular. It is such a honour to be trusted to draw or paint a personalised book plate or living room painting with lovely mandarin ducks.
I have done a large floral triptych during the Sars-Cov-2 lockdown. It goes without saying that busying myself with large tulips, irises, and daffodils brought much joy in an otherwise scary and depressive time. See here: the power of art!
Book plates, mandarin ducks, sashiko decorations, a medieval Ex Libris, and an architectural freehand drawing. Express your wish and let me try to capture it on paper or canvas.
When I am not working on a commission, I busy myself with freehand drawing. I grab an old, art book and copy masterpieces of the past. Or I find Iron Age art objects in museums and try to crawl into the mind of its long dead maker. Or I design Christmas cards, greetings cards, textile prints, or study traditional or ancient geometric signs (Celtic, Iron Age, Japanese, Aboriginal, Saxon). I haven’t been a day without feeling inspired and I would need a few more lives with more time to be able to grow through art, to deepen my understanding of art, and to honour artists that have enriched our lives. Without Bach’s music, we wander in the dark. Without art we fail to communicate the meaning of life.

Paula Kuitenbrouwer

at Etsy

https://www.instagram.com/mindfuldrawing/?hl=en

My Celtic Art Project

Preliminary studies for a drawing of an oval metal disk, showing four boars, swans and a hidden face.

My Celtic Art Project 

This is my contribution to my “Who are the Celts’ course at Oxford Department for Continuing Education, week 5 ‘Celtic Art’ (2017). At the end of a demanding study week the participants were challenged to make their own Celtic art, a drawing, woodwork, or poem, whatever your prefer.
 
I was always in awe when I saw Celtic art in museums but I was never challenged or commissioned to make Celtic art. For doing this project, I had to remove my anxiety for rigid mathematical organization (the patterns and swirls). I liked the part of focussing on mythology, faces, and animals.
 
The article on the enchantment of technology, that I had to read during the course, inspired me to embrace a geometrical challenge for making Celtic patterns. I enjoyed the challenge more than I beforehand thought possible.I used golden/silver ink-pens, ordinary Bic blue pens, art paper, a protector and many rulers.
Golden with Silver & Lapis Lazuli Celtic Plate
with Boar, Hidden Face & Swans
© by Paula Kuitenbrouwer
Printed art card of my Celtic Project