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The Voulez-Vous Project: Where we celebrate undiscovered Australian artists.

 

Welcome to Mamamia’s art endeavour, the Voulez-Vous Project. Every week we celebrate emerging artists, designers, illustrators, creators and women who knit using their vaginas. (Kidding. Maybe.)

Our aim: to help the internet become a slightly more beautiful, captivating, or thought-provoking place by making art accessible. To find out more about the Voulez-Vous project, click hereClick here to see all the previous Voulez-Vous posts.

Think back to your old family photos. In big albums that are falling apart, plastered on walls, shoved in cupboards to be looked at sporadically. They’re important to us, sure. But to Andrea Sinclair, they inspire her.

Andrea is an incredible artist, originally from Canada. She studied art in the 80s, but gave it up and only rejoined the art world in 2007. Flash forward just seven years, and she’s a finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize show.

“The inspiration for my work initially came from my lifelong love of old family photos,” Andrea told Mamamia.

“I decided that I wanted to keep some of [my family’s] captured moments in my paintings. I love how beautiful everyone seemed… it was so romantic. I know some of the real stories from back then and that everything wasn’t always so beautiful and there have been some sad eventualities, but I still think about who they were then and what their dreams were for the future.”

Drawing faces, of which she is known for, are her passion.

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Artwork by Andrea Sinclair

 

“Faces are intriguing, full of mystery. We all ready faces in our own way; make up our own stories about the person we are viewing,” she said.

Her current muse is her son. He has been the subject of her portraiture for the last year. Her painting inspiration comes from portrait artists like Lucian Freud and Rembrandt and Australian artists like Ben Quilty and Jenny Sages.

“My muses have predominantly been family members, but also many complete strangers, which is challenging and exciting.”

Andrea wants the people who buy her work to get lost within the painting.

“My work cherishes the beauty and mystery of the human subject. It aims to leave a sense of mystery that keeps you looking at it and never fully answering the question about who they are, possibly leading you to a different conclusion on a different day, depending on how you feel.”

Click through the gallery below to see more of Andrea’s work.

To see Andrea’s work, you can find her website here or her Facebook here.

Do you know an artist (or are YOU an artist) who creates beautiful or thought-provoking work and whom you think should be featured on Mamamia’s Voulez-Vous Project? Send an email to info@mamamia.com.au