By Shamsiya Hussainpoor
The Monbulk ‘Artist of the Year’ Sunny Dean Tudor made his debut solo exhibition over the weekend.
His exhibition titled ‘Eighteen’ opened at Sherbrooke Gallery in Belgrave on Saturday 10 August.
He’s been part of the Sherbrooke Art Society for a few years now, and he’s had some of his paintings in the exhibitions, but this was his first solo show.
Mr Tudor has been drawing since the age of four, in 2018 he began doing watercolours, and just before Covid he started painting.
“It’s always been something I really enjoyed and just something I would do to pass time, I’m home-schooled, I had a lot more time to pursue my passions than a lot of other kids, which is very helpful,” he said.
He has been using organic hemp canvas and makes his own natural oil paints for the last three years.
For some people, art is an escape and some even find it therapeutic but for Mr Tudor it’s about bringing the visual to life.
“I get ideas in my head, I get obsessive over them, and I need to put them onto something, or have them come to fruition,” he said.
“A lot of the paintings I do are narrative based, when I get a story in my head, I want to express it.”
“When other people look at my paintings, if they have enough time, they will end up having their own story to it, which I really like because one picture can tell many different stories.”
The meaning behind one of Mr Tudor’s popular portraits, ‘Longing’
“They say she lost her lover to the sea,” the old woman said to her grandson. They watched the youthful redhead walk past as they mended the fishing nets that had been damaged with the morning’s catch.
She pretended that she hadn’t heard.
The old lady didn’t understand, didn’t know the whole story.
She continued as she did every morning, through town and down to the beach.
Five hundred and twelve days it had been.
She walked down the beach along the water line letting the waves pull at her bare feet.
She barley felt the cold of the water anymore.
The smell of the ocean caught up in the wind played with the curls of her hair as she climbed the rocky headland that separated this bay from the next.
She took her time climbing, careful not to misplace a hand or foot on the crumbly sandstone.
The view at the top was always beautiful, but today sunbeams shot out from the usual clouds to glint on the horizon line.
She could never enjoy this view, no matter how much she wanted to.
It was the last place she had seen him.
He didn’t switch over all his paints immediately, until a year later that he decided to make the natural paints his only paints.
The 22-year-old artist said he purchases all his paints in bulk from the American company, ‘Natural Earth Paint’ because they “ethically source all the pigments.”
“They’re all natural and mineral-based pigments, it comes in a dry powdery form, then I mix that with the walnut oils – it’s a lot safer to use, if you’re to touch regular paint with your hands, there’s chemicals in there, they’re going to absorb into your bloodstream and also when you are washing that away – it’s going into the soil and it’s affecting the environment and your health,” he said.
“There are some upsides, and downsides to using these paints – the downsides are each paint is very unique, so the texture is a bit different, the dry time is a bit different, you really have to learn how to work with them, and they can be trickier to learn how to use, it’s time-consuming to know each colour and how it behaves and how to use them properly.”
“But the plus sides are, it’s very high quality, a lot of paints you’re buying, they’re actually thinning the pigment with fillers to make the paint go further – you’re not getting as high-quality product, and they’re going to fade over time.”
These unique oil paints are often a lot more vibrant in their raw form, and they stay vibrant for longer – which makes them much more archival.
He said he paints a little bit sporadic.
“I’ve tried sort of having an everyday like daily painting practice, and a lot of people seem to think that that really works well, but it never works well for me to paint every day or draw every day – can’t force myself to be consistent and disciplined in that respect, it seems to kill my motivation,” he said.
“I seem to be more consistent in having a big chunk throughout the year.”
Each of his paintings can take up to 15 to 20 hours depending on how detailed the painting is and how creative the story behind it is.
Mr Tudor currently works in hospitality in the Yarra Valley, and he’s been saving up for his upcoming for an overseas trip with his partner.
“I’d like to continue doing what I’m doing so far, I’m very passionate about it and it’s something I would like to have as my full-time career at some point,” he said.
See the young artist’s work at Sherbrooke Gallery until 31 August.
