Andy Mc Cready is a 28 year old artist at an exciting place in her life. Successfully represented by an art gallery in her native New Zealand, she has recently brought giclée prints of her original art to etsy, bringing her a wider audience through her shop, Gilt and Envy. Her work is feminine, Surrealist, intricate and intimate. Still awaiting her first etsy sale, she was kind enough to answer some questions about her work with One Grand Home. If you love what you see, just click the pics to purchase.
Where does your illustrative style come from?
It comes from drawing in the way I feel is most natural and intuitive to me – and this just happens to go against most of the rules I was taught in art school (ie: to work loosely, sketch in big shapes first, slowly build up the whole image simultaneously). None of this made any sense to me, as someone who is more at home creating intricate miniatures rather than oversized gestural paintings. I like details, being meticulous, line rather than form, a tight controlled hand, and working on one section at a time.
. . . I don’t think my own style was really liberated until I started to discover more alternative, illustration-based work and realised that this was what I was more passionate about – give me John John Jesse or Audrey Kawasaki over Jackson Pollock any day.
Doe Eyed - Large limited edition giclée print, $95
When I’m creating original paintings I like to get very hands-on and messy. More often than not my materials come from the hardware store rather than the traditional art shop, which I guess is a little incongruous given that I create such girly pictures with these stereotypically manly materials!
I mostly work in cheapo acrylic paint and pencil on mdf board that I cut down and file and sand myself, with a bit of spraypaint thrown in for good measure. Before I start drawing, I’ll cut a number of pieces of mdf board to the right sizes, and as I’m working I’ll move these around constantly to work out what should go where – like piecing together a jigsaw.
Although I have a general idea of what I want the finished product to look like (ie: a colour scheme, patterns, content, etc.), it usually evolves and changes as I work.
When I’m satisfied by how the work looks, I’ll glue and clamp all the separate pieces of board together. Then it’s time to photograph the works, and get digital files of them that I can take to get printed as limited edition giclées by the wonderful folk at McK Design.
All this generally takes place on my cluttered bedroom floor with music blaring and the consumption of much coffee.
What are some of the themes you are most interested in exploring in your work, including any that you are struggling to express?
Beehive - Large limited edition giclée print, $95
I’m interested in exploring the transience of beauty, the construction of identity through the piecing together of fragments, the decorative, interior decorating as something we also do to ourselves (makeup, renovation, DIY, creating facades or masks), the feminine, the fantastic.
I’d really like to develop and clarify my thoughts about Surrealism in my art work. I wrote my Masters thesis on Surrealism, and I adore artists like Magritte, Tanguy and Dali, but I’m cautious about describing my own work in this way because I’m aware of the complexities involved in the theory, and am sometimes bothered by the casual and inarticulate way people bandy about the word ‘surreal’ to describe absolutely anything.
Tarred and Feathered - Large limited edition giclée print, $100
I see you have an interest in the themes of mental illness and madness. How do you deal with those states or conditions without exoticizing or fetishizing them?
I think the nature of illustrating or aestheticising a condition by giving it visual form is such that you can’t help but exoticise or fetishise it to a certain extent. I understand the need to avoid this when say presenting a scientific study or attempting to report on something in an objective way, but art is so incredibly subjective, and relies on this for its effect. When I view art, I want it to fascinate and attract me, and there is usually some beauty to be found in things that are dark or desperate.
Gilt and Envy - Large limited edition giclée, $100
What’s your ultimate goal for yourself as an artist?
Obviously being able to sustain a living solely from my art is a big one. I can’t think of anything better than being left to my own devices to paint all day.
More specifically, if I had to think of a particular achievement to work towards that would make me the most proud, it would probably be having my imagery on the cover of an album by one of my favourite bands. And of course – every struggling illustration artist’s dream – a feature in Juxtapoz magazine wouldn’t go astray…
And on the business end of things…
In this economy, why, would you argue, anyone should prioritize art as a part of their discretionary purchases?
Art can be a means of escape, a device for provoking thought and discussion, or merely an aesthetic pleasure – all things that are particularly called for in uncertain times, and the value they add to an individual’s own life (as well as to cultural life in general) in these respects goes beyond that which can be measured in monetary terms.
I (and a lot of casual consumers of art in forums like Etsy) find myself pretty confused about how prints are priced. Without giving away any trade secrets, could you explain a little about how you price your work and/or some of the inputs that go into the pricing of your work?
I find pricing incredibly difficult and would love to have the magic answer to this. It’s especially complicated given the fact that I’m represented by a gallery in my home city, through which most of my sales are made, but I’ve also just opened some online stores, and the prices need to be relatively similar despite the differing amounts of commission. My prices might seem relatively high for prints on etsy but they’re a lot larger than the standard 8 x 10 inch prints sold on there, and I get them professionally photographed and printed, which bumps up the cost a bit, but it’s worth it for the quality of the print. I think the solution here is to work towards varying the price points in my store a lot more – create some smaller works solely to sell through etsy, and perhaps in larger edition numbers so that I’m able to make them more inexpensive.
Copycat - Large limited edition giclée print, $100
What is the hardest thing about being a working artist and what is your greatest business challenge?
Definitely balancing a full-time job with making art, because I never seem to have enough time to devote to it. Paintings progress at a much slower rate than I’d like, and I have a backlog of ideas scrawled in a notebook that grows by at least five for every one painting I finish.
I think my greatest business challenge was taking that first initial leap from hiding away in my bedroom creating pictures to making a conscious decision to put my work out into the world for sale, comment and possible critique. Taking it from private to public, and accepting the notion that I could call myself an artist – basically just legitimising it in my own mind really.
Now that the bones of everything is there I need to focus on is how to get all those lovers of quirky retro art flocking to my door. This forces me to consider terms I hate, like target market, promotion, networking, etc – hopefully I can attempt to do this with as little promo-speak as possible.
Questions for Andy or reactions to her work? Please, comment below.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I like Andy’s work a lot because I dig the whole post-modern gothic vibe but I wish she would revisit her thinking about masculinity and femininity. It was kinda disturbing to read the comments about ‘girly’ versus ‘manly’ as though women don’t belong at a hardware store.
Haha, you obviously haven’t been to the hardware store in my town – it’s quite possibly my favourite shop and I run around like a kid in a candy store, but when standing in a line of men in workboots and shorts carrying lumber, and then asking the store guy advice on the best type of spraypaint to buy for creating lace patterns using plastic doilies, the looks you get do tend to engender a sense of not belonging!
I really just wanted to highlight the contrast between the images I produce and the materials used to create them – delicate whimsical drawings of pretty young girls rendered from industrial mdf board and cheap housepaint. Perhaps it’s less a feminine/masculine thing and more that I take pleasure in bypassing expensive fine art media and producing something beautiful out of crude materials.
Anyways, thanks for the feedback Art Lover, glad you dig the imagery
Andy, Your prints are very cool & I like learning about all of the work that goes into them. I kind of just assumed that it was all created on a computer. Do you think you could ever offer anything at the under $50 price point?
Hi Lucita,
Thank you for your question – it’s something I’m working on at the moment actually.
I’m in the process of creating a number of smaller works that I can offer as prints for around $30 to $40 (US dollars). From my own experience on etsy, I really appreciate stores that have a number of different price points so that there’s something available for everyone. Check back in a couple of months and hopefully some of these will be listed on my site by then.
P.S. I’m quite useless with computers, and can’t imagine ever getting to grips with them enough to be able to use them to draw – it’s the old-fashioned messy way for me!
Great work Andy. Finaly website with great inspiration graphics. i would love to see some of your designs printed on our custom wallpapers. Thank you for sharing. Peter