People Like Us – Jasmine Smith
Using your skills to pay the bills!
The lockdown has certainly put us through lots of different challenges. Jasmine Smith turned to creativity for a release and to give her something to do
Jasmine created a beautiful painting of her friend which was shared on social media – the image created lots of attention and Jasmine has been busy ever since creating body positive paintings for lots of happy customers!
Jasmine hosted a session at the People Like Us Creative Health Festival. Sharing the methods she uses and her own top tips that sparked attendees to try their hand at creating their own body-positive artworks
Read on to find out more about Jasmine’s experiences and her passion for creativity
Using art to empower
The lockdown has created an extremely hard environment for people suffering from anxiety or other forms of health issues. Mental health can actively affect body confidence, from my own experience especially women, but not excluding men or other genders. Therefore it is important to me that my artwork helps my clients, women especially, feel empowered and confident in their bodies and gain back control of how they view themselves in a positive format
lockdown business
I had just finished my degree. I achieved a first-class classification in Photography when lockdown started, I decided to start up my own businesses as I couldn’t get a job within the arts industry. This is something I am very proud to have achieved in such a short amount of time
I tried to put a positive spin on lockdown and have tried to keep this attitude from the beginning. I applied to over 35 jobs within the photography industry but had no responses. I was beginning to get disheartened about getting a job within the creative industry
However, I tried to stay positive and took this time as an opportunity rather than a burden. With the attitude of keep creating, making and trying new things and you never know what will happen! By posting what you are creating onto a social media platform you can create opportunities and worst-case scenario, you create beautiful feeds for your friends and family to enjoy
tell us more about your artwork
I wanted to create art which had an impact on a community of people that I have a close connection to. I decided to start using my artwork during the lockdown as a way to openly talk about and express mental health as these can be extremely hard times for people suffering from anxiety or other forms of health issues. Mental health can actively affect body confidence, from my own experience especially women, but not excluding men or other genders.
Therefore, my artwork aims to make my clients, women especially, feel empowered and confident in their bodies and gain back control of how they view themselves in a positive format. The majority of my pieces are colourful, bright and bold commissioned portraits, to celebrate the human form and all its beauty. The majority of the paintings commissioned from particular clients and are based of nude photos they choose to send me in confidence. Others choose to describe the body type they would like and I paint from imagination
Find out more
Check out my work on Instagram and Facebook
People Like Us
Coventry’s own online creative health festival – Monday 6th – Sunday 12th July 2020
Designed and made for the people by the people. Celebrating the power of arts and creativity.
People Likes Us can come together to create opportunities, to dream, to co-create, to do things, to make things, to think about things, to rebel against things, to change things. But most of all to explore our creativity and connect with new people.
What can we create together that will have a positive impact on our health and wellbeing?
We are developing more People Like Us opportunities so sign up to the newsletter and give us a follow on Instagram and Facebook
Or sign up to our newsletter to get updates plus a free gift