Jackie Brown – Exclusive

Frankie Thorp is a contemporary abstract painter, living and working in Essex. She studied illustration at London College of Communication. What inspires your work as an artist? There are so many different sources of inspiration for me. Film, photography, popular culture and fashion to name a few. Anything that gives me a dose of colour inspo! I am very drawn to anything that is very bold and graphic, especially illustration and anything ‘cartoony.’ I think I always fancied myself as a cartoonist or illustrator. I used to dream of working for Disney as a kid and was always making up my own cartoons. That really hasn’t gone away. Who are your biggest influences? At the moment I’m pretty obsessed with a British artist called Stephen Smith. He does these beaut stitched collage canvases. I think that’s the next thing I want to experiment with on a large scale. A load of German graffiti-style artists (too many to name) A couple of French artists called Bertrand Fournier and Luc Pierre both of which make very fun colourful and graphic style artworks. Oh and also I have to get an illustrator in there as I keep banging on on about it - an American artist, Tara Booth! Her work is funny, raw and so honest. I implore you to check her out, especially if you’re female. Just so I sound informed and ‘learned’ I really admire the work of Josef Albers. His book ‘The Interaction of Colour’ is my bible of colour combos!