Velvetiki
aka. Gwen Rosewater – Healdsburg, California, United States
Gwen has been an artist for many years, and in many mediums. She began selling velvets under the "Velvetiki" name some time @2020 on her Etsy store.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
The artist resides in an atmosphere of exotic splendor, thereby ensuring that each and every painting is deeply infused with mystery and romance...
...well, in fact, she generally dresses in stained t-shirts, working with oil paints and tackling the difficult medium of black velvet.
The perhaps unexpected truth about velvet painting is that doing it well is not at all easy, requiring considerable skill and a good deal of patience. Building up a light area on a velvet painting requires the slow and careful application of many, many layers of smoothly applied paint. Even a bit too much pressure on the brush creates the splotchy effect that is the signature look of most velvet paintings.
It is a shame that the medium should be almost entirely associated with crude craftsmanship. Gwen venerates those relatively few artists who have approached it in a serious manner.
Her mission is to try and follow in their footsteps, and create paintings with the incomparably striking impact of vivid color laid against a field of deepest black.