Trading on Shambles Market since 2016, Zulia Finnigan is a local artist who creates beautiful and unique feather-based paintings. Combining her love of nature with her creative talent, Zulia has a wide range of intricately hand-painted feather designs for customers to choose from – depicting everything from birds and flowers to animals and insects.
During lockdown, Zulia continued to receive commissions and sell her artwork via her Instagram and Facebook pages and has now returned to trade at the r Shambles Market three days a week – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Over the lockdown period, Zulia also developed a new passion for crochet and in her spare time has been crafting some stylish and vibrant handbags that customers can also now purchase from her stall at the market.
A long-time artist of landscapes and city views, Zulia has been painting on feathers for over 5 years and has a real passion for using this rare medium for her beautifully colourful designs. Initially starting out by selling her artwork at craft and art fairs, Zulia found the feedback from customers was so positive that she was keen to progress to taking a regular stall every week on Shambles Market.
Zulia explains: “I absolutely love creating my feather paintings and offering my customers something really unique and different. With my pieces I’ve been inspired by my passion for nature and I love to create intricate paintings of my favourite birds and animals. I often get feedback from people that they have never seen art pieces like this before and over the years I’ve had such positive reactions to my work which has been really lovely.
I have many customers who return again and again to buy my feathers and I am very proud that they have flown all around the world – reaching countries like Canada, Australia, USA, Indonesia and China. I also have a lot of York residents who buy my paintings, as well as tourists looking to pick up something a little different as a memento of their visit to our lovely city.
During lockdown I’ve been busy working on lots of new designs to restock my stall and have also found a new hobby in my crochet-work! The crocheting is something I really enjoy and it’s lovely to be able to share my passion for this with my customers too.
It’s been great to return to the market and getting back out to chat to my customers in person. Building relationships with my customers and the other traders is one of my favourite things about being on the market and I am so glad to be back. Please do come on down to my stall and have a chat with me about my artwork!”
See more of Zulia’s amazing designs by heading to Shambles Market on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.
