Creating artistic portraits of extraordinary artistic beauty and imagination, JoAnn Wilmot became the featured artist of Issue No. 14 of Living the Photo Artistic Life. Indeed, JoAnn has secured a position in issue after issue because of the sheer technical virtuosity of her images …
Q: Where do you feel your artistic style originated? How did it arise?
JoAnn: I was a graphic artist and art director for over 25 years, and as such my job was always to bring another person’s idea into fruition. So when I started in the Photoshop Artistry course and then moved on to the “AWAKE” course, I found I really didn’t know myself very well or what it was I wanted to say to the world through my art. I just was not used to creating for myself, from myself. So I floundered around for quite awhile trying to find my voice. Meanwhile I just kept trying out ideas and styles gleaned from the videos and used all the fantastic class content with the hope that something would begin to ring true.
Then, last August, eight months into Awake, my husband and I went to New York City to see how many Vermeers we could take in on one day in different museums (we found EIGHT, including “Girl with a Pearl Earring”!) We also both love the works of John Singer Sargent and ran around the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking for his galleries too. After seeing how those artists handled storytelling with paint I decided that I wanted to concentrate on women’s portraits. Of course I was greatly influenced by our course contributors Teddi Rutschman, Billa Bozem, and Caroline Julia Moore, who were already deftly handling images of women with such beauty it made my head spin!
Q: How is it you approach your work (what’s your method of sitting down to create)?
JoAnn: Oh, that dreaded blank page! I mostly just have to throw something on it to get started. Sometimes I have a color or title or model image in mind. If it’s a color it’s usually because I just saw it somewhere and it made me say something crazy like, “Hmm, I wonder what that red thinks of that blue? Too shy?” If it’s a title I decide to lead off with, it usually comes from something I read or a song my husband is whistling incessantly!
And I like to build the color and lighting up to be a bit magical and mysterious. I use a lot of unrelated images — flowers, blurred lighting, water — to create the depth and brightness. I often overlay other unrelated photos to serve as lighting adjustments — particularly flowers, feathers, splotches of color, and fabrics. Depending on the blending and masking this just works well for me.
Since I’m not a photographer (only learning now), I began by using the AWAKE course models provided by Sebastian Michaels and Colby Files. They gave me the chance to try out ideas and hone my vision of the women I wanted to portray … which I now think of as rara avis (or rare birds). Lately I have also been purchasing stock photos from Colorbox, always with commercial licensing. Of course, as I see more and more of my AWAKE classmates venturing off into capturing their own creative models photos, I just know I will eventually have to go that direction too.
But for now I simply love the idea that I can take the woman out of her element (the photograph), and put her into mine (the canvas), and then I try get the viewer to meet her there, to connect with her unique story — her “rare-birdness.”
I’m always hoping for the story to be interesting enough. (Is she flying or falling? Is she coming together or disintegrating?) But mostly I like that she does it all on her own. For every artist is alone when creating, and our own story cannot help but come through as well.
Q: What does “living the photo artistic life” mean to you?
JoAnn: Ahh … living the photo-artistic life! It’s bliss! I now have something that makes me feel alive every day. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I have that new-fangled AWAKE radar on … always on the lookout for a special something to take a photo of, or to inspire some fresh notes in my journal (or on a paper napkin). Living the photo-artistic life is about living life in the NOW. Where before I might have bustled along, I now catch myself stopping to pause and take a longer look, searching out wonders. I’m afraid I’m so completely “AWAKE” now, it can’t be undone.
Q: What are the most important things you’ve learned in your journey to becoming a serious artist?
JoAnn: To stop with all the ‘I’m not good enough’ silliness. We are all different in our own work, all have our own styles, and it’s all good. All that matters is that it makes us happy and completes us in some way. That’s art to me.
And the AWAKE family of artists are just the best friends I’ve never met.
And now, when I look back on a year and a half worth of work, I see that every piece, every portrait, has within it a part of me I newly found along the way. Which makes me wonder … Perhaps in the end, they are all, in some way, self-portraits after all!