Skip to Content

Victoria Aust

I have always enjoyed art and design, whether it is looking at the work of others or creating work of my own. As a young child I was always drawing, painting or colouring in, and I won several... read more I have always enjoyed art and design, whether it is looking at the work of others or creating work of my own. As a young child I was always drawing, painting or colouring in, and I won several local competitions including painting and photography. I was very much influenced by my grandmother who is well known locally as a professional artist and teacher of art, and with whom I would spend hours just playing around with paint and a huge range of materials. I believe this to be the reason for having become very experimental with materials in my work. I use household materials to create my art whether it is food colouring, tomato ketchup, nail varnish or toothpaste. I am a contemporary artist, but that's not to say that I don't enjoy using oil paints on canvas or drawing realistic portraits, because that is where my talents really lie and where they are more clearly visible. I also enjoy photography, both digital and traditional, although I will only use digital photographs as a starting point for a painting as I don't believe they are valuable enough to use as photographs in their own right. I do enjoy manipulating the images and distorting them on the computer to create interesting compositions for paintings. This is where my interest in graphic design began. The beauty of traditional photography is that you have to get it right first time because you cannot delete it and take it again. The film negative cannot be wiped and then reused, so the photographs can be unique. This means that you take more time in setting up your composition so that it is absolutely perfect. As a young artist in Reading there has not been a lot to inspire me, but I am well travelled having visited places such as Madrid, Goa, Canada and New York over the years. I use these experiences to inspire my work along with current affairs or anything else that happens to affect my life. Of course I have never been far away from London and its beautiful arts and culture and I regularly take trips to galleries and exhibitions as well as theatre productions, which I love. I have studied a Vocational A-Level in art and design and I am now doing a degree course in Graphic Communication at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in Farnham. This will allow me to study art and design of the digital age, because I believe that is where we are heading, if we are not there already, but my passion is definitely still with painting and drawing.

Visit Victoria Aust's TIG Profile