Welcome to the online home of Emma Jacobs Art … I am so excited to share this journey with you!
I call myself a “re-born” artist, having come back to art in my mid-forties when I joined a weekly oil painting class with local artist Kim Pereira in February 2016. I am a practical, determined person, who likes to figure out the rules, and in a methodical manner, chip away at what I want to achieve my goals.
I remember saying to Kim that the last thing I wanted was a whole lot of amateur paintings around my home. If I do something, I do it properly, so I set out to learn how to paint oil paintings. I learned the rules of lean to thick, dark to light, colour mixing, how colour wheels work, which brushes, which paints, what type of canvasses. I learned where to buy supplies, how to choose my subject matter, what the ethics are behind using reference images.
I started to pay attention to artists I liked. I watched other artists to see what I liked in their style and methodology. I attended workshops with artists like Dee Donaldson at her amazing Studio 3, and Shirley Howells who ran her inspiring Sunnyside Guest Farm painting weeks just outside Clarens in the Eastern Free State. I spent time on You Tube, Google, and social media learning from others. I subscribed to the South African Artist Magazine and started following the featured artists.
But most importantly I painted. As much as I could and as often as I could. I painted 18 paintings that first year and in 2017, I painted 17 paintings. I was building knowledge and confidence, layer by layer, week by week. I sold my first painting about 6 months after starting painting, to a guest of ours at Westville B&B, our art-themed five-star B&B. What a special day of validation that was!