ABOUT LLOYD LEWIS
BIOGRAPHY
I am a professional artist based in Bristol, I mainly work in acrylics and I love painting portraits. I have always loved drawing and painting as a child I would draw on everything including painting on the walls. After a hiatus in my art journey, I started painting with watercolour using an incredibly limited palette (just blue paint) I then progressed onto acrylics and widened my palette.
A few years ago, I was faced with a series of upper spinal surgeries which nearly left me with permanent vocal paralysis. Creating art really helped me through this difficult time, I was unable to even play, lift or fully engage with my 2 young children but I was at least able to visualise a future as an artist. It was after the 2nd operation when I decided to leave my career as a secondary school Science teacher and pursue my twin passions of art and martial arts. I am now an artist and I run my own martial arts school.
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My self portrait is about my dealing with the difficulties in my past. In the last seven years alone our family has had to deal with the amputation of my son’s lower limb, he now wears a prosthetic and is just incredible, my back surgeries, a global pandemic, my daughter’s kidney issues (3 weeks in hospital during lockdown she is now getting better) I also had a difficult childhood and art has always been there to keep me centred.
When starting a painting I have some idea where I want it to go. I start with a drawing with my paintbrush straight onto the canvas, move to blocking out and then I add layers to create detail and form. My self portrait took over 50 hours, it is the largest I have ever painted a self portrait and I really enjoyed the freedom that gave me.
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I have been lucky enough to be a wildcard entrant in the landscape artist of the year in 2019 and 2020. It really was an absolutely wonderful experience and I met so many other wonderful artists. It has encouraged me to venture out and paint landscape every so often and branch out with my painting in a different way. The atmosphere there was incredible and everyone was just so nice. I also got to meet the judges which was an enormous pleasure.