Octavia Milner

Peckham based Octavia Milner originally trained as a textile designer (print) and worked for ten years as designer /maker, hand painting textiles for sale as furnishings and associated products.
Having always painted, until recently almost exclusively self- taught she decided to do some formal study in painting to extend her skill base. From 2015 to 2019 Octavia studied on a range of courses at Morley College. The skills she acquired were the catalyst to her current practice.

Working in both oils and acrylics Octavia paints abstract landscapes and makes small sculptures from found materials, assembling discarded things. The starting point for a painting is usually one of her own drawings, watercolours, photographs. These are often of disintegrating natural and industrial structures and the objects that she finds. She says, ‘When walking outside I am always on the look- out for things that catch my eye; manmade or not, discarded things that I might use in my sculptures and to draw and draw on in my paintings. I will pick something up and carry it for a while and see if it lasts the walk or gets rejected before I get back to the studio. As far back as I can remember I have picked things up off the ground.’

Working on several canvases at once, a series of work develops. Paintings are linked by the time and circumstances in which they are made. Paint is put on and then scraped off repeatedly until ‘a painting surprises me when I see it’. Early stages of a painting take time as layers build up slowly, almost as if the painting is developing its own history. Paintings are put aside for days or months and brought back so they can be tackled in new ways. Octavia says ‘I never lay out my colour palette in advance but respond to what colours are on the canvas. Often the last stage of a painting is done quickly and impulsively.’

Interested in learning more about Octavia? See her at http://octaviamilner.com