I’m Lauren, I live in Edinburgh, Scotland (I’ve lived here all my life and still adore it!). I also work as an English & maths tutor for children and a young person’s mentor in high schools through an educational charity.

Do you have a favourite artist?:

It would be so difficult to choose, I would have to say no, but I am particularly drawn (pardon the pun) to Gwen John’s early work, Käthe Kollwitz’s drawings and prints, Holbein’s Tudor portraits, and the semi-abstract paintings of Vanessa Bell. So quite a mixed bag! Also who doesn’t love Van Gogh and Sargent.

What is your own artwork like?:

I mainly paint portraits in oils and a figurative style. You can see some of my own work below and on the Folio Tutoring Instagram page. I also enjoy drawing and painting animals, and sketching places when travelling.

Did you study art at university?:

I completed a foundation diploma in art & design at Edinburgh College, then decided to study English literature at the University of Stirling, while keeping my art going on the side by staying creative and attending life drawing workshops. I then studied a Masters in creative writing before circling back to visual art during the pandemic when I established Folio Tutoring, and here we are today!

Have you had exhibited any of your work?:

I have had paintings shown at exhibitions in the Mall Galleries in London: the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition (2021) and the Society of Women Artists Annual Open Exhibition (2024). In 2021, I won the Brave Fine Art Gallery’s ‘Portrait Artist of the Past’ prize, and in 2014 I appeared as a contestant on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year.

What or who made you want to become an artist and art tutor?:

I feel grateful to have always had support from my family to make art and work towards becoming an artist. I grew up with my mum especially encouraging me to be creative (she herself having attended art college as a mature student), while my dad supported this also without being artistic himself by his own admission, instead inspiring in me a love of books and film.

     I began tutoring children in English and maths in 2020, and this coupled with the ensuing pandemic inspired me to firstly focus back on drawing and painting and secondly to put my own classes out there and see what would happen. Initially, I had no expectation that I would receive any inquiries, but once lesson requests began to roll in, I soon found that I had the start of something exciting. I was pleasantly surprised that so many people signed up, with students ranging from 6 years old to sixty-something, and that so many students stayed on with me long-term to take weekly classes, so I continued to develop Folio Tutoring into what it is today.

What do you like most about being a tutor?:

Teaching is the best way to learn, it’s said, and I now completely agree, since I have become a better artist myself in the process of tutoring others. However, I have found that the most rewarding aspect of running my classes has been the enjoyment, inspiration and confidence boosts that have blossomed as a result. I initially saw this as a byproduct, but now I see that this is on par with, if not more valuable than helping people to develop technical artistic skills.

What do you think of traditional art education?:

I decided not to apply for to art college after gaining my diploma, because I had gathered from the experiences of others that the emphasis is on you exploring your own style, with little in the way of learning traditional drawing and painting techniques. There are art ateliers where the opposite is true and the focus is on perfecting methods to draw and paint like the old masters. However, this did not suit me either for the same reason that it is too one-sided, the best-case scenario being to balance these strategies. This is exactly what I aim to do in my classes: teach technical skills while guiding students to experiment and explore their own style. I am a believer in the saying that you must learn the rules to break them. Balancing this building-and-breaking cycle is key to being a great artist.

What do you do in your free time?:

I don’t have much of it, I won’t lie! But I love film, being a keen cinema-goer (anything but gory horror). Having studied literature, I love to read and write. My favourite books of all time are Gone with the Wind, Middlemarch, and One Day. I also enjoy walking, visiting new cities, and quizzes & puzzles.

If you could give aspiring artists one piece of advice, what would it be?:

The most inspiring piece of advice I have gathered is to cultivate your own life story. Think of the many quests to figure out if artworks are fakes or originals. It matters because the true value of art is in the story of the person behind it, who inspires others across generations because of how they saw the world and how they expressed it.