Interview with Diane Griffiths - 25th Birthday Competition Winner

To celebrate our 25th birthday, we invited artists to share their creativity with us as part of our birthday competition. We were delighted to receive such a diverse and inspiring collection of submissions, each offering a unique perspective and showcasing the talent of the artists who took part.

Following the competition, our team member Luke caught up with our winning artist, Diane Griffiths, to find out more about the person and creative process behind the winning piece, 'Driving Home'. In the interview, Diane talks about their inspiration, their approach to creating the work, and what winning the competition meant to them.

We felt it only right that we asked 25 questions to stay on theme!

We would also like to thank everyone who took time to enter the competition, the level of skill was totally mind-blowing! You are all winners! Make sure you keep up your creativity and please make sure you enter any future competitions. 

Luke - Congratulations on winning! How did you feel when you found out your painting had been chosen as the winner?

Diane - I was absolutely thrilled! I knew the announcement was coming that day and had been checking all morning, but by late morning I’d convinced myself that I hadn’t won. When the email came through at first I assumed it was a general email telling me someone else had won, so I actually had to read it twice!

Winning through a public vote makes it feel like a real group effort. So many people and communities have supported my work, and being able to go back and tell them, "We did it!" is incredibly special. More than anything, the win reminded me just how much support there is for my art, and that means a great deal to me.

Luke - What inspired you to create this particular painting?

Diane - I'd already developed an interest in painting at night and exploring how natural and artificial light can transform a landscape. I'd painted some conventionally beautiful locations, including St Michael's Mount, but I began to wonder whether I could take somewhere much more ordinary and make people stop and look at it differently.

Luke - Could you tell us a little about the scene we’re looking at and what it means to you?

Luke - What was it about this night time setting that appealed to you as an artist?

Diane - I love the way night simplifies the landscape. Details and distractions disappear into darkness, while glowing windows, streetlights and signs create focal points that simply aren't there during the day. I've always found editing a landscape quite difficult, so painting at night actually helped me learn what to leave out and let colour do more of the talking.

Luke - The night sky is such a striking part of the painting — what inspired you to make the stars and sky such a prominent feature?

Diane - I've always loved photographs of the Milky Way, but I've never had the patience required to capture those incredible images myself, so I thought perhaps I could try to do it in paint instead!

Luke - Was there a particular place, memory or experience that influenced the scene?

Diane - The garage genuinely is one of those landmarks that tells me I'm nearly home, but you don't need to have visited that exact Texaco garage to understand the feeling. I think most of us have had our own 'Texaco moment'; a familiar building, sign or set of lights seen through the car window that tells us we're nearly home. 

Luke - How did you approach creating the contrast between the dark landscape and the bright lights of the petrol station?

Diane - With Driving Home, I could allow much of the surrounding landscape to disappear into deep blues and shadow, which made the illuminated petrol station a natural focal point.

The strong red and white of the Texaco canopy against that darkness was one of the things that attracted me to the scene in the first place. Rather than trying to paint every object around it, I concentrated on the effect the light was having on the space, the glow around the building and the way it began to illuminate the darkness.

Luke - What are your go-to art material brands? Do you have any favourites? 

Diane - I mix brands quite freely, but probably around 90% of my acrylic paint is Amsterdam. I use a fairly consistent palette of favourite colours, and their larger pots are affordable enough that I don't feel precious about using plenty of paint, which suits the way I work.

For canvases, I almost always work square and my go-to size is 50×50cm. I regularly use GreatArt's Gerstaecker Studio 2 stretched canvases. I've become a convert to Posca pens, and often use them during the early stages of a painting to establish composition or introduce straight lines over a dark background. Most of those marks eventually disappear beneath paint, but they're a really useful part of my process.

Luke -  What type of brushes do you use, do you find some are better than others for different parts of the painting?

Luke - How long did the painting take you to complete, from the initial idea to the finished piece?

Diane - This is always the question I struggle to answer! I fit painting around work and everyday life, so a painting can typically take around a month, although I usually have several on the go at once. With Driving Home, there was also a lot of time spent simply looking at it and wondering whether I'd finished. I've since learnt that stepping away, looking and thinking is just as much part of making a painting as the time spent holding a brush.

Luke -  Was there a particular part of the painting that you found especially challenging to create?

Diane - There were several! The sky was fun but still relatively new territory for me, so I kept questioning whether it felt convincing enough. The cars were tricky too, I'm always slightly worried mine will look like cartoon cars!

Surprisingly, I struggled most with the foreground. Initially I tried to include too much information, but eventually realised I needed to pull it back into darkness so that the illuminated garage could really stand out.

Luke -  Do you have a favourite detail or part of the painting?

Luke - The reflections and lights on the road add a wonderful sense of atmosphere. How did you go about capturing those?

Diane - I create wet reflections by diluting acrylic paint almost like watercolour and building it up in thin layers. I repeat colours from the main light sources so that everything feels connected, but I also let the water and pigment behave a little unpredictably as they dry. That creates soft edges and variations that would be difficult to reproduce deliberately with a brush.

It's something I've embraced much more as my work has developed: control the important decisions, but give the materials enough freedom to surprise you.

Luke -  Did you have a clear composition in mind before you started, or did the painting evolve as you worked on it?

Diane - I had a very clear composition in mind and took several reference photographs, but despite all that planning I actually had to restart the painting! I'd made the garage too large and hadn't scaled the composition correctly. I got quite a way into it before admitting it simply wasn't working and beginning again. Sometimes having a clear idea doesn't necessarily mean getting it right the first time! 

Luke - What do you hope people feel when they look at this painting?

Diane - I'd love it to make people do a little double-take. First, perhaps they're drawn in by the colour, lights and starry sky, and then they realise they're actually looking at a painting of a petrol station!

After that, I hope there's a sense of recognition. It might remind them of driving home after work, setting off on holiday, stopping during a long journey or simply seeing that familiar landmark that tells them they're nearly home.

Luke - Does the finished painting look the way you imagined it would when you first had the idea?

Diane - Surprisingly, yes! My paintings often go on quite a visual journey as I work and I don't always know exactly what the finished piece will look like when I begin. Driving Home was different, I had a very clear image in my head from the start.

Luke - Have you entered many art competitions before, and what made you decide to enter our 25th birthday competition?

Diane - I've entered a number of competitions over the years, although I've become much more selective about which ones I enter. GreatArt immediately caught my attention because I already shop with you, and a £500 art materials voucher is a pretty irresistible prize for an artist!

Luke - What does winning a competition celebrating our 25th birthday mean to you?

Diane - It's really special to have been part of GreatArt's 25th birthday celebrations. There's something lovely about a painting created using materials bought from GreatArt ultimately winning me more materials to make the next paintings, the £500 voucher will definitely be reinvested into my work! 

Creative careers can involve a lot of uncertainty, so moments of positive reinforcement really matter. They give me confidence that the ideas behind my work continue to connect with people and help maintain the momentum to keep developing them.

Luke -  Do you have a particular artist, artistic style or subject matter that has influenced your work?

Diane - Edward Hopper is probably the artist people most often see reflected in my work, and I don't disagree. I've always been drawn to the way he used artificial light, architecture and seemingly ordinary moments to create atmosphere.

Photography has probably influenced my way of seeing just as much as painting. My early experiments with long-exposure night photography taught me that a scene can contain far more colour and light than the eye initially registers. That's an idea that has stayed with me, not just noticing the light itself, but how it moves and interacts with its surroundings.

Luke -  What are you working on at the moment, and is there a particular subject or style you’d like to explore next?

Diane - At the moment I'm developing a new body of work based around Cornwall, continuing to explore The Colour of Night and the shared experiences hidden within familiar places.

Artistically, I'm particularly interested in pushing my mark-making further. I'm becoming less interested in describing every detail and more interested in suggestion, allowing individual marks, layers and textures to work together from a distance while revealing something quite different when you move closer.

I'm naturally a very organised person and I love having a plan, but I'm beginning to realise that creatively I sometimes need the opposite. I need to leave enough space for an unexpected photograph, conversation or idea to change the direction I'm heading in. Driving Home itself began with one of those little ideas, so perhaps the most exciting thing about what comes next is that I don't entirely know yet.

Luke - If you could choose any Gallery in the UK to have this painting displayed, which would it be and why?

Diane - This is a difficult one because Driving Home has already found what I think is its perfect permanent home, the original painting was eventually bought by the owner of the Texaco garage itself! I don't think I could choose anywhere more appropriate for it to belong.

But if I could borrow it back for an exhibition, I'd dream big. I'd love to see it displayed in a major UK gallery or museum as part of an exhibition exploring contemporary everyday life and the places and experiences we sometimes overlook.

Luke - Your work often focuses on familiar, everyday places after dark. What draws you to subjects that other people might overlook?

Diane - I've become fascinated by the idea that we've somehow created an unwritten hierarchy of what is 'worthy' of being painted. Nobody questions a beautiful coastline or cathedral hanging on a gallery wall, but a petrol station, supermarket or bus stop can still make people do a double-take.

It's changed the way I look at the world too. Instead of asking, 'Is this an interesting place?', I now ask, 'What's interesting about this place?' Light might provide the answer, or an unexpected juxtaposition, reflection or little human story.

My job isn't to invent beauty where none exists. It's simply to slow people down long enough to notice what was there all along.

Luke - What are you going to spend your £500 winnings on?

Diane - Canvases! I already regularly use GreatArt's Gerstaecker Studio 2 canvases, so I'll definitely be stocking up. I'm also going to use the opportunity to try some different canvas ranges and, of course, there'll be some new paint involved too. The whole prize will be going straight back into creating more artwork, although I suspect £500 of art materials will disappear remarkably quickly!

Luke - Finally, what would you say to anyone who is thinking about entering an art competition but is nervous about putting their work forward? 

Diane - Enter it! You genuinely don't know where pressing that submit button might lead.

When I was creating Driving Home, I felt almost apologetic explaining to friends and family why on earth I was painting a petrol station! By the time I entered it, though, I was proud that I'd created something different and felt it was probably my strongest competition entry yet. Even so, my expectations were low, I distinctly remember wondering how on earth I was going to sell a painting of a petrol station if it was rejected.

That painting went on to win the People's Choice Award at The British Art Prize, open doors I could never have anticipated and, two years later, win GreatArt's 25th Birthday Competition. 

Competitions are unpredictable and rejection is part of being an artist, but don't reject your own work before anyone else gets the opportunity to see it. Sometimes the painting you're most nervous about putting forward is exactly the one that needs to be seen.

Please feel free to follow Diane on here social media channels;

Instagram - @dianegriffithsart

Facebook - @dianegriffithsart

Website; www.dianegriffithart.com