If I was the owner of a café or bakery or a chef looking to advertise my recipes, then I know who I would be hiring to create my menus and cookbooks. Playfully illustrating delicious treats, from cakes to pastries, Abbey colourfully personifies food through her digital tablet. Moreover, by utilising this medium, Abbey reflects a new movement within the art world. There is often an expectation that the majority of artists must have studied Fine Art or attended art college in order to practise their skills. Yet, the digitalisation of society is a phenomenon that has, particularly since covid, and as much as colleges may not like it, permeated deep into the art world. In doing so, it has made art more accessible and has allowed people to express themselves in entirely new ways; as can be explored through Abbey’s marvellous (or tantalising, I should say) illustrations here and her journey from humble occasional sketcher to social media sensation.
‘I have always loved to create art, it was my passion when I was younger and I knew I wanted to become an artist’ Abbey tells me. ‘I mainly stuck to sketching and painting with realistic subject matter, a lot of still life’s and portraiture. I used to practise portraiture with my Nan, where I would make her sit for hours sketching her face over and over again, they were never a good likeness but she loved them all the same.’
‘I grew up in a rural part of Kent in the UK, surrounded by animals. None of my friends lived within walking distance and most were at least 20-minute drive away, soI would often spend my free time outside playing with my dogs and drawing. Neither of my parents were in artistic fields but a lot of people in my family were talented at sketching and painting’ Abbey adds.
Rather comically, like an author who is hesitant to hand over their finished manuscript, growing up, Abbey was reluctant to relinquish her artistic pieces. ‘I used to have a hard time letting go of any artwork I created, which made me question whether I could be an artist’ Abbey tells me. ‘I used to feel such a deep connection to it that I couldn’t bear the thought of letting it go, to the point where I once drew a mouse on a piece of scrap paper less than a 1 cm long and cried all night when my Mum put it in the bin – though, she didn’t see my mouse drawing on it and very kindly went through the bin to find it for me.’
‘I studied art up until GCSE level [high school for our North American readers]. I had always been so sure that I wanted to go into an artistic job but felt discouraged from doing so at school. It made me question whether I was capable of being an artist and made me feel I lacked the talent to succeed. I decided to try and see if I could find success in an adjacent artistic field at A-level and so took up Photography’ Abbey expresses. ‘I did several studies on fairy tales and mythology and loved making the whimsical come to life. I loved drawing over the photo layers and incorporating my art into the final images. It was also at this time that I started studying Psychology and was utterly fascinated by it, in particular biological psychology. I found the cognitive function of the human brain miraculous and loved learning why we are the way we are’.
‘I wish I had the belief in myself back then to pursue art as a career’
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