About the artist
Aubrey is a freelance artist with a background in oil painting and an honours degree in Fine Art from Kent Institute of Art and Design. Although they have since moved to a digital workflow, Aubrey has been able to use their original training in this new medium, and their art is still influenced by traditional painters, including William Blake, Caravaggio, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as well as more modern illustrators such as J.C. Leyendecker , Julie Dillon, Greg Manchess and Petar Meseldžija.
In their personal work, Aubrey is primarily concerned with the power of narrative. They see stories – contemporary fiction as well as myths and folklore – as a modern form of alchemy, capable of transmuting the reader into something more than they were before through empathy, imagination and shared experience. With this in mind they have begun creating small, experimental, works using encaustic paint, drawing a parallel between the melting, fusing and reforming of the wax and the transformative process of reading.
Inevitably, Aubrey is a prolific reader and keen writer, currently working on “Sophie’s Seasons”, a quartet of illustrated books for children which draw on classic English folklore and fantasy elements to play with the continuing appeal of myth in an age of scepticism.
Recently, Aubrey has been working to balance the flexibility of digital painting and and the unpredictability of encaustic with the portability of other analogue materials, including watercolour, ink, and pencils.
For work enquiries, they can be contacted via email at aubrey (at) cheerfulomelette.co.uk