On Friday Staffordshire Living’s Chrissie Woodward went along to meet up and coming artist Charmaine Chaudry. Charmaine is an emerging freelance portrait, landscape, and abstract artist, selling original canvas art and prints.
If the surname rings a bell it is probably because she is the youngest daughter of Mo Chaudry, famous for being the Staffordshire based entrepreneur behind the M club, Waterworld and M group brands. And when it comes to creative entrepreneurial sprint, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Whilst some offspring of successful parents may decide to coast through life hanging on to the coat tails of Mum and Dad, this is not the case with Charmaine and her two siblings.
On meeting Charmaine, I was immediately struck by her warm friendly and engaging personality. One thing I was quite curious to understand was how and why Charmaine decided to become an artist in the first place. Having graduated in 2019 from Kings university London with a degree in modern languages it seems quite a departure to pursue the dream of becoming a commercially successful artist, having sold her works across over 30 countries including the USA , Europe and Singapore.
She explained that whilst she had always painted, she originally thought it would be a good idea to qualify in interior design. Charmaine followed her degree with studying course in in the subject. During this time, she became more and more interested in painting and started to sell them initially to family and friends, organically this grew into a full -fledged business gaining sales and commissions along the way and developing her website and social media, which proved to a great news for her sales.
Following a move to accompany her fiancé to Oxford, Charmaine started to also diversify into teaching, classes and workshops to form CC’s Hidden Art club, which she initially began in her living room. During this period mainly because of the pandemic, Charmaine was able to really focus on gaining her inspiration and developing her style.
Charmaine was able to really focus on gaining her inspiration and developing her style.
We wanted to find out a bit more about what is the behind the inspiration for the business and the art she produces at Charmaine Chaudry designs
During her time in Oxford she was shortlisted for Young Artist Award and exhibited at Oxford Art Society’s annual exhibition and was also invited to exhibit at The Wychwood art gallery https://www.wychwoodart.com/?price_from=&price_to=&artwork-type=any&styles=any&keyword=charmaine&post_type=product&s=search to check out her paintings for sale there
She also exhibits her work on singulart an international online gallery based in Paris
https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/charmaine-chaudry-32895?ref=ts
In addition, her art has been featured in publications such as World of Interiors Magazine and House & Garden. Her distinctive impressionist compositions most often created with oils are now available on her website. https://www.charmainechaudrydesigns.com/
Now based in Liverpool with her own studio, exhibition space and home of CC’s Hidden Art club , she is attracting a younger people who want to learn how to paint.
Charmaine is now on her way to great success.
She was one of many wildcards in one heat as part of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year
Our advice is to watch this space, she already has some collectors who are buying up her work.
- If you had to summarise you and your art in a sentence, what would it be?
“I’d like to think that my art and I are vibrant, romantic, relatable and full of life!”
- What is the greatest inspiration behind your art?
“It’s hard to choose one inspirational idea and I’m not sure it’s ever super clear why people are drawn to certain topics. However, I would say I’m inspired by light and how it changes a space, how colours change by light and temperature. I love capturing a specific atmosphere and for me that is generated by light. As well as this, I am inspired by the feelings of nostalgia and the “exotic”. My dual heritage of England and Pakistan is inherent to this as I feel a pull towards both classically English nostalgic scenes as well as towards Pakistan, a place that is contrastingly warm and romantic but distant to my daily life
- What was your journey into getting into the medium of Art you specialise in?
”Painting specifically is relatively new to me, I picked it up about three years ago but I’ve always been an artist in the sense of drawing and creatively expressing myself. I started painting oil portraits, I think this helped train my representational skills as well as understanding a new medium. This slowly moved to landscapes. The first couple of years of frequent painting I just taught myself what technically worked but it wasn’t until this last year, where I gained confidence in what art means to me and what I wanted to portray, that I moved towards a more impressionistic style.”
- What has been the biggest obstacle for you creatively and how were you able to overcome this?
“My biggest obstacle and biggest motivation is being overly aware of progress. I’m sure different artists work differently but making this my full-time job has helped to give me the drive to create every day. However, on the other side of the coin, sometimes I get side-tracked by how many paintings I’m selling, how my Instagram is growing, what if people don’t like this painting and it doesn’t ever sell. I do enjoy the business aspect to my work but it can become draining emotionally and creatively.
- Where do you see yourself in 2 year’s time?
“I hope to be part of an artist community. I started working as an artist during Covid, so I really have spent most of my artistic life working from my flat, so getting out and meeting others in the field and being inspired by them would be a breath of fresh air!
Mostly though, I hope to feel more confident as a ‘professional artist’, imposter syndrome is a constant battle, and hopefully that will be a little less with two more years of amazing experience under my belt!”
For more information and to begin your collection go to https://www.charmainechaudrydesigns.com/ for more information
