Thinking of changing or developing your artistic practice? Artist and former Brushstrokes Courses’ student, Steven Trevillion shares his experience on changing his direction as an abstract painter to a portrait artist following on from our 2021 Beginners Portrait Course.

It was just after Christmas 2020 that everything changed for me. Until then, if anyone had asked, I would have said that I was an abstract artist working mainly with collage and mixed media through processes dictated largely through random events.

Starting with large-scale abstract paintings I had spent the last ten years slowly developing my own vision and approach to art. Over that time there had been changes but they could all be seen as logical developments from what had gone before. While my art had never been wildly popular, I had had some modest success with group and solo exhibitions in both London and Cumbria (where I moved in 2016), and the work had sold steadily if not in any great quantity.

Why things changed so suddenly I still do not know. What I do know is that the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns caused my creative juices to dry up. I found I could not motivate myself to do any more of my mixed media work, even though I had just had a successful solo exhibition at a local gallery.

In order to make something (anything!) happen I decided to try something new. I thought that if I took myself completely out of my comfort zone, I might start to be able to work again. It was in this spirit that I decided to do Laura’s online portraiture course. But the whole experience did much more for me than that.

Laura turned out to be an inspiring teacher. I enjoyed the whole process of starting again as a beginner, and to my surprise I discovered that I was starting to really enjoy both the online sessions and Laura’s ‘homework’. Soon I began to realise I was making significant progress in this new world of portrait painting.

I spent more and more time in the studio trying to put into practice what I had learnt and gradually began to find my own way of working. I followed up the ‘beginners’ course with a series of online tutorials which helped me to develop a specific oil portrait through the various stages that Laura helped me to identify.

After that, I began to work on my own across a range of different media and I have not looked back. I have just completed a large self-portrait which I think is my best work so far and I intend to go on to do more like this in the future.

What continues to fascinate me about portraiture is the possibility it offers of engaging in a prolonged meditation on what it means to be a unique human being, an experience which I try to communicate to anyone looking at the finished artwork.

It is always hard to draw lessons from one person’s experience relevant to other people, but if I was going to draw one it would be that you can always change what you do. It is never too late.

Steven Trevillion

To find out more about Steven Trevillion, see more of his artwork or keep up-to-date with his work & exhibitions, use the link below to visit his website: