Second year Durham student Araminta Murray-Wells, an aspiring illustrator and author of children’s books, is championing novel and exciting ways of producing and disseminating stylised art. Minty progressively perceives her illustrating not only as a way of interacting with the spectators of her art but also as a vehicle for socialising during the creation of the work itself. The illustrator’s hosting of ‘sip and paint’ and ‘arts and crafts’ occasions respectively encompass the harmonious symbiosis of making art and making friends. Her companions, in fact, have constituted a great part of her commercial presence: what commenced as simple caricatural depictions of the friends who would regularly visit her first year room, turned into a Durham- wide demand for her playful paintings of friendly faces. Minty is now regularly receiving commissions for her uniquely stylised friends and family portraits and seems to focus nearly as much on projects of this variety as her foregrounded narrative illustrations.

While the quaint and charming character of Durham, along with her passion for people in all their exuberance and wonderful strangeness seemingly motivates her paintings of exaggerated reality, her literary motivations are rooted in the soil of her pastoral home. Quite literally, Minty attributes much of her narrative focus on nature to her childhood among the famed North York Moors, joining a wealth of artists and authors who have been creatively inspired by this paradoxically imposing and sinister, yet subliminally romantic northern landscape. Indeed, Hockney’s colourful accentuation of Yorkshire’s most literarily emphasised location inspires Minty’s explosive and playful hues in her first children’s book: The Whimsy of Whispering Wood.

Minty’s first children’s story pertinently captures the redemptive capabilities of friendship and the acceptance of others and, perhaps most fundamentally, of the self. The budding illustrator, who arguably reveals the free-spirited character of her own childhood through her work, has stated her motivations behind wanting to pursue further creation of stories of this type as bi-fold. Minty explains her desire to “awaken the imaginations of children” but also, behind the intricate, yet expansive imagination of the worlds she creates, to allow them to recognise an ethical rationale behind the character’s journeys. As the protagonist enters the woods seeking a mythical character and leaves with an understanding and, by extension, embracing of imperfections and difference, so too does the engaged and immersed reader. As I am certain is the same for many of our readers, Minty’s enduring point of reference concerning seminal and influential works of her genre is Donaldson’s ever-adored The Gruffalo. Minty seems to echo Donaldson’s devotion to escapism in her own oeuvre:

                                        I opened a book and in I strode in.

                                        Now nobody can find me.

Not only does Minty invoke this literary immersion, which Donaldson is able to so gladly discover, by her creation of scintillatingly fanciful worlds; however, it is also present in her very creative process.  So as to mirror the vivacity and energy of her characters, Minty listens to fast-paced house music during her painting sessions. Conversely, when writing, embodying the nature of her enchanting prose, Minty listens to tranquillising, quasi-hypnotic classical music. 

For her upcoming children’s story, The Fairy Seamstress, Minty has likened her preparation to that which is elucidated in one of her favourite poems, Ted Hughes’ The Thought Fox. Hughes’ titular animal entering the forest to make sporadic, although, somehow, creatively coherent imprints is widely understood as a metaphor for inventive thought. Literary creation is transient and, therefore, “(t)he page is printed” often through excitingly unexpected ways. It is this acceptance of the weird, wonderful and, occasionally, non-linear way our minds work which makes Minty’s art so compelling. Can we, thereby,  learn something from the way Minty creates art and her art itself? Perhaps a whimsical, creative and enchanting envisioning of life is something we all need in a world which, at times, forgets to not take itself too seriously.

To look at more and keep up to date with Minty’s art, follow @minty.mw.art on Instagram!