Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dina Lockridge. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Dina, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Learning how to become an artist is a complex and interesting journey. At an early age, we are taught basic art techniques, ways to capture color, light, shadow, and form. If one seeks to pursue a career in art, these lessons become painstakingly joyful and frustrating as we try to capture the lesson being taught to us. For me, while I loved and exceled at still art, it wasn’t what captivated my passion. I embarked on learning about sketching the nude female form to grow my skills for shapes and depth and as an experiment to see if this was the way I would capture the art I wanted to create. There were many aspects I loved and appreciated in practicing this art form, but I felt more drawn to abstract versions of the human form. I then delved into abstract art technique studying about my favorite abstract artists and this led me to my passion of color.
My love of photography also came into play as I studied fine art. I would spend hours in nature especially at the beach capturing what I saw and how I wanted to show how I felt there. As I grew older, I took many photography classes and while I was living in New York City attended Pratt Institute beginning with film development and technique. I worked a lot on reflection, perspective, shadows, and the intricacies of processing my own film. It was magic for me to see what I captured coming to life before my eyes. I shot only in film for a very long time reluctant to turn to digital, but I finally did. I love digital as well, the immediacy, the manual ways to effect apertures and ISOs. For my work today I use my Canon 5D digital but for my photography art I still shoot with film.
The process of learning art is not a straight and narrow path. For some, if they adore realism then it can be, spending hours days, weeks, months perfecting the realistic captured on paper or canvas, but for me my road was windy, studying various art forms as well as studying the alchemical, mysterious, and symbolism I like to add to my creations. It takes an abundant amount of trust to acquiesce to the process. Art is not linear.
For me the skills most essential are color blending—how to create a shade and tone of color I’m envisioning. Having an expertise in the marriage of colors is necessary for me to create the outcome I’m seeking. Another important skill is form. Knowing the essentials of how to sketch so that I can manipulate shapes, sizes, and distort say the female body into an abstract form. I could not achieve this without a strong working knowledge of the anatomy of the human body.
I would say for me the biggest obstacle was what I call ‘clinical’ form of art or photography classes. I found the expected trajectory of art schooling to be ironically lacking creativity. Often for me it wasn’t a space in which I felt free to veer off and explore the aspects of art that was/is subjective to me. I found it confining and limiting in terms of developing an artist’s voice, my artist’s voice. So, as I do, I took that frustration and focused on how to take these expected lessons and make it my own by using these basic and sometimes uninspiring tools to perfect my craft.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a mixed media artist known for my large-scale, colorful captures of feminine beauty, sensuality, and empowerment. At three-years-old I received my first film camera from my grandmother and haven’t stopped exploring, mastering, and finding new ways to marry my fine art background with my photography. I have a love of the sacred feminine capturing moments of surreal beauty most often in nature or underwater that is inspired to leave the beholder mesmerized and the muse empowered. Color is an important aspect of all my artwork whether it be my fine art paintings, my photography, or painted photographs. Music has always been my love and an intricate part of my creative process. Each photoshoot is conceived to a particular song and that song is repeated throughout the editing process infusing it with harmonic consistency and feeling. Each art piece arrives signed and numbered along with the title of the song and musician in which the art was created to.
I offer clients three ways of working with me. The first one is, classic photoshoots — whether it be portraits, families, headshots, pregnancy, underwater, etc. The second is, more conceptual photoshoots that can range from simple beauty shots to extremely glamorous editorial-like, where I create a concept board with the client, and we shoot either in nature or in my studio to capture what they want. I also work with a lot of muses to create my visual storytelling. Often, this results in a very large-scale hand painted photograph. We select an image; I blow it up to often 36 x48” in black and white and hand paint the colors onto it. The third, is my fine art. I have an art gallery on Saatchi Art with all of my fine art paintings and hand painted photographs for purchase and welcome commissions to create artwork with specific colors.
I’m not a typical photographer. I work in a highly conceptual way, offering ways of clients being captured in much more artistic forms. My editing process is very different than most. I LOVE creating my own presets in Lightroom that have strong under and overtones, of pinks, violets, greens, and yellows. I apply grain and moody filters to create more editorial artistic effects onto each image.
What I’m most proud of about my art is the way my clients feel after creating with me. It’s a true collaboration to make these women feel as empowered and beautiful as they’ve dreamt to be. It’s the feeling of the image and confidence of the subject that I feel makes my photography and art unique. There is an ethereal, dreamy, ultra-feminine essence in each image that celebrates women in all forms.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding part of being an artist is the way it parallels life for me. Life, like in art we must find comfort in ebbs and flows. Sometimes that’s in the form of frustration when what you’re envisioning isn’t resulting in the way it was imagined, sometimes it’s the inevitable creative blocks and knowing when to surrender and find patience for the inspiration to reignite, and sometimes for me, it’s being a wife and a mother to two amazing daughters managing my creative time. In all scenarios, the reward is how life and art relate to each other, how one approaches life is how one can choose to approach their art with trust, compassion, curiosity, love, and reflection. Art for me is an extension of this spiritual journey of life, the connection with other empowered women, voices being expressed and heard, valuing the legacy and future of the feminine and having clients that love and appreciate my art is the greatest reward I could ask for.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My art is driven by years of study and not necessarily art study but with feminism, philosophy, symbolism, and mythology. For so many thousands of years women have been fraught with inequality and devalued only to be valued in sexual aspects but often discarded in terms of equality in mind, body, and spirit. When studying for the years I have you see how women are absent from history and religion, forgotten, discarded, less than. My art’s sole purpose is putting the feminine at the forefront so that her sexuality is hers alone, how she chooses to express or reveal this, so that her mind is appreciated, and her spirit is free. All my art is an homage and an honor to women.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dinalockridge.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dinalockridge
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dinalockridge