June 23, 2022

Meet the Artists: Liz & Kate Pope

Liz and Kate Pope, otherwise known as 'The Pope Twins' describe their sibling relationship more like 'best friends'. Living only a stone's throw away from each other and working together five days a week, drawing and collaging over cups of tea! In light of their new collection of artworks, we wanted to find out more about their unique creative process.

Preview of artwork 'Brighton Band Stand' by Liz & Kate Pope

How do you plan the artwork you’re going to create?

With paintings, we plan the artwork by hunting out any photographs we may have taken from any trips in the past - or we research the area and then begin sketching.

We often get together a few hand-drawn pencil scribbles to see which composition will work the best. We sometimes even scan in the initial drawings, print out in various scales and piece them back together.

Can you take us through your artistic process?

We then take the sketch, sometimes we will enlarge it to size and pin the sketch on the studio wall to follow as a guide.

A background is often painted first, in either white, for a base coat, or a soft pale colour.

Kate likes to add collages at an early stage too, building up decorative layers. Kate's work generally feels more 'surface pattern', you will often find patterned papers hidden in her work.

Liz's work is a little more illustrative so more line work than collage - Liz also tends to focus on the dark and light areas within in a painting, working across the piece with colour shades.

Rough sketch of Polperro artwork piece in progress.

Do you ever or have you ever disagreed on any aspects of artwork?

We are twin sisters, so the odd disagreement might happen on the odd occasion!! haha

You create many different types of landscapes for your artwork such as. Coastal, abstract e.g. Hope or, cityscapes. What are your favourite type of scenes to construct?

Kate loves to create coastal scenes, especially Cornwall. Harbour scenes, with little quirky boats and buildings.

Liz's enjoys city scenes, playing around with composition and adding lots of illustrative elements.

SHOP LIZ & KATE POPE ART >>

Kate – I understand you go to charity shops and look in books to search interesting patterns and textures, what is the most unusual/ amusing thing you’ve found to use on a painting?

I once found a little girls floral dress in the charity shop sale basket, I loved the pattern so much, I bought it home, scanned it in and printed in paper form to collage into my work!

Is that part of a raffle ticket in your new Perranporth artwork?

Those are small magazine cuttings, we save lots of tiny bits of coloured paper from magazines, newspapers, leaflets...in fact the family saves them for us too, so we are overloaded!

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Liz - do you have a set colour palette in mind when you start a piece of artwork?

Yes I would normally have an idea on colour, but it's surprising how a painting can take on a different colour direction further down the line, it's what makes painting so exciting, it never turns out as planned - well, not mine anyway!!

How long does your work take to create on average?

An A2 size painting would normally take around 3-4 days, but we are often working on a few different projects at once

What’s an art tool you can’t live without?

Liz loves her 0.5 mm mechanical pencil - her 'clicky pencil' as she calls it!

Kate loves her sand paper, sanding over paint layers to create a lovely texture, bringing out other colours underneath.

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Your artwork is very unique, are there any artists that have inspired your style?

Liz has always loved Hockney's work, also Elizabeth Blackadder and Warhol.

Kate will often be inspired by visiting art markets, gift shops too, so hers is more of a mixed bag!

What does your current workspace look like? Do you have a studio where you work or is it at one of your homes?

We mainly work in a converted bedroom/art space at Liz's house - but Kate is chief scanner, she also has her own small set up at home.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up?

We don't tend to have that many exhibitions at the moment as we're normally busy with art commissions and briefs - which we love!

SEE MORE OF THE POPE TWINS ARTWORK >>

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