WetINK Artist of the Month – Aimee Lindeque

Recently we met up with Aimee Lindeque, a Cape Town-based artist, to learn more about her and her art.

Aimee is originally from a farm in Mpumalanga. She moved down to Cape Town to study art at the University of Cape Town. She majored in sculpture at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. After that she stayed in Cape Town to make art full time from her studio in Salt River.

Influence

Aimee’s art is influenced by all the amazing contemporary illustrators and artists’ work she is seeing now. Her home province, Mpumalanga, and Cape Town have a constant direct influence on her art.

Nature also influences her art and she had real life situation which has inspired her art. Aimee recalls “Quite a few years ago I was walking alone in the lowveld next to a river.

There was a shine in the river that drew me towards it, so I stepped closer; shoes touching the water’s edge. As I peered closer, a very very large African rock python reared itself up towards me. I jumped back and it swam further away into the river. However, that moment when I was drawn in by some indistinguishable detail towards the snake has stuck with me and has inspired a lot of my paintings.”

She describes her art as mix of Hieronymous Bosch meets Where’s Wally.

The creative process

 Her process can be broken up into what she is listening to in the moment. The process is different from project to project but these are the steps she takes when she makes an un-commissioned watercolour painting.

1. Listen to a Spotify ‘drawing’ playlist when pencilling out the composition (only music for this part).

2. Ink in the outlines with a dip pen. For this she only listens to podcasts, right now she is enjoying ‘the dropout’ and ‘Oh no it’s Ross and Carrie’.

3. Start painting with watercolour. During this part she only listens to audiobooks. For spooky October she only listened to thrillers. Late nights in the studio were definitely a bit ominous.

When it comes to titling her work, Aimee is a bit reluctant. At the start, it was always a struggle but after doing it for a while it has become fun, and she finds it really adds to the art. Right now, she is enjoying putting alliteration in the titles. Her most recent painting was called: “Felines, fish and flowers”.

Challenges and the future

One of the challenges Aimee faces as a working artist is to balance business and creativity. She is still working to find the balance and there is one piece of advice from a fellow artist that Aimee always keeps in mind, and it is “make sure that you need to make art. There are better ways to make money and making ‘art’ is not the only path for creative people.”

Looking forward, Aimee has few dream projects. One she has always wanted to do is to paint the world’s largest watercolour. The current record is about 5m by 3m. This kind of project would need a museum sponsorship and she hopes that if she had the opportunity WetINK would produce art prints of it. We would like to go on this journey with you.

If you would like to get in contact with Aimee Lindeque, you can use one of these contacts:

Website: www.aimeelindeque.com

Email:  aimee.lindeque@gmail.com for questions and catalogue requests

Instagram: @aimee_lindeque_art

Facebook: @LindequeArt1