Hello! My name is Peggy Seymour and I'm from London. I am a self-employed jewellery designer/maker/seller by day and, unknown to most, a portrait artist by night.

I hid my secret identity quite effectively for over a decade but have finally decided to take my painting seriously and pursue my life-long dream of making a living out of art.

To cut a long story short, I had a traumatic art education which basically crushed my confidence and the desire to paint and draw right out of me. As a result I totally lost my way artistically and didn't pick up a paintbrush again for another ten years. During that time I found other ways of venting my creativity through design work of various kinds but it never truly felt like me and I never really stopped thinking about painting. It has always been my big "what if?".

So, fast forward to now. I've conquered my fears, picked up my paintbrush and actually applied paint to canvas. Now I'm ready to show the world what I've got. This is where you, dear reader, come in.

Juggling my art with trying to bring in a decent wage is super-difficult. As a self-employed person I am entirely responsible for my own income. Right now, when I'm painting, I'm not earning anything and with every painting taking upwards of 30 hours to complete, progress is slow and money is tight.

On top of that I'm completely unknown. I have no fans, no following. I've never sold my oil paintings before. I'm a total rookie.

Art with My Heart

Art with My Heart is a project designed to keep me painting, develop my skills as a portrait artist and share what I am learning whilst doing it.

I believe the best way to improve my painting is to paint. Every time I create a new piece I learn something new and stretch myself further. I've already learnt so much since I started painting again but I desperately need your help to keep it going.

With your support I want to create 12 brand new portraits of humans against black backdrops. I love painting people, especially against black. The light and dark contrast is extra intense and the skin colours really pop. There's a sort of silence about it. With no noisy distractions in the background you can just focus on the awesomeness of the human form and all the emotion it can convey. It's really very beautiful.

But that's not all! I want to share my learning process with you. I'll be taking work in progress photographs of everything I do and writing notes on my painting technique discoveries as I go along. All this will be available through a backers only blog and in much more detail in a PDF Method Book which will contain in-progress shots, close-ups showing every tiny brush stroke and, if I can work out how to make them, links to time-lapse videos of me actually painting.

I'm completely self-taught and the process has been very frustrating and lonely but, if you'll allow me, I'd like to share everything I know with you.

What will you do with the portraits when they're done?

Every portrait I create as part of this project will be included in my Catalogue of Work PDF along with the ones I have already created. It will be like an exhibition in electronic form.

The process of creating each portrait will also be documented for my backers only blog and PDF Method Book.

The portraits from the £125 reward will be kept by me as a starter portfolio to approach galleries with.

Portraits from the £75, £250, £475 and £500 rewards will, of course, be shipped straight to their owners on completion. They will be shipped flat, just so you know.

What will you do with the money?

Your support will enable me to pay for:

All the materials I need including oil paints, canvas and paper.

A printer that can actually print out my source materials (my current model is having an existential crisis)

All of the fun rewards I want to offer you, including Giclee prints, postcards, stickers, shipping supplies and postage.

Kickstarter and payment processing fees (about 10% of the total raised)

Food, water, electricity and a roof over my head whilst I'm painting. I find these really help.









Rewards: