|
Visiting Artist Zoe Payne
Artist Zoe Payne proved there is indeed life after school, in case, as she said, her Year 10 and 11 audience doubted it! Fired with enthusiasm to tell her story, Zoe led us from the early days (International Baccalaureate at Dartford Grammar) through the Foundation Course at Central Saint Martin’s to a 3 year Theatre Design course at Wimbledon, arriving at her current position as a freelance artist specialising in costume and set design.
| |
|
| |
 |
| |
|
Her research books were breath-taking: rich, densely detailed explorations of the subject, linking images. At degree level you can have fun playing with the theme for more time. Her Falstaff project (Projection, Protection, Defence, Vulnerability and Expression) was fascinating; ideas gleaned from armour catalogues, armadillos, cars, nests, bags, crystallised into a design for a textured ruff, worn down to show-off, or over the head as defence. It was a privilege to see the journey of a professional artist’s designs from their inception to the finished product.
The second year at Wimbledon allowed Zoe the chance to spend 4 months in Spain on the Erasmus scheme, working on a design for a Lorca play. Polishing up her rusty Spanish, she explained her initial ideas after the first week! Loving imagery, her set design played with light and dark to show the lead character’s balancing act between being weighed down by the burdens of life, or so light that his time on earth left no impression.
Finally we were amazed to see some of the 2000 of Zoe’s charcoal drawings in preparation for her final year’s project, an animation based on the Greek myth, ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’, which we all watched. Inspired to show the vibrant underworld juxtaposed with the numbness of the overworld, Zoe told the story through shimmering charcoal, with hints of buttery-cream, and the singing voice of an actor friend from Knee High Theatre Company, with whom she’s worked on designs for their production of ‘Antigone’. It was beautiful to watch the 5 minute film.
This could be your story, Zoe told the girls. She’d had no experience of theatre at school, but took the advice of a teacher to join the National Youth Theatre as a costume designer, spending 2 months making costumes for shows in site-specific places such H M S Belfast and old houses in Deptford. What raw talent she must have had! Look out for the name in the future.
| 
