Welcome. I am an artist based in Northamptonshire, UK, and I paint in oil paint and oil pastel. Stories are important to me and I paint the human form because I wish to tell human stories. I am inspired by our beauty, inside and out, our vulnerability, and the emotional joy and physical pleasure we're able to gain either alone or from intimacy with other consenting adults. I believe the very state of enjoying what it means to be human deserves to be celebrated. I am also inspired by colour and texture, the beauty of living things, and my own imagination.
Artwork for sale can be viewed on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/SHYeomans
I'm on Instagram as shyeomans
Galleries
Bio
I was born in 1984 and have loved making art since I could hold a crayon. My parents were both very supportive of my artistic endeavours, and Christmas and birthdays often came with new art supplies from them and from other relatives. As a child my big passion was animals; I just loved seeing them, interacting with them, reading about them, and drawing them. My first 12 years or so of life were spent diligently copying animals from my wildlife and bird books, and copying such images as those found on the covers of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.
During my teenage years I developed an interest in fantasy books and, because of this, I learned to comfortably draw from my imagination. The Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books gave me fuel and the years spent studying my wildlife books gave me a good grounding for drawing and painting dragons, hellhounds, demons, sea monsters, and other fantasy creatures. I also discovered heavy metal music, Dungeons and Dragons computer games, and the books and films of Clive Barker. These also heavily influenced what I was painting at the time, and these are all things I still love over 25 years later.
Despite my parents' best efforts to encourage me in academia as well as art, I was remarkably unremarkable at school but somehow I got by with little effort on my part. Although I had almost no interest in anything that wasn't art, reading, animals, or heavy metal I managed to leave school with an averagely decent set of GCSEs.
I left school at 17 to attend college, where I completed an AVCE (a full time, two year course equivalent to two A-Levels) in Art and an accompanying A-Level in Fine Art. I struggled in college for two reasons. Firstly, with my background of hyper-realism and my lack of exposure to anything else, I found it difficult to see the value in non-realist art and a lot of that which the tutors tried to teach me fell on stubbornly deaf ears. Secondly, during this time I was also suffering with a two year long episode of extremely poor mental health, which included some quite horrifying schizophrenic symptoms that required some pretty strong medications and support twice weekly from a professional psychatrist. I managed to pass with good grades but, because of the toll this took, by the time I had finished college I decided to go straight into employment rather than on to University, and I worked full time at a pub for a year. In May 2004 I secured a job involving scanning and digital restoration of images.
In my late twenties and early thirties I kept a Harris' hawk and I bred mice and exhibited them at National Mouse Club shows. Caring for my hawk and my mice took up most of my free time during these years, but I would draw for pleasure occasionally. In 2013 I began painting with oil pastels and this lit a fire under me. I started working much harder and much more regularly at my art, pushing myself and my practise to grow and evolve. I found myself appreciating a much wider variety of art, moving away from the admiration of the strictly realistic and looking more for expression. It was also around that time that I became interested in painting people - because I became more interested in people.
I have found my own experiences with mental health issues and the lessons I've learned have given me a philosophical mindset that I truly treasure. To try and understand the world and myself, I read many different ideologies and pathways. Stoicism and Objectivism sing to me the most; Stoicism for its teachings of acceptance and positivity in life, and Objectivism for its ideals of independance and personal responsibility.
Although mental health issues have dogged me throughout my life (though fortunately nowhere near as badly as those two years in college) as an adult I have learned over time how to keep my mental health in tip top condition, and one of the ways this is accomplished is through art. Through art I can explore myself and my philosophies. My paintings tend to be created from imagination and my paintings of the figure come from a place where I am exploring emotion, relationships, and mental health. While I'm painting, my thoughts are totally fixated within that little world appearing on the paper in front of me. Stories evolve as the shapes appear, emotions direct my colour choices.
