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Alexia Sinclair is an award winning Australian photographic and digital artist. Her photographic and illustrative artworks are housed in important art collections throughout Australia. An exhibiting artist since the early 90’s, Sinclair’s distinct style is celebrated in magazines throughout the world. Sinclair is now a full time artist who focuses her energy on producing and exhibiting her fine art as well as working on campaigns and commissions, including working as a digital artist in NYC.

http://www.alexiasinclair.com

You list on your website the people that inspire you, is that a growing list?

That list only just scratches the surface of the creative's who me. I'm constantly amazed by imagination and skill and I'm inspired by something new almost every day.

Watching the post-production video ofMacbeth for NZ Opera gives insight into the amount of details thatgo in to producing such an amazing image. Is the final composition totally pre-planned or do some elements change as are work?

Every single artwork is different and they evolve differently. In pre-production I typically research and storyboard to such a degree that I have a solid image I'm working towards producing. Off course, an image will always evolve in post­production, just as it does on a shoot because it's a totally organic process.

You can see in Macbeth that I have intentionally shot the characters and props on location to cut down on the post-production time and in this case, I'm simply enhancing in Photoshop, rather than manipulating, camping and illustrating.

Were NZ Opera a fun client to work with, and did they give you room to create your own vision?

NZ Opera selected me to produce their campaigns as an artist (rather than a practitioner) and this involves art directing the campaigns myself. Working on a campaign from conception until birth gives you a certain amount of control as a creative.

NZ Opera wanted to produce campaign imagery that would catch the eye of youthful audiences to entice this new demographic into audiences whilst remaining faithful to their loyal older audiences. Capturing both audiences' imaginations is tricky, particularly as you're dealing with Opera boards, tight budgets, and your client is 2000 km away. However, my introduction to this job was over coffee with the director of NZ Opera who flew in to Sydney to meet me. He is a divine man filled with enthusiasm for my art, whose arms flap around wildly whilst drawing you in to the saga of whichever opera he's describing. Now how could that not be fun?!

Which of your artworks has taken the longest to produce and what was it that made it take longer than others?

Any of the twelve artworks from my series titled 'The Regal Twelve' could be considered as the longest to produce. They are heavily layered and laboured works that strive to push the boundaries digital manipulation. I produced this series over a three-year period and as I always considered this to be a series (rather than individual artworks) I continued reworking each artwork as I evolved as an artist over this extended period. I produced this series for my Master of Fine Arts.

Are your techniques evolving the more you use Photoshop, and does that drive your style into different areas?

I'm naturally evolving as an artist regardless of the tools I use in my trade. Certainly I can train my hands and imagination to get better and stronger but my evolution is related to everything I'm going through in life as an ordinary person too. Artists are always strengthening their skills and imagination but my creative evolution is very much a psychological state that considers the many things that inspire me, devastate me, drag me off my path and rollercoaster me back to creative bliss.

Apart from visual inspiration does music inspire you, and if so what's your number #1 music recommendation to get the creative juices flowing?

I'm not one of these artists who have ten top favourite photographers and walks around with blinkers on. Quite the opposite, inspiration comes from everywhere for me. Seriously, clouds, wind and nature can sweep me in to a creative frenzy!

Music is one of the biggest transporters of imagination, and for me, music can immediately send me into a creative trance. I don't have a number #1 music recommendation as it changes with my moods but for soulful work like my illustration work, I tend to move towards dark music with classical instruments such as strings and piano, for repetitive retouching I like a bit of trance, for costuming some jazz. Totally depends on my mood!

In your work do you picture a life outside the canvas for the characters to help you create their world inside the canvas?

As a narrative artist, I typically study pre-conceived characters, either from real life or the written page, as the subjects or characters of my artworks. Their lives are filled with events and symbols and they fall into specific periods and locations, so it's hard not to image their lives before I consider the artwork. I'm interested in considering all of these aspects and build a scenario in my imagination and this becomes the artwork I work towards producing.

How much research was needed for the Regal Twelve - is history an interest of yours?

'The Regal Twelve' is a series of twelve noble women from history, whose lives span over two thousand years and who ruled in different countries and in different ways and that's a lot of history to consider!! However, once you begin studying history, it's completely addictive and you feel compelled to know more and more.

To complicate this research, I was interested in incorporating the history offashion into each image as well as the symbols of their lives and reins. Even shooting the locations relating to their rein is a matter of researching castles and battles and travelling to these locations to shoot background plates. This research was constant throughout the three-year production period of this series. I'm currently working on the sequel series, a series containing twelve noble men throughout history, titled 'The Royal Dozen'. I began shooting the first background plate for Genghis Kahn on The Great Wall of China in 2007 and I'm in the thick of post-production on this series right now, ready to exhibit this series at the Australian Centre for Photography later this year. I'm still researching my final two characters...

Do you see more video and film work in your future?

Yes. We've begun video documenting a lot of my creative process because it's kind of arrogant to assume that people understand my process. This documentation includes video documentation of my shoots, costume making, travel and my post­production. People are amazed to learn about all of my pre-production research and design and this documented process is clearly something that interests people. People also love to see what goes on at shoots, what kind of lighting set up I use, and how I direct my models. It's great for people to see how this image evolves from the raw shoot through post-production as I record all of this too.

Film, that's a whole other kettle offish and I've certainly dabbled and know how incredibly time consuming producing a film can be and my art-making is already incredibly time consuming. Still, I'd have to say that yes, film is on the cards for the future. Commercially, it's really nice for a client to have a unified vision of a campaign from stills to moving imagery and I look forward to moving in to this next stage of multi creativity. Yes, film is something that we talk about a lot, as far as creative endeavours are concerned too. This week I was shooting in a grove of autumn trees as yellow leaves fell around me. The magic was in this moment of movement, and although I try to infuse the energy of an active moment into my stills, some things can only truly be achieved in this moving moment.

One must evolve anyway...

Photographer and Digital Artist Alexia Sinclair gave us a very open and warm look into her life, including snapshots she’d taken as a child, dressing her brother David in costumes. Her flare for visual expression started at a young age. She was raised by “anarchist hippies” and later working for them as a chef to fund her work.

When describing her study in arts, Alexia revealed that she had mixed experiences with universities and colleges. Some stubborn opinions on what defined real art, and a reluctance to acknowledge the role of a computer. However she also felt that the knowledge forced upon her expanded her ability to draw and visualise her work. She remarked that “anything that you learn along the way is not in vain”.

In describing her style Alexia says her aim is to “produce fine art in a commercial arena”. Her influences include the Italian artist Carvaggio, admiring his style of working in a studio with one man light source. Her own inspiration is helped along by looking to mood boards of found imagery and taking walks to get her imagination growing and developing concepts. To achieve the contemporary approach to representing historical figures Sinclair grabs inspiration from Hollywood films, as she sees the same approach used.

Using examples from her Regal Twelve series, Alexia talked us through her process – sourcing contemporary references towards the subject she’s trying to depict, studying the relevant history and the extensive travelling involved to shoot those amazing backdrops. The travelling, equipment, costumes, models and all the other things that make a completed piece mean that Alexia’s craft does not come cheap.

It was for this reason that she worked as a chef in her parent’s restaurant. This, earning a travelling scholarship in her honours year and a Masters scholarship all combined to help her fund the 3 year project of The Regal Twelve. Alexia advises us that getting a scholarship is not easy work, sometimes taking months of paperwork. But that hard work and patience are what’s needed to help you progress. Self funded trips around the world are a constant part of Alexia’s life. The experiences and beauty she gets to see are not lost on Alexia, but she also points out that when everyone else is partying, she is downloading and filing images.

Alexia puts her all into her work and pushes herself to achieve the results she is after. Sometimes even surpassing her expectations. She told an anecdote that reflects this, where she took on a low paying commercial commission, shooting cars in and around the streets of New York City. Working to the point of nosebleed for a “short, horrible man” who pushed her further and further helped her realise that expanding your skills and pushing your belief in your abilities can help your work grow to the next level.

Although receiving massive recognition and a stack of awards (such as the Harpers Bazaar Canon Fashion Award), Sinclair’s Regal Twelve also brought her the criticism that she is a “neo-feminist man-beating wench”. In retort to this Alexia thought “why not do a series of kings too”, so in contrast to The Regal Twelve, Sinclair’s next major project is The Royal Dozen, showing at the Australian Centre of Photography later this year. Coincidentally, as Alexia followed Stephen Dupont in today’s program, her exhibition will be following his their also.

Since her parent’s restaurant closed Alexia has been taking on commercial retouching to keep her personal work funded. This has also given her the experience of working with a broad range of hair and make-up artists and stylists, inspiring her even further. She shows examples of this and other commercial work such as her Canon ad campaigns. The importance of taking on commercial work is illustrated when Alexia says her art has only started to pay for itself in the last couple of years.

Although working yourself to breakdown and the point of organ failure (“turns out I was OK, I just had to start eating and sleeping”) is not recommended by Alexia, her strongest advice is to push your boundaries and put your all into your work.