Artist and Founder, Lucy Clare Spooner Studios

I'm Clare Spooner, and I'm the principal founder and everything else for Lucy "Clare" Spooner studios, which is my own firm. So I am an artist, I'm a painter, and I'm also an interior designer. So it can be anything from doing a full-gut renovation, where they've bought a new home or an apartment, and they want it torn down to the studs. I would love a project like that right now. But the reality for me, starting out, is somebody needs a bedroom refresh, a living room refresh. They want fun wallpaper up on their daughter's room, that kind of things. So I scheme, order, find the subcontractors and put it all together. If if entails looking at fabrics and looking at different colors and things, then I bring a bunch of materials, spread them out and do kind of a "yes/no" meeting where, "What are your first impulses, your first reactions?" I mean, "Do you like this, do you not like this?" And then I put it together in a little Powerpoint where everything is in one slide, so they can get an idea of what the room would look like. So I break up my painting into two sections which is my studio time and my practice, and then I have my commissions. I really just love to paint. And so, that's where my practice is really important. Very soothing. I started painting, again, when I was out of college because I needed an outlet. I needed to get away from the crazy hustle-bustle of New York, and just get it out on paper. And I've kept it up and I'm making a living on it, which is magical. The commission is, you want your dog painted and I paint the dog from a photo. Usually it's animals, alma maters or houses, children, families. My practice side that's, like I said, usually in oil, but often also watercolor where I'll do studies. I'll travel in the South of France, I go to Venice. Been going to Venice the last few years to paint, which is a big painting city in art history. So those trips, I might go for a week or two and just paint the whole day. And those are great. And that's often in oil, but I also do watercolor sketches before and after and during, whatever. And there I'm doing landscapes. If I can get my hands on a model, I'd love to paint a model. I try not to paint from photographs for oils, but I do sometimes anyway. Nothing wrong with it, I just find it static.