Featured Artist: Jacqui Macumber of Inkah Art

Education and background:
I am a qualified primary school teacher. Part of my teaching degree was an art subject and creating an art folio which I absolutely loved. After teaching my own grade for a couple of years I decided to casual relief teach, and this meant I got to spend quite a lot of time in the art room teaching art, which I loved far more than classroom teaching!

I then fell pregnant, and while pregnant spent a lot of time being creative and trying to come up with artwork for my daughter’s nursery and my own house as I absolutely love anything to do with interior design. I was really happy with what I was creating and received a positive response from family and friends who commissioned me to create pieces for them. I created an instagram account to share my artwork and it really just grew from there. A few months ago it got to the point where I felt I might actually be able to try and make a go of this and decided to officially become a registered business and launch my website! I would therefore consider myself to be a self-taught artist!

Where are you based?
Torquay, Victoria

How long have you been a visual artist for?
Officially, only about a year so I am very new on the art scene!

What do you feel is your biggest achievement to date?
Launching my own website and having people buy my artwork! (I also have a couple of really exciting things that will be happening and reveal themselves in the next couple of months, but unfortunately I can’t share them at this time!)

What are your creative influences?
I love where I live and am often inspired by the beauty of the natural environment. I love colour and see beauty everywhere that inspires me to create something! I also just love interior design, and am inspired to create beautiful artwork that works with interior spaces that I adore. I usually start with a colour palette and the rest of the process that evolves is very organic.

What are your favourite tools of the trade?
Acrylic paint, ink and liquitex gloss medium!

How have you found getting started with printing at Image Science?
Very easy to deal with, more than happy to help someone who previously knew nothing about how any of this worked! I knew what I wanted to achieve but no idea how to make it happen but had literally a million questions that were answered for me and was guided through how to make my plan a reality. I’m very happy with the result!

How have your limited edition prints been influential to your business?
Having my artwork produced as prints is an integral part of my creative process. I photograph my artwork throughout it’s journey, not just the finished product as I love the way each painting evolves and changes along the way. Photographing my artwork progressively allows me to capture the ever changing nature of my work, and I am then able to create prints using these photographs which is amazing because the prints that are of sections of an artwork don’t exist any more yet they are beautiful and I wanted to be able to use them! Having prints allows me to do this. I can create a series of beautiful images that originate from the one artwork, and the original finished artwork is often quite different from the print series I created – which I think makes it really unique.

What’s next?
I would love to expand my business into two other avenues at this stage – one being greeting card design, and the other is something I am thoroughly excited about and that is a cushion range. I am passionate about beautiful homewares and it would be a dream of mine to turn my artwork into fabric to produce my own cushions. I am exploring this possibility at the moment and I hope it becomes a reality soon. I am looking to potentially have my artwork stocked in retail stores in the future, and I’ve also been working with an interior designer to provide artwork for their clients.

Thanks so much for allowing us to feature your work Jacqui – it’s always a pleasure printing your stunning pieces!