Lauren explained:
“It was great having the chance to speak with the wonderful Corrina Rothwell about her art and illustrations! Her fun and quirky designs are eye-catching and interesting to look at, and her play on words and imagery really draw you in and make you want to see more! It’s the type of art that will keep you looking and the humour will have you giggling in no time…
Here are the questions I got to ask Corrina…”
What do you do?
I’m an illustrator and an artist, a bit of both. In terms of illustration, greeting cards have been my main focus for the past couple of years but I also make prints. I’d like to build on that and I’m looking at doing personalised prints for example. I’ve just started painting again too, at home. I’ve painted throughout my life, on and off, and because everything I do for my business is digital now, I want to get back into creating one-off pieces again. I’ve started doing little paintings I can hopefully exhibit.
How did your business start?
It’s one of those things really, I didn’t exactly sit down and say I’m going to start a business, it’s just kind of evolved over the years. I’ve always done artistic stuff, it’s just changed. I started around 1990, a long time ago now! I dropped out of uni and went on the government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme. I made cushions and painted fabric, that kind of thing. I kept trying loads of different things and they worked out, but I wasn’t quite happy with where things were going, so I ended up doing machine embroidery for 14 years. I was self-employed and did a lot of exhibiting and commissions so effectively, I’ve had several little businesses if you like. Officially, the greeting cards started in 2011, as that’s when I did my first trade show with them. At that point, I said ‘right, this is going to be a proper business rather than just trying to make money out of artwork’. That’s when I really started to do things properly, including social media etc.
So how do you come up with your ideas?
Sometimes if I’m lucky, they just appear from nowhere, say when I’m washing up or doing some other mindless task and its mind drifting. I’m also one of those people that quietly observes everything that’s going on around me, and I pick up a lot of inspiration from things I see or hear people saying – and also things I find myself thinking and doing. This is why people can relate very well to my work, because it’s about ordinary people and ordinary things – but with a twist of humour thrown in! My mind tends to play daft games with words as a matter of course, it always has, so quite a number of my ideas arrive that way. If I have to come up with ideas under pressure, I tend to use things like random word search on the internet to get ideas sparked off.
What made you choose Sneinton Market as your location?
Well it was Helena (Tyce) really. I was aware of the new spaces here but I thought it was too big to take on a whole unit, on my own. So when Helena mentioned that she was looking at a place, it just kind of happened and we decided to share one. It’s the community feel down here that I really like. The more people that move in, the better it’s getting.
How did you get into your line of work?
I think it’s something I’ve always been into because both my parents were artists. I did try and do European studies at uni and go down the academic route, but it’s just not me. Creativity is something that’s always been a part of me. It wasn’t really a decision to go and be an artist, I just had to do it.
Lauren said:
“I would like to thank Corrina for sharing some of her spare moments to talk to me about her work and art, it was really nice hearing what she had to say.”
Check out Corrina’s work:
