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 at Kev’s Class and as a high-school mentor with a charity called Light Up Learning.

Do you have a favourite artist?:

It’s so difficult to choose, but I particularly like Gwen John’s early work, Käthe Kollwitz’s self portraits, Holbein’s Tudor portraits, and the paintings of the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Not to mention Van Gogh and Sargent.

How would you describe your own art style?:

I mainly paint portraits with oil paint and in a figurative style. You can see some of my own pieces below and on Instagram (@laurenr4444). I also enjoy drawing and painting animals, and sketching places I travel to.

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 classes. I then studied a Masters in creative writing before circling back to visual arts during the pandemic, which is when I established Folio Tutoring.

Has any of your work been exhibited?:

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. In 2014, I was a contestant on the TV show Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year. Eleven years later, I appeared on the show again.

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

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

     I began tutoring English and maths in 2020. This, coupled with the ensuing pandemic, inspired me to focus back on drawing and painting as well as to try establishing my own classes. I had no expectation that I would receive any inquiries initially, 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 to sixty-something years of age. 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 now with experience I completely agree. 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 witnessing the enjoyment, inspiration and confidence boosts that have blossomed in my students 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 art 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 there is on you exploring your own style, with less in the way of learning traditional drawing and painting techniques. There are ateliers where the opposite is true and the focus is on perfecting methods of drawing and painting like the old masters. However, this did not suit me either for the same reason that it is too one-sided. So I decided that the best-case scenario, for myself at least, was 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 in order to break them and, therefore, this cycle of building and breaking is key to being a great artist.

What do you do in your free time?:

I won’t lie, I don’t have much of it! But I love films, being a keen cinema-goer (anything except 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 all the quests there have been to figure out if artworks are fakes or originals. It matters because the true value of a work of art does not lie in the image it presents or the way it was crafted but in the story behind it, the artist’s story.