Mixed media artist Gillian Lee Smith is based in Nottingham (originally from Edinburgh), who's career path took a massive change at the age of 27. In her early 20's she did nursing for a few years, knowing that this wasn't her true passion she decided to go to Edinburgh College of Art, and graduated 8 years ago now. Knowing that this new career would take her on the move to different places, she tried to get her work recognized by showing it in different galleries, she eventually settled down in Nottingham and has been there for 7 years now.
Drawings & Paintings
In the beginning of her new artistic career, Gillian studied costume design, she used a variety of media to create these beautifully painted a drawn pieces, from pastels to paints, pencils, acrylics, oils and much more. Trying to express her experimental work, she would use a lot of anything she could find. Soon enough, Gillian had bigger ideas that she wanted to perceive, and turned these fantastic art pieces into little sculptures of dolls, and just like the paintings and drawings, they each shared a story behind them, which is what inspired Gillian to create all these wonderfully dark and spectacular pieces in the first place...
Her Inspiration
When Gillian was creating all of her art pieces, the drawings, paintings and the dolls, she had a story for each of them. The designs were all created from her imagination, however there was a story that inspired her ideas and she knew exactly how to express them through her art pieces. Gillian has to work part time so she can sustain her art career at the moment, she works in care homes looking after the elderly. Some of the people that she works with suffer with dementia, she uses objects and story telling to try and stimulate their memories throughout their lives, some have happy stories to tell her, however some unfortunately have more darker stories to tell, but all of what she hears inspires her to create her fantastic pieces. 
Dolls
With Gillian's head full of imagination after working as a nurse, and then with dementia sufferers, she wanted to go beyond paintings and drawings, she wanted to bring the characters in these stories to life, and went on to pursue this by creating wonderful little dolls. Each doll is different, they take hours and hours to create and have such amazing detail painted on to their fabric based bodies. Gillian explained that ''The dolls represent memories and story telling, they are very personal. They show things we try to hide, secrets and fears''. The dolls have had such a positive response, growing in demand, she managed to sell more than what she thought. Although they took off really well, Gillian has gone back to focusing on her experimental 2D paintings - not because she didn't want to keep creating her wonderful dolls, but, she explained that ''It's easier to sell art than dolls. People seem to connect more with paintings than they do with sculptures''. Although she managed to sell many of the dolls, they came at a smaller price compared to her paintings, and she already sacrifices a lot of time and luxuries, which she would like to gain back at this current time.
With Gillian's head full of imagination after working as a nurse, and then with dementia sufferers, she wanted to go beyond paintings and drawings, she wanted to bring the characters in these stories to life, and went on to pursue this by creating wonderful little dolls. Each doll is different, they take hours and hours to create and have such amazing detail painted on to their fabric based bodies. Gillian explained that ''The dolls represent memories and story telling, they are very personal. They show things we try to hide, secrets and fears''. The dolls have had such a positive response, growing in demand, she managed to sell more than what she thought. Although they took off really well, Gillian has gone back to focusing on her experimental 2D paintings - not because she didn't want to keep creating her wonderful dolls, but, she explained that ''It's easier to sell art than dolls. People seem to connect more with paintings than they do with sculptures''. Although she managed to sell many of the dolls, they came at a smaller price compared to her paintings, and she already sacrifices a lot of time and luxuries, which she would like to gain back at this current time.
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