Conversation: Charlotte Henderson
Edinburgh illustrator Charlotte Henderson wants to make art fun again for both the gallery glitterati and rowdy kids. We spoke about why she works and how she plays.
What do you do for fun?
I love spending time outside – going for walks around the city with my dog or looking in charity shops for cool bits and bobs.
How do you keep a gap between work and play? Do you think it’s harder, as an artist?
When I’m not at my part time job in a shoe shop, I really like to spend most of my free time creating personal work or even working on any illustration jobs I may have going on. I think it helps that I have different environments to separate my part time job and my creative work – when I close up the shop for the day, I’m already waking up the creative part of my brain by scrolling through my phone looking at things to inspire me and getting ideas for what I might make when I get home!
As an artist, I think this separation is harder to maintain as I get so much joy and freedom from image making that my practice can be very consuming, personal and indulgent even when illustrating for a client. It can be a challenge to strike a balance between my love of the process and meeting the deadlines and specifications of the brief.
Can you tell us about your practice? How do you use play in your creative practice?
I see myself as constantly learning – I am always experimenting with new approaches and love to discover new creators that can inspire me. While my work is made digitally, I love scribbling ideas in my sketchbook as well as doing life drawing and observational drawing to stop myself from being confined to the rigidity of digital illustration – it gets me outside and gives my eyes a rest from screen time too! My approach to illustration is playing with shapes in the endless variety of sizes and colours that digital image making can provide – cutting them up, rearranging them, sticking them together... it goes on and on!
Having fun whilst image making is key within my practice. If I’m not enjoying myself, I will often notice it right away and do my best to address it. I use illustration as means of expressing myself creatively as well as a way to unwind and reflect which comes with challenges when commissions come along and this philosophy is often put on hold! If possible, I like to channel this into little personal projects alongside client briefs and this can even help inform my work for these commissions. I like to keep these mini projects fun and simple such as a portrait of my dog Lola or a minimal composition of satisfying shapes.
And can you tell us about Art Is Play, the book you created for your degree show?
This project began as a way of putting the joy back into my practice during my final year at ECA when I found myself constantly comparing my work to others, stressing about deadlines and freaking out about the future – every art student’s struggle!
I began to think about my childhood when art was something I loved wholeheartedly and unconditionally without all these worries attached to it. I wanted Art is Play to encourage children to become creative thinkers, makers and doers. They could use this activity book as a helpful tool to look at any art, get their own ideas about it and use them to inform their own creations with no concern about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
What have you enjoyed working on recently?
I have just wrapped up a few exciting projects with Collective, a centre for contemporary art on Calton Hill. I have been working closely with their Learning Producer on the children’s program Collective:Play which hosts a variety of activities and events such as Loose Parts Fridays which gives children the freedom to make and do with creativity and resourcefulness. As well as designing typography and a logo inspired by loose parts play, I was asked to illustrate activity trails that children can carry around to encourage them to really engage with their surroundings and learn more about the vast nature and history within Edinburgh.
