Tea and Cake with Gracie featuring Jeanne-Marie Webb

Hello Friends! Welcome to a series we run on the blog called: Tea & Cake with Gracie :) My awesome friend and colleague Gracie Howle interviews inspiring artists and posts the interviews (including some free offers not published elsewhere before) here on the blog every 2 months or so. I love to create art and bring amazing artists & people together in my classes, in person and on social media. I want to help bring more exposure to some of the amazing artists out there! Today Gracie’s interviewing Jeanne-Marie Webb. Make sure you check out Jeanne-Marie’s awesome giveaway and free video tutorial and art print downloads below. Jeanne-Marie’s giving away one spot on {Held}Captive (valued at $95!)  – PLUS one reader will win one of Jeanne-Marie’s gorgeous sling bags in one of her Tea Bag Girls designs! Tam xoxo

Read previous Tea and Cake with Gracie Artist Interviews by clicking on artist’s name: Kathy Glynn | Donna Mulholland | Wendy Brightbill | Whitney Freya | Violette Clark | Melissa Dinwiddie | Tascha Parkinson | Susana Tavares | Lynn Whipple | Karine Bossé | Jenny Grant | France Papillon | Jenny Wentworth | Kristin Dudish | Rachael Rice | Angela Kennedy (Pennystamper) | Andrea Gomoll |

Happy happy March lovely friends! Today I’m interviewing the wonderful  Jeanne-Marie Webb :) Jeanne-Marie’s giving away one spot on her awesome {Held}Captive Class (valued at $95!)  – PLUS one reader will win one of Jeanne-Marie’s gorgeous sling bags in one of her Tea Bag Girls designs! :) Read more and join in below! :) Much love, light and blessings to you dear friend :) Gracie x

1. Welcome Jeanne-Marie! Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.

My name is Jeanne-Marie Webb and I am currently living in Cape Town, South Africa with my husband and two beautiful teenage daughters. We live just outside the city in an old 1920’s quirky home and we are so beautifully placed to the various parts of our life… school and university, work and airport. No matter where we stand we are surrounded by beautiful views of our mountain and sea.  We really do live in a beautiful part of the world.

When I’m not full time #inmystudio,  I am working in a film production office.  I am a freelance film production accountant and have been in the film industry for almost 25 years.

Jeanne-Marie’s Giveaway!

Jeanne-Marie’s giving away one spot on her awesome {Held}Captive Class (valued at $95!)

Join me and journey with me (on the {Held}Captive Class) as we create and find our tender pieces together, through the imagery and stories buried within us and help them find their way onto our canvases, into our journals and into our clay. – Jeanne-Marie Webb

One reader will win this Jeanne-Marie Webb sling bag!

…beautifully handmade, lined and with a long handle to sling across your body for comfort.  The size of the printed image is 12″ x 12″ digitally printed on CottonTwirl and sewed onto a 100% Organic Cotton Bag 200gsm with Juco Webbing Sling and base of bag.

*GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED *
*GIVEAWAY WINNERS ANNOUNCED*
Thank you to everyone for joining in the giveaway, we loved reading your lovely comments! Here are the randomly drawn winners, congratulations!

One spot on Jeanne-Marie’s awesome {Held}Captive Class goes to Donna Jones
who said:

One Jeanne-Marie Webb sling bag goes to DianneT
who said:

Jeanne-Marie’s Freebie Offers!

Check out the inspirational video Jeanne-Marie created for us:

Click the ‘play button’ to watch this video or click on the review link here: Review Link

Jeanne-Marie’s giving away the 3 gorgeous downloadable prints below! :) (Pls note these prints are to use and share for personal use only and, if you’re reposting online or on social media, we’d appreciate it if you include a reference link to Jeanne-Marie’s site: www.jeannemarieart.com. Thanks for understanding!). Download and print out the high resolution version of these prints by right-clicking on the image and choosing ‘save target as’ / ‘download linked file as’ or by downloading from the links:

aPrintJeanneMarieWebb.JPG | bPrintJeanneMarieWebb.JPG | cPrintJeanneMarieWebb.JPG

Learn more about Jeanne-Marie in the following interview:

2. ​Your clay dolls and sculptures are so gorgeous! Please can you talk to us a bit about those and how you got into them?

Thank you so much. Well my very first introduction to paper clay was when I took a Santos Doll class on Jeanne Oliver’s teaching platform with some close friends. I wasn’t very good at it but there was something about it that intrigued me. I then went on to take a few extra online clay classes and bought some workshop books on sculpting simply. And I continued to dabble on my own.

It was actually at the start of 2016, I was in a particularly low painting phase that I actively started working with the PaperClay everyday. For me it was a form of creative play, where I could experiment and not take myself too seriously. The creative play was good for my soul – it was light, playful and kind of nurturing at the same time. I had no idea how soulful each one would come out. They seemed to capture and hold my own emotions and moods. They were kind of grounding and mother naturery and earthly and they just spoke straight to my heart and to the heart of many people. That was a delightful surprise. Sometimes I would be woken up in the middle of the night with a SoulBearer on my heart and mind. Or when I was in the shower. That had never happened to me before.

It was a real journey of learning and trial and error and testing and playing. It took me around two years to find my own way and to finally pluck up the courage to paint them and it was in painting them that I found their stories. I really do recommend this practice. “Serious art is born from serious play” – Julia Cameron. I’ve tested it.

3​.​ You say:​ ‘I have been dabbling with art for a good number of years; however, my art started changing once I made ‘creativity’ a daily way of life.‘ Can you talk to us a bit about that; what your daily routine/ way of life looks like?

I really was in love with the notion of being a creative person. I have been drawn to it most of my life. I dabbled with art and going for lessons once a week and it was nice. And I did various things more like creative hobbies. But I knew I wanted more but I wasn’t sure how to attain it. I wanted creativity to be my “default setting” and not something I was trying to achieve or just thinking about. It was when I was doing one of Julia Cameron’s books where she speaks about keeping bank hours doing your art practice. This resonated so deeply with me. I will never forget the day – it was on the 1st June, 6 years ago… I jumped out of bed (in an exaggerated way). And I said out loud to my family “today going forward, I’m going to keep bank hours doing art”. Whether it was painting, prepping canvas’ or blogging. It had to be art orientated. And I just started doing that and I haven’t stopped yet.

I love daily project work. In 2015 I did my first year of 1FaceaDay and in 2016 I did my 1FaceaDay on Teabags. There was so much growth that happened for me in showing up daily and it was a wonderful way to track my progress. The daily repetition is what improves your skills. Doing these projects daily really changed me as an artist and changed the way I worked and painted. It was really a wonderful gift that I gave myself.

Currently my days are starting off at around 5.30am, I am doing my morning pages/ writing. And then after the morning school rush and chores I settle down into my studio. I usually always have some kind of project on the go. Either I’m taking classes and I am doing homework and doing lessons. Or I am I am filming/ teaching myself. I am always working on something. The past few years I’ve had big projects on the go and for the first time in a while, I’m going a little slower and refilling my creative tank. When I am filming, I work to a very strict filming and editing schedule.  But my favourite thing is to have my mornings to myself to just have the freedom to create and paint. New things are always birthed when we give ourselves the time to go deeper.

4.​ ​ I LOVE your ‘Tiny Bags of Love’! (HERE and HERE). Can you talk to us a bit about those and why, when and how​ ​you were drawn to creating your art on teabags?

Thank you. Discovering my Tea Bag Girls was really a happy accident that I officially stumbled upon in 2014. I had joined a group of ladies who were doing 100faces. The aim was to work quite small. I had no idea what I was going to use to do this project. I was rummaging through my ephemera box when I came across an old tattered Rooibos Tea bag. It was the perfect size I was looking for. It was old but perfect. I gessoed my substrate and I did my first little portrait and it surprisingly worked.  It had an overwhelming response on social media. I decided to continue to do my 100Faces on teabags. It was just a delightful thing that happened in my life.

At the end of 2015, the first year I did my 1FaceaDay project, the month of December I did Tea Bag Girls and again, I had an overwhelming response on social media so I decided I was going to continue the project in 2016 but do the whole year instead. It was a massive undertaking but I knew I wanted my year long journey to lead me to my very first exhibition.

I love how unassuming and humble the teabag is yet strong and tough at the same time. I love that I got to paint women on them, it seemed to be a good pairing. It was a beautiful journey and it changed me and my life quite a bit. I am not sure me and my teabags will ever be done with each other.

5. What’s on your art table right now?

I started off 2018 a little slower than usual and I’m allowing myself the space to breath deeply and recover from the big art years I’ve had. So I’m working with the humble pencil at the moment. My girls bought me a beautiful Leather handmade and bound journal with Italian paper inside for Christmas. It’s delicious and I have been slowing filling it with graphite drawings. I have around 10 unfinished SoulBearers on my table to finish painting but I’m working on one at the moment for my {Held}Captive class. I finally know how I want to finish her story. I have some unfinished paintings to work on too. I started a painting on the 1st of January that I called “Interwoven”. It’s filled with lots of beautiful women. It might take me months to finish them – it was an ambitious undertaking but it’s kind of suiting where I’m at, at the moment. In between life, love and everything else, I’m getting to play with my photography… I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to cameras and this is a great source of play for me. I’m currently doing 365TinyCaptures where I’m taking a pic everyday of something I’m grateful for. It’s a visual feast for my soul.

Thank you Jeanne-Marie for sharing and being here with us! You can find out more about Jeanne-Marie on her website: jeannemarieart.com or through the links:

Site: jeannemarieart.com
FB: facebook.com/jeannemariewebb
IG: instagram.com/jeannemarieart
Twitter: twitter.com/JeanneMarieArts

Want to learn from Jeanne-Marie? Jeanne-Marie Webb is teaching on Life Book with us this year!