Featured Artist: Ona Kingdon

This weeks Studio Tour featured artist is:

Ona Kingdon CSPWC, PWS, NWWS, BWS

Website:  www.onak.ca

Blog: emotiveexpressions.blogspot.ca

Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/ona.kingdon
E mail ona@onak.ca

Ona works primarily in transparent watercolour and loves the luminescence of this medium. She enjoys building up the depth and variation of colour through multiple glazes one pigment at a time and preserves the white of the paper to create highlights. 

 Ona began painting in watercolour seriously in late 2008 and, over the last few years, has won many awards both locally and internationally.

Hope you enjoy learning more about Ona in the following answers.

Where were you born? 

I was born in the south west of England.

If you could have an art related vacation anywhere in the world where would you go and why? 

I like places where there are interesting people because I love painting human emotion. I also enjoy meeting my art friends from around the world and visiting the big watercolour exhibitions so my ideal art vacation would have to include one of these too.

What’s your favourite thing to create and why?

I like creating art that captures elements of the emotions of life. Something that makes people smile, cry, feel sad, feel longing or pure joy.

How did you get your start in the world of art?

When I was small I would go with my mum to drama events. She would give me some pencils and a sketch pad to keep me amused and I would get lost in a colourful imaginative world where a simple scribble could become a tree, a few shapes a friendly giant and a triangle a mountain far on the eastern horizon. My mum would tell me the names of three objects and I would use them to create a story in my mind and then illustrate the story on paper.

Things didn’t always go to plan though. Once, when I was about three years old I was with my mum in a very old Victorian theatre with a sloped floor. I dropped my pencils in the middle of a very serious and tragic scene on stage. The pencils rattled noisily on the wooden floor all the way from the back of the theatre where I was sat, to the front of the stage. As they rolled clattered along, everyone in the crowded audience bent their heads to see what the noise was. It looked just like an inverted Mexican wave. I guess, even from an early age, that I was destined to be noticed as an artist :)

Do you have go-to paints/colors that you love to use in your art work?

I am in love with the Daniel Smith Quinacradone range of colours and use at least a couple of them in every painting I do. 

Who has been your biggest inspiration as an artist? 

There are several watercolour artists that I really admire such as Paul Jackson, John Salminen, Jane Freeman and Birgit O’Connor and I love the work of Dali too but I have to say my biggest inspiration as an artist has to be the deaf children that I taught for over 15 years. This experience helped me to develop a strong understanding of how feelings, emotion and knowledge can be communicated visually and the many children that I supported over the years really taught me how to see the more subtle aspects of how emotion can be conveyed.

What have been some of your crowning achievements?

Becoming an Elected member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, a signature member of both the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society and the North West Watercolor Society.

Winning Awards for the last two years In the Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s National Exhibition and several other big international exhibitions

Being chosen as one of the top 10 one’s to watch in 2012 by the Watercolor Artist Magazine

If you could have three wishes as an artist, what would they be?

To inspire others to have a go

To connect emotionally in some way to people through my art

To rise to challenges in the art world and keep growing and developing as an artist

What is the best advice that you have received as an artist?

Be you and be proud of being different. This way the work you produce comes from the heart and will have so much more meaning.

What colour best describes your personality?

I don’t think I am a single colour but more of an analogous section of the colour wheel from the warm blues through the purples and violets and into the cooler pinks. 

The color blue is reserved, thoughtful and quiet and likes to do things in its own way quite like I do. The color indigo reflects great devotion along with fairness and impartiality. It also stimulates creative activity which I love. The color purple links to imagination and spirituality allowing us to get in touch with our deeper thoughts. I love running with my imagination and seeing where it takes me and tend to think a lot about things. The color pink is compassion, nurturing and love. It is affectionate, thoughtful and caring and has gentle loving energy. I guess this is my motherly side although caring and compassion do tend to come across in many of my paintings too. 

 Ona