CATRIONA FINLAYSON

“But UK Face Painter of the Year as well – Wow! Bibi Freeman, who is just the God of Face Painting for me, and Shannon Fennell, who is also amazing, have both been past winners. It’s odd, as it doesn’t seem to have registered yet – I was at the conference just to see all the amazing gurus of face and body art at work, and was so not expecting to win anything. When the announcement was made, the lady beside me at the dinner table had to thump me to get my attention and get me moving to the stage to accept my prize!”.

“However, to tell the truth, outside the ‘industry’, very few people know about it and I often still get looked on as someone doodling on cheeks as a hobby. I’ve been too busy painting since I got back to think, really – I haven’t even unpacked from my trip to the UK! I had to leave the trophy back at my in-laws’ farm as the boat has no flat surfaces it would fit on. I’ll be printing new business cards though – here in Hong Kong, ‘face’ so to speak (awards) is a big selling point so I hope it will help my business.

Cat’s winning entry; receiving her prize in Quetzal costume – the Quetzal is the

national bird of Guatemala

Cat’s prize-winning entry was a fabulous 3-D effect frog which stood out from the rest of the entries. “I just loved the jungle theme and had entered the frog in the competition as I’d enjoyed working out how to fit it on a face, and had only seen very cartoony amphibians done before”.

Born in Scotland and currently residing on a catamaran moored off an island in Hong Kong, Cat has worked all over the world doing a variety of unusual and often art-related jobs giving her an interesting CV. She has been a balloon decorator, painted murals in pubs and clubs, had a stint in graphic design, ran a Caribbean cave resort, been a jungle medicine tour guide in Belize (where she also lived as a child), a nanny in Canada, painted coats of arms and antique reproductions in England, and has run educational programmes at London’s Natural History Museum, two zoos, a safari park and a nature reserve. She is a qualified quad bike and kart mechanic, abseiling and snorkelling instructor, secondary school teacher, and a teacher of many different crafts including willow weaving, wood block etching and silver clay. She also speaks Dutch.

first self-paint as a tiger and another entry in the Convention jungle competition

Cat got into face painting in 2002, when she was working as the education officer for two East Anglian zoos. “Our face painter quit, so my boss said “Cat, you’re arty, you try it!”. I was shaking! We had good paint – Grimas – but filthy sponges and useless old brushes”. Needless to say she got a lot of practice at painting zoo animals, “I still hate painting monkeys as mine look awful, but I can say that my tigers have improved TO recognition!”.

She quit that job 6 months later, but in 2004 her new employer, a wildlife trust, started using her for face painting at big public events. “I was only allowed to paint creatures native to the UK, but I found that by talking about them as I painted, people who would not normally care got interested and learned a little. Don’t get me wrong – these were fast, fun faces, many of which I’d cringe at now, but it was a new teaching tool for me”.

“I bought my own, decent kit, mainly Snazaroo and Grimas. I even won a small face-painting competition with a photo of my first painting on myself, a tiger. I was hooked! In 2005 I started my own face painting business part time, and managed to get to the UK Face Painting Convention. Seeing people like Jinny at work was mind blowing and a huge relief – I could try to paint my abstract curly doodles, and I didn’t have to stick to the cartoony animals everyone seemed to expect. I stopped running the nature reserve and became fully self employed in 2006”.

Cat grew up in an artistic environment with her mother being keen on all kinds of craftwork, and did well at art in school. “I always loved drawing and making ‘stuff’ (my mum can craft anything), and growing up in places like western Scotland and Belize, there often wasn’t much else to do!”

“In my final year at school, I took art, biology & geography A -levels, a mix I was told wouldn’t get me any jobs, as I was split between arts and sciences! I went on to art college, which numbed my brains a bit as I felt they didn’t really teach us, so I then took a BSc in Botany, with Art & Photography. We were aimed at publications like the BBC Wildlife Magazine, but none of us ended up there.”

“I painted coats of arms and antique reproductions for a year, then went sciencey and gave educational tours at the Natural History Museum in London. I was often on duty in the evenings for special events, watching models being painted up as living statues –I’d always liked decorating my clothes and had fantasised about shaving my head so I could paint it, so that really interested me”.

Cat loves all aspects of her work from face and body painting to illustration and craftwork but at the moment she is particularly inspired by body painting.

“I am really wanting to get to grips with bodies, so to speak. I like incorporating physical features into the art if I can, rather than the skin just being an un-flat canvas. Faces have only so much space and so many shapes that suit them, so coming up with interesting original ideas is harder sometimes…maybe its just that I’m new to bodies!”

“I have only done a few illustrations recently. The face/ body art has taken off and I have been too busy for anything else, not that I have the space at the moment, living on a catamaran! We are hoping to buy a junk (a sort of square, Chinese, wooden motor boat) and if we do I plan to take over the main deck room as a studio most of the time”.

some recent illustration work

Having recently moved to Hong Kong, Cat has found it challenging finding her feet in as an artist in a totally different culture. “It´s been both good and bad”, she says, “I’m embarrassed to say it’s the first country I have lived in where I had not even a smattering of the language - it’s even harder than Dutch! But most places I go someone speaks English, even if they have to be called up on a mobile phone which then gets passed over to me. This is not really China, though. Hong Kong has a different culture to the rest of Asia, and most of my clients are expats from Europe, the USA or Japan”.

“So, a lot of the research I did, which said things like not to use white or pink on faces as that meant death, has not been true. Everyone is friendly, and parties seem to be far more elaborate and polite. But oriental children can find it very difficult to look you in the face - I think it’s a sign of respect - so painting them is more work”.

She was dismayed to find that she was one of the very few face painters in Hong Kong to use proper cosmetic paint. “Many children, and even body models are terrified of me as, in the past they had been done in felt pens or acrylics that wouldn’t wash off. On the plus side I get to spread the word on good products and safe practices and am often the first experience of face art for some kids.

“Its great that here I have the bookings and a cheaper lifestyle, which has let me purely concentrate on art. I do feel isolated though, as every other body or face painter I have tried to contact either does not exist or turns out to be someone who I can’t pass work on to. I’m really glad for the online artist community as they know they are my social life!”

The dreamcatcher face which Cat painted as her entry at Seeboden (and featured in Issue One of Brush Strokes) was inspired by an upcoming job she had when she was hired to make 20,000 dreamcatchers with Hong Kong school-children.

“It was for the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation (YAF) which uses corporate sponsors to take arts and drama into local schools which often don’t bother to teach them. We won a bid to paint the public at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens with all profits going to charity. YAF then asked to see what else I could do. I got a call the next day asking if I would help them raise money for Orbis, the eye charity”.

Cat trying out ideas for her dreamcatcher face and posing with the rugby players she painted

“Each year a sponsor pays for something round and eye-like to be made in art classes in schools – teachers get a learning pack and starter kit as well as lessons from the artist. I had learnt to make dreamcatchers years ago, when I stayed with a doctor who had studied with Native Americans, so we went ahead with this as the schools project. The finished ones were put on display at malls throughout the city then were returned to the kids”.

I had a fabulous day getting samples of feathers, beads and threads from the zone where all the Chinese factories have their outlets. When I couldn´t find the right wire or willow to supply the school teachers, YAF just asked a factory to make the right size and shaped rings, pre-wrapped in suede. It was a great organisation to work with. I was writing the teaching pack when I arrived in the UK for the summer, and Bibi Freeman asked if I would assist her at Seeboden. I spotted the Face Paint awards advert on their website, and as we were not due to body paint that day, thought, hmmm……maybe not! But with a lot of persuasion and seeing the theme was ‘dreams and Illusions’, I had to go ahead”.

the dreamcatchers on display in a Hong Kong mall

“Anyway, as you may know, dreamcatchers were originally made to trap dreams floating around – stupid bad dreams got stuck in the web and destroyed by the rising sun, whilst good dreams slid out and down the feathers into the heads below. Hence the sun rising from clouds on the neck of my lovely model Sonja, and the crystals for good dreams”.

Like most artists, Cat draws her inspiration from many different sources, “I really like the ‘competitions’ just now, whether for photo email entry like on the chat sites, Snazaroo USA, or ‘live’. Not that I always send in what I do for them. I find the themes inspire me to look for a new twist on things, and it’s amazing what other people create, that gets you going too”.

“This week, I met Ambah, an artist from Australia who was flown to Hong Kong to paint a body a day at a new mall. She was asked to do two bodies on Monday, so called me in, with the simple brief of ‘a butterfly inspired dress’. The evening she phoned I had seen an old dress of Cher’s being sold, so that gave me the idea. Sadly, as we only had a few hours before the press call, we didn’t get to make it look like real clothes, but it was fun!

some recent body painting projects

Having seen the way the work of a professional photograper enhances the art of many body artists, I’d love to collaberate with one on future projects. I think my photos let me down when I do have a good day painting, and this work is so ephmeral that it would be great to get some really good shots.

Cat has worked at many interesting events and festivals. “My favourite job last year was a music festival in a stately home in England. They had created a magical experience, with the ancient trees all lit up and even their sheep were dyed in a variety of mad colours. I wasn’t the only fully dressed fairy -everyone was joining in, and I painted 12 hours a day, as many adults as kids, with hardly any spidermen being asked for!”

She also calls on her craft skills for scene-setting on her jobs, more often than not, painting in full fairy costume wearing beautiful wings she makes herself. “As I said before, I’ve always drawn and made things, mainly presents for people and helping my mum with her craft business. When I ran big events with my nature education job, a particular favourite was when we decorated the entire reserve every Halloween for a huge ‘Spirits of the Marshes’ light celebration. Hundreds of local families came down to take part in games, quizzes and a sort of lantern-lit tour that ended with them floating tiny candles in half a chestnut shell to make a Will O’ the Wisp Wish. The Wildlife Trust had no budget for this so I created costumes and wings from garden wire, tights and glitter, and huge lanterns from our own willow and tissue paper. This was so popular I later had to run classes in it, and ended up selling wings too. I also made wings for my handfasting and got married by a fairy!”

Cat in fairy mode

“I make replica ’Sweetie Jewellery’ out of fimo, and was one of the first Silver Clay tutors in the UK- I love coating real leaves in that so that when its fired I have a silver one left. I can’t do craftwork at the moment as we are ‘living’ on a tiny sailing catamaran so I don’t have a table let alone an oven or space to make things. I also do illustration work and have just done illustrations for a UK charity promoting wildlife”

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a necklace made from silver clay and some of Cat’s replica sweetie jewellery

And what does she have planned for the future? “I’d love to go back to Seeboden next year - my head was in such a spin this year, and I was so exhausted after all the painting and the heat that I didn’t look around or meet anyone. It was only the third time I had bodypainted so I just tried to help Bibi as much as I could, followed her excellent directions and stumbled through everything! But, unfortunately I think I have a booking in Hong Kong at the same time as the Seeboden Festival. It will be an interesting one if it happens - the orchestra has had a new symphony written for them where each instrument is an animal - zebras, hippos, etc - and they need all the musicians face painted for the run of the show to help children relate to the music. If it doesn’t happen, I hope I can go to Austria though I’m not sure if I’d compete as I want to see all the artists at work!”

Some recent projects: left: jungle theme body paint; centre: the Blue Boys; right: another jungle-theme but this time, due to China´s strict laws, Cat had to paint the model wearing a lycra suit

For the time-being she is being kept busy. “Entertaining over here is a huge deal, people spend a fortune on staff and decorations, so I never know what I am walking into at private gigs. The tourist board has hired me for dozens of short bookings throughout the city, to promote their Winterfest. Some evenings I’m perched precariously in a tiny patch on a steep street under an outdoor escalators, the next I’m painting on a stage in the busiest, posh shopping centre and this goes on into January”.

I’ve also just done a site-specific body painting for an Urban Dance event. They wanted the model to lie on an interesting pavement so I could blend her into it, Veruschka style. The poor model was absolutely freezing but I was pleased with the result. Another fun job I did a few weeks ago was to paint five models blue to advertise the Blue Boys. He’s really a performance artist from Australia who poses with four identical dummies in shop windows, etc. They were riding around on the metro with me as I was on my way to another gig and for once me in fairy costume went unnoticed!”

Visit Cat´s website at www.cats-creations.co.uk

All photographs © Catriona Finlayson

You can find full details of her Seeboden dreamcatcher face and her experiences at the Seeboden festival in her article in Issue One.