Holytown artist Maxine McGinn discusses her art. Read on to delve into the mindset of an artist at work.

Maxine McGinn is a fine artist who works freelance, taking on commissions for specific works and selling her own figurative work. Maxine's commissions include creating portraits for people from pictures, portraits of famous people and occasionally producing reproductions of famous paintings. She also has one off figure drawings for sale that are produced through life drawing classes, and also a range of ballerina pictures that are bespoke.

Maxine only started her business in June but has been picking up commissions right, left and centre. She explains "In the summer I was struggling to get a job so I thought I'd sell some pieces I'd already done as a way to get some money and It escalated from there!" Her biggest commission to date was "for a canvas painting of a drag queen which comes in roughly at £100. That's due to canvas size and paint costs and labour. I'm just about to start this one in a few days after buying the canvas!"

Maxine is currently still studying and undertaking a Fine Art/Contemporary Art Degree. She said "I've always wanted to be an artist and have loved drawing for as long as I can remember! My Papa was a brilliant artist, and had a book of ballerinas I drew from as a child. Last year my Gran gave me all his art materials and for Christmas I completed the ballerina paintings and gave them to my Gran and my mum as presents and this started to generate interest in my work."

Luckily Maxine hasn't received any particularly strange requests, although she did say "My boyfriend did me to do a painting of him like Kate Winslet in Titanic! I declined."

Maxine takes commissions from all over North Lanarkshire and central Glasgow but has plans for expansion. She says "I hope to expand this to anyone, from anywhere who would wish to commission a one-off piece of fine art from me."

Visit Maxine's website at maxinemcginnfineart.blogspot.com/ or her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/#!/maxinemcginn.fineart to see more examples of her work and enquire about commissions.