It’s in my DNA…
“It is only when we are no longer fearful that we begin to create.”
— J. M. W. Turner
Artistic talent/an ability to draw and paint, often runs in families.
In my family, my sister and niece can both paint and draw. My youngest brother also used to draw quite well and my niece studied photography at university.
My uncle was an old school architect, producing design and detail drawings. When he retired he became a very accomplished watercolour painter.
At the wedding of my nephew recently I was also told about my 5 year old great nephew who draws buildings from imagination, much like I used to. I have not had much contact with my great nephew, so I can only conclude this capacity is genetic.
Not all my family members are artistic however, or maybe they have just not been motivated to explore the creative aspect of their personalities as yet…
Above are a selection of my recent plein air sketches.
When you look back in art history you can spot many famous artists with siblings, parents and children who also display the arty gene, a small selection include:
Augustus John (1878 - 1961) had an older sister, Gwen John (1876 - 1939), who was recognised as a talented portrait painter. Gwen spent much of her life in France.
Augustus Edwin John OM RA was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning."
Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) had a younger brother, Ernst, recognised as a decorative painter.
Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism
Paul Jackson Pollock’s (1912 - 1956) older brother Charles was an American abstract painter. Charles Pollock's career as a painter was sharply divided into two periods. Until the mid 1940s, Pollock followed the social realist movement, studying under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York. In the 1940s Charles abandoned social realism and turned to abstract expressionism and colour field painting. Some attribute the shift to the influence of his famous brother Jackson
Jackson Pollock was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles.
John Constable (1776 - 1837) had 3 children, all of whom were talented artists. He also has a plethora of talented grand and great… grandchildren. In 2021 his 4 x great grandson Vayla, aged 7 years at the time, had artwork accepted by the Royal Academy and became the first member of the family to exhibit there for 200 years.
John Constable RA was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedham Vale.
Pablo Picasso’s (1881 – 1973) father José Ruiz Blasco was also an artist.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.
Paul Gauguin’s (1848 - 1903) son, Émile Gauguin was a recognised artist.
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Toward the end of his life, he spent ten years in French Polynesia.