Meet Imogen Hawgood of Northern England

Today we’d like to introduce you to Imogen Hawgood.

Hi Imogen, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I am an artist and illustrator from Northern England. While I am not an LA local (where I grew up was the very opposite in fact, rural, quiet and classically English), it was a visit to Los Angeles which has had the most influence on my work. I became fascinated by the dramatic neon marquees of movie theatres and huge outlandish signs which adorn the building facades along Hollywood Boulevard. I think it is perhaps because there is nothing remotely similar in the UK, that I have been painting the urban landscapes of Los Angeles ever since.

From an early age, a creative career has seemed my most natural path. I was always most interested in creating, both at school and outside of it. So, while I enjoyed the more academic side of education, the arts are where I saw myself heading. I was very lucky to have supportive parents, who are both creative themselves, who encouraged creative experimentation and supported me to follow an artistic career. Teachers and tutors over the years have certainly warned that working in the creative industries is unstable and risky, but I have always been so sure I wanted, if not needed, to follow this route, that I honestly didn’t consider anything else to fall back on.

I studied an Art and Design Foundation course before starting my degree in Illustration at Norwich University of the Arts. At the beginning of my degree, I was uncertain whether I wanted to be an illustrator, in the sense of being given a brief and producing to a client’s specifications. And to a certain extent, although I do take on illustration briefs, I still feel the same way. I tend to describe myself as an artist and illustrator, as a lot of my work is self-initiated and follows more of a fine art route. Having the background in illustration, and learning from some really incredible tutors, however, gave me a more realistic outlook on making a career in painting work for me. I was taught about pricing, licensing and finances as well as image composition, narrative and experimentation. These skills together have enabled me to embark on a career as a self-employed artist post university with confidence and realistic expectations.

It was during my Art and Design Foundation course that the city of LA comes into things. I went on a study trip to LA with my course and found huge, long-lasting inspiration there. Los Angeles was so far removed from my home surroundings, and different to anywhere else I had ever been. Nearly a decade later, I have been back to California twice with my now husband to explore further. We travelled from San Francisco down the Pacific Coast Highway to LA, a road trip dream of mine, and further to Palm Springs and Las Vegas. The inspiration I found on these trips has been never-ending and will continue to inspire more paintings for years to come.

I began experimenting with painting, which continues to be my main focus, during my second year of university, starting out with acrylics and gouache. It wasn’t until the Covid lockdowns, however, that I started experimenting with oils. I have always been put off by the long drying times of oil paints, so it was to my great surprise that this is what I like most about working with oils. Having the ability to continue blending and working on a painting over hours or days has really changed the way I paint. My favourite thing to paint it light- glowing festoons of lightbulbs at a festival, neon lettering in the dark or a streetlight in the rain. Working with oils made this kind of painting much easier and more exciting to do and was certainly a huge turning point in my creative development.

I decided to become self-employed and make a go of it as an artist. I would still say I am in the learning and figuring things out stage. My creative work by no means offers financial security. Like a lot of people in the creative industries, I have always had a couple of part-time jobs which help keep things ticking over. I work from a home studio on a mixture of self-initiated projects, and commissions for clients. I enjoy both sides of this work, however it is always nice to have total freedom over what I’m painting.

I have been lucky enough to exhibit my work across the UK, including exhibitions at the Mall Galleries in London, Gallagher and Turner Gallery in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and According to McGee Gallery in York. I have also been shortlisted twice for the British Art Prize in 2024 and 2025, which exhibited along London’s Southbank at the Oxo Tower Gallery. Most recently, and most excitingly, I exhibited two oil paintings with Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles as part of a group show titled ‘The Big Orange’ curated by fellow British artist George Townley. Although I wasn’t able to travel to LA to see the exhibition, it was incredible for me to see my work in the very city that inspires me so much. I hope to bring more exhibitions to LA in the future.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As I mentioned earlier, creative careers aren’t the easiest or the most reliable, particularly when working freelance or self-employed. Having part-time jobs alongside my creative work does help, but it can be frustrating when one month is full of commissions and work, and the next few are really quiet. It helps me to always have a couple of paintings on the go so that I have something to come back to during breaks between commissions. The unpredictability is difficult, but it still feels worth it to be able to create the art that interests me.

Selling art is another tricky topic. The internet is so full of art to buy on so many different sites, that it can be really hard to get your work seen. I have found success using social media to sell my work. In fact, my early sales and first international sale all came via Instagram. This, too, is unpredictable. I don’t like to be too reliant on social media as it takes a huge amount of upkeep to maintain engagement and beat the mysterious algorithms. The other option is selling via galleries. Getting the attention of galleries and finding the right one to work with, is also really difficult. I have found entering online art competitions is a great way to start exhibiting and getting work seen and can often lead to more exhibitions down the line. I have loved working with galleries like Gallagher and Turner in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and According to McGee in York- where I did my first duo-show with artist and musician Horace Panter.

A lot of my paintings feature scenes from Los Angeles and the American West, and subsequently most of my sales, both originals and prints, go to the US. This is something I really love as I hope it means I am capturing the locations I paint in a way that evokes meaning to people who live there. At the same time, I am expanding my subject matter and looking for inspiration closer to home, in the hopes that I can connect with a more local market too. I have been finding intrigue in painting classically British fairgrounds, seaside arcades and festivals. This type of subject matter echoes what I love about painting LA- neon signs, glowing lights and capturing fleeting moments in time.

Sign painting has long featured in my work, and recently this is something I am exploring more by creating my own fairground inspired hand painted wooden signs, which I sell locally. Finding the balance between creative expression and commercial success is an ongoing journey that continues to shape how I develop my skills and angle my personal projects.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I work with oils from my home studio to create all my paintings. I find it easiest, and most successful, to paint from my own experiences, using my own photos and memories as inspiration. When starting a new painting, ideally, I will photograph the location myself and then return to the studio where I tend to start with a pencil sketch to nail down the composition, before moving to canvas. I often do a lot of research into the locations I paint. For example, I recently painted the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. I had my own photos of the theatre; however, I looked online at other photos of the building at different times of day over the years. Similarly, when painting a British movie theatre, The Screen on the Green in London, I looked at archive photographs to see what kind of movies it tended to show, and how the lettering is structured on the marquee. I think this research gives me a better understanding of a location and can lead to a more realistic and meaningful painting.

The first movie theatre I painted was the Cinerama Dome in LA. I completed the painting just days before they announced their permanent closure in 2021. I received so many messages from LA locals saddened by the closure but grateful to see it captured in a painting, and I was so pleased to sell the original to a buyer in LA. This painting sparked my ongoing interest in movie theatres, so I would say it is this piece that means the most to me.

Something I really enjoy about painting movie theatres like the Cinerama Dome or Tarantino’s New Beverly Theatre, is that painting them as they are today is almost exactly the same as painting them as they were when originally built. As buildings they are unchanged, and their goal, to screen movies and make cinema accessible for everyone, is similarly unchanged. Cinema has always been, and will continue to be, a form of escapism loved by generations of people all over the world.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
My childhood was filled with festivals, funfairs, and carnivals all over the country. These are now common features in my paintings, and I expect my childhood is where the interest began. I can remember days spent in festival craft tents creating pots, paintings and fairy wings, hours spent at seaside amusement arcades trying to beat the penny slot machines and countless turns on a fairground carousel or helter-skelter. Perhaps this nostalgia is specific to my experiences growing up, but I think the more likely truth is that everyone can feel comforted by such places and memories. I hope there’s a sense of this nostalgia in my recent work, capturing festivals, seasides and ordinary moments in beautiful places.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imogenhawgood.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imogenhawgood/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imogenhawgood/
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ImogenHawgood