First few basic questions, who are you, what are you doing, where are you coming from?
Hi, I’m Jenny, an independent artist and designer from the UK, now living in beautiful Amsterdam. Here I work from my home studio, making colourful handcrafted and digital collage illustrations for magazines, album art, book covers, surface pattern, zines, and other custom pieces and commissions. My background is as an illustrator and graphic designer, but more recently, I was encouraged by my enduring obsession with visual culture to start integrating collage into my portfolio – one of the most fun, rewarding developments of my creative career so far.
Your works are super vibrant and colorful, how would you describe your style? And how quickly did you find your ”style”?
I think I’m still finding my style – or, at least, it changes depending on circumstances, and I’m comfortable with that. The way I might approach an abstract mini, which I would create more organically, is different from a more conceptual larger-scale collage portrait piece, and my analogue work looks different to the pieces I create in Photoshop. I have a designer-trained mind – and a history as an illustrator – so if I have something I want to communicate more directly, I like to plan things out carefully. But if I want to create more instinctively, and be more naturally expressive in a fine art sort of way, the artworks do turn out differently; I like to experiment, and to me it makes sense that things like materials, scale, method and concept change the end piece. I think everything I’ve ever created has influenced my style in one way or another, so it’s an ongoing journey of discovery; though as my collage portfolio grows, I’m starting to recognise a poetic, storytelling thread running through it that I’m excited to explore.
In your works, what are the most important things/elements to yourself? Do you have certain things that you pay more attention to, like structure, colors, and shapes?
I’m often drawn to focus on colour first, and in that case, the composition will emerge from my efforts to center cool or warm tones or create areas of contrast, harmony, or balance. I love the contrast of crisp, straight edges with softly curved, carefully cut elements, or the soft, tactile fringes of torn paper. Increasingly, especially with more abstract pieces, I’m learning to pay more attention to the placement and flow of shapes; I’d like my work to be less fussy, more dynamic, and intuitive.
When you start a new piece, do you have a clear vision of where to start or what you are going to do?
It totally depends on what I’m making that day – for example, whether a series of minis, or a big conceptual piece. When I’m creating daily theme-based works over a longer period of time, as with Februllage or Collactober, I’ll look at the prompts and gather resources for each in advance, so I have materials for each day’s collage ready to go. Normally I’m not so organised, and instead, I’ll collect a bunch of resources together with a colour scheme, or inspired by a concept I want to explore and have them on my work table to use as I go.
While working on new artwork, when and how do you know it’s ready? Is it a clear or immediate moment?
I work quite slowly and thoughtfully, but I almost always have a moment with every artwork where it suddenly seems to come together. Then I’ll take a break (sometimes just ten minutes for a coffee, sometimes overnight, or longer) from that particular piece, and I’ll go back to it, and maybe I feel it needs more work – or maybe it looks ‘complete’ somehow. I’ve learned to trust those moments, and I’ve become much better at taking breaks for that reason. Otherwise, I have a tendency to go through endless iterations of the same collage, layered over and over, which isn’t the most efficient way to work! Sometimes I simply come up against a deadline, and at that point, it just has to be good enough.
Your works are vividly energetic, how much do your works take from you? How do you feel after you’ve finished work?
It completely depends on my confidence that day – how I’m feeling about my art, or how things are going in general. Some days are more successful than others, and although I’m sometimes disappointed with what I achieve, I do focus more on the process than finished pieces, which really helps. I find the handcrafting of analogue collages to be uniquely soothing, and the sensory experience of working with different vintage papers and textures can be really meditative, which means I often come away from my work table feeling better than when I arrived. I definitely escape into my work and use it to move through my thoughts and feelings, so in that sense, it’s very therapeutic. The artistic side of things is where I’m most at home – if I’ve spent the day engaging with small business or admin tasks, I find that really tiring.
What do you think are the best and worst things in collaging and the creative process?
For me, the biggest draw to collage is an attraction to curation: the act of bringing together disparate elements to make a coherent whole. It gives me inexplicable joy to gather together fragments from daily life, combine them with long-forgotten art books and other treasured supplies, and breathe new life into pieces made from materials that might normally go unnoticed or be discarded.
What I love as a whole about making art is the freedom I have (outside of client work) to create whatever I want, in any style I choose, and watch my skills and portfolio grow – alongside the joy of nurturing connections and community with other creative people. Being an independent artist can be painful, but it also does help that I can indulge my fascination in whatever I choose, and on the best days, it makes me endlessly happy.
The most difficult moments of my practice are during times when I have fewer clients, or maybe my passive income streams aren’t doing as well as they might be. I find the anxiety of that really tough, and it can cause a big drop in my confidence, and become a barrier to making new things. I’m also often really sad and angry about the world – free Palestine! – but I’m getting better at channeling that into my work in different ways, instead of letting it crush my creativity. I’m learning to trust the process, but sometimes it feels like the occasional deep insecurity is the cost of the freedom I have. I think it might be a lifelong journey.
Do you work on multiple pieces at the same time or simply focus on one?
Recently I’ve been obsessed with creating mini-pieces that fit into a series, so in that case, I’ll often work on multiple pieces at once, usually three or four. If I’m making a larger, stand-alone work, I normally focus only on one piece.
Can you name the song which reflects your work? And then, why that song? What kind of threads do you find between the song and your work?
That’s a really tough question, because I think different pieces have a different mood, which would naturally be reflected in a different genre or kind of song… late last year I made a couple of darker, more politically-charged pieces, which have different energy to more vibrant, decorative or abstract works. However – there’s a song by Poom, a French electro-pop duo, called ‘Les Voiles’, which is kind of simple but has a really wistful, synth-y dream-pop vibe to it. It’s a story about unfurling the sails of an imaginary boat and going dancing, on a carefree adventure to count the stars. It’s light and warm and dreamy but also a little bit choppy in a way, and has female-male vocal harmonies all the way through… it makes me think of colour, and moving forward, and going on a journey to new worlds. So maybe that’s it. Otherwise, you can find playlists I’ve made full of music that inspires me at jennylloyd.pictures/#/playlists.
If you should describe your art with one word, what would it be?
Hopeful.
Jenny Lloyd around the internet
Instagram: @jennyariane
Homepage: jennylloyd.pictures
Cara: @jennyariane
