Creative genres: Visual arts and Novelist
Themes Visual Arts: The ocean or natural world  
Mediums: Varied 
Themes Writing: Alternative universes, inspiration from historical Celtic themes.            
Location: Bristol, U.K 

Becky Whitworth contacted me through the Facebook Creative Isolation page interested in participating in an interview. She lives in Bristol in the United Kingdom,  with a studio space built from a big blue beach hut. It is interesting to see that she is another creative who works from two distinctive genres, with her pen name being R.A Whitworth. Whilst I'm yet to meet Becky, her love of the colours of the ocean, nature and outlook on life made her a really interesting person to follow. Besides animal life, she gets her inspiration from the coasts of Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland. Welcome Becky, and thank you for sharing your story from the other side of the world!  

JFP: Hi Becky, how you would like to introduce you and your creative practice in the world?  Any highlights in your career as a creative you would like to share?

BW: I am an artist and a writer from Bristol in the UK working from my big blue beach hut inspired studio space. In my artwork, I use a range of mediums such as watercolour, oil, acrylic and more recently marker pens to explore the beauty that surrounds us within the natural world. My passion for the oceans and nature nearly led me to further academia to study marine biology, but now powers a lot of my work, even enriching my fantasy novels also. Through my creativity, I hope to inspire others to see and appreciate the natural world before we, as humans change it irreversibly into a less biodiverse and barren world.

In my writing, I also take inspiration from history as well as from Celtic legends to create my novel series, which is based within an alternative world which can be travelled to, through ancient stone circles. My characters take on different aspects of mental health, (such as amnesia, depression etc) which I have felt has not been properly illustrated in many novels and also want to use my voice to illustrate those often unspoken aspects of life.

Apart from the release of my novels, one of the highlights of my career has included my artwork being exhibited twice in an art gallery in central Bristol. As well as this, I have been immensely proud to have sold my artwork both through commissions and through sales online to excited buyers. More recently this year also, I recently competed for a place in the finals at Art Battle in Bristol, although I didn’t win I am very proud to have taken part in an exhilarating evening with other like-minded artists.

JFP: Could you describe a bit about your creative process, your favourite themes, mediums/genres? Anything you would like to share about what inspires you to keep creating, believing in your abilities?

BW: My creative process involves a lot of colours, I adore the use of beautiful colours or contrasting them to capture light in an image and these often form the foundations that inspire me to create each piece of artwork I create. For example, one of my most popular pieces, “Pink Elephant” began from seeing the vivacity of life in South Africa and the intense hues of a magenta and blue witnessed in an African Sunset. Since then I have gone on to capture more of these elephants in similar hues to explore that theme further.

More recently, I have been creating a series inspired on the ocean, inspired in part by the BBC series “Blue Planet” and a trip to the Mediterranean waters of Cyprus, focussing on marine mammals such as seals, turtles and colourful whales. Anyone that knows me will say I take a lot of photos. I do this to create a thorough reference gallery for my artwork – and even photo editing! When wanting to paint, I often run through my gallery of photos which has all been categorised by an animal, landscape type etc. to find a subject I fancy attempting or using to construct a design for the painting.

I find it immensely satisfying to create quality pieces of artwork and that pursuit to create something beautiful that someone will love drives me to continue creating. In my writing, I have a strong belief and confidence in my work and strive to complete the novel series so that people can read the whole story and feel inspired by it as I have been. I’ve had amazing feedback from both creative pursuits and that also helps to keep me creating.

JFP: Have you ever experienced a creative block or time in your career as a creative where things were difficult that made it difficult to practice your craft? Would you mind sharing that in some way? How did it affect you? How did you move on from that?

BW: Like all creatives, I’ve experienced a creative block. It’s a perfectly normal obstacle that doesn’t always require inspiration to overcome. This can happen at any time, when I feel deflated, perhaps after a busy week, when feeling down or things aren’t going as planned. Feeling the limitations of the creative block can be debilitating, leaving me feeling unable to create something of quality. But I don’t believe in letting this get me down, so when I feel this way I listen to music or listen to a good audiobook and create anyway.

JFP: What would you advise someone in a creative block/to move on with their craft to do? What are some steps, some words of encouragement you could give them? (Or even a source/book/person/etc to look towards?)

BW: The best way I’ve found to deal with it is to create anyway. It doesn’t matter whether you feel inspired to create something, only that you want to. Discipline yourself to create and it will come naturally even if it doesn’t come straight away. In my art, I’ve often found that doodling in a sketchbook with a box of watercolours helps also, even listening to music or reading a good book to help with motivation. It’s important; I’ve always felt, to break past that barrier of a creative block to carry on with what you do best.

Other ways I recommend to ease creative block, is to set yourself a schedule, give yourself downtime (to prevent burnout) and keep up a regularity that you are creating in. Set yourself three goals that you would like to achieve and give yourself a time scale. E.g – 1. Create full time, 2. Learn a new skill within that creative sector (learn a new medium etc.) and 3. Exhibit/publish your work.

You would be surprised at how much this helps you to structure your creativity and help to speed progress. Follow any artist or creative person on social media, seeing these posts in your feed also helps to boost motivation and help you find inspiration – you might even learn a new skill as a result from joining the colourful creative online network!

JFP: Some wonderful pointers there, thank you, Becky. Please keep in touch with us and let us know how you go with your next book. I must say, we feel very envious of a very big blue beach hut to work in; what a way to bring on creativity. 

 For a look at some of Becky Whitworth's creative work, please go to the gallery. 

Links to pages :

  Becky Whitworth artist  R.A Whitworth author page  www.instagram.com/beckywhitz   Shop