Post by Gwen on Aug 15, 2010 17:05:03 GMT
NAME: Gwen Severine Roberts.
NICKNAMES: It's just Gwen, thank you.
RACE: Human.
OCCUPATION: Gallery Owner & Artist. Situated in the Skirball Centre, Gwen owns and runs the Abeli Gallery where she displays works of art from local artists, largely for sale but occasionally she houses shows just for viewing. During the week she runs art classes specialising watercolour and oil work in three 'grades' -- beginner, intermediate and advanced as well as playing host to visitng craft teachers at various times in knitting and crocheting, quiliting, découpage and jewellry making.
GENDER: Female.
SKIN COLOUR: Caucasian; pale.
NATIONALITY: American.
AGE: 29.
CLOTHING: Gwen's style of dress can generally be described as 'classy' -- she opts for elegant clothing most of the time, with her more expensive outfits reserved for functions at her gallery; she likes opulent elegant colours and soft fabrics in that case, smart fitted suits with pencils skirts or for the more grand occasions sweeping cocktail dresses. By contrast when she isn't working Gwen opts for a much more simple and casual look with feminine shirts and fitted jeans or other pants, dressing up a little more if she's going shopping with her girlfriends, or opting for something a little more fun and flirty if she's going out somewhere with her boyfriend. When painting she often wears old clothes, things that are already covered in oil paint splotches with a rather worn, blue painter's tunic to protect herself, even if it's a losing battle.
HEIGHT: 5'10"
WEIGHT: 141lbs.
TATTOOS: None.
PIERCINGS: Her ears, twice.
JEWELLERY: Lots; Gwen has various pieces to go with her different outfits, however she limits wearing anything silver due to her boyfriend's allergy to the metal, generally keeping those pieces safely wrapped in a separate jewellery box and only putting them on if she knows for certain that he won't come into contact with her when she has them on.
BODY MODIFICATIONS: None.
HAIR
LENGTH: Long enough to brush the bottom of her shoulder blades.
STYLE: Gwen wears her hair long and layered with feathering around her face and neck and a medium weight set of bangs; most of the time when she's working in the gallery or painting she whisks it up into a ponytail or a bun, but equally in her off hours she lets it loose.
COLOUR: Dark brown.
FACIAL HAIR
LENGTH: N/A.
STYLE: N/A.
EYES
COLOUR: Blue.
ODDITIES: None.
PERSONALITY: First impressions are everything with Gwen; with a memory like the proverbial elephant that never forgets an initial meeting that goes poorly will colour her impressions for a long time meaning that winning her trust and affection early on is the best way to get into and stay within her good graces. Hand in hand with that is the fact that Gwen has what's commonly called an artist's temperament, she can get irritated by things as simple as the weather making it difficult for her to paint, to stubbing her toe or running out of coffee, equally she rarely stays angry for long, her mood as changeable as stormy skies. To call her inconstant would be wrong though, she is very reliable and punctual, her organisational skills and gregarious approach to work means that her gallery is run as a very tight ship and all the curators and host staff that she employs are aware of the fact; people are careful not to put a foot out of line in her place of business not because they're afraid of her but because she holds them -- and herself -- to a certain standard and frankly, they just don't want to disappoint her. That is an effect that she simply seems to have on people; young artists look up to her as someone who is finally coming into their own style and voice, just finding her footing in the art world, her parents are proud of her and in turn want her to be proud of them and her friends hate to disappoint.
Gwen is the type of woman who likes to contribute to her community; she is kind and compassionate and endlessly accommodating, she promotes charities and has hosted several fund raisers in her gallery free of charge, she supports youth art programs enthusiastically and believes in the healing powers of music and literature, of the arts in general. Environmentally conscious and a vegetarian she can be seen as a little bit of a new aged hippie behind the veneer of Middle America. While it can be obnoxious or even seem suspicious to others she can find joy in practically everything; every cloud has a silver lining, everything will look better in the morning, she never goes to bed angry, she never lets herself stew over things for too long because it might spoil something that could have otherwise been great. She is a great friend to have in your corner, always ready to support and encourage, being a firm believer that everyone needs that from time to time and she is more than happy to be the one cheering from the sidelines.
As an artist she is just beginning to find recognition in the local region. A freedom loving idealist, unfettered by "small thinking" Gwen sees the big picture and is very aware of her connections to the rest of the world, or the world as she understands it which very much bleeds through into her art. Having a vast thirst for new experiences, she is spontaneous, and enthusiastic, almost always with a twist on her point of view that makes her see things ever so slightly differently to the way most people do. As a teenager she tended to be a little flighty and unable to concentrate for long periods of time on any one thing but time and age have assuaged that somewhat at least. Not least of all her serious relationship with Harrison Charles has helped to settle her; though she has always been a decicated worked and had her goals firmly in her line of sight, moving in with her boyfriend and generally getting on with her life goals has allowed her to gain some focus on her art, something that has been left by the wayside in favour of getting the gallery up and running until recently.
When it comes to Harrison and their long term relationship (the longest she's ever maintained at eighteen months it ought to be noted) she is silently fairly convinced that he is The One for her and is rarely happier than when she is spending time with him in whatever capacity.
WEAKNESSES: As a human Gwen is susceptible to any number fatalities thanks to accidents or disease, up against vampires and werewolves she is little more than a frail, mortal child. Gwen is also pregnant by way of a werewolf, a pregnancy that is sure to take a large toll on her fragile human body.
ABILITIES: Any abilities that Gwen possesses are mental rather than physical; she's a quick learner and a speed reader though quite obviously her real strengths lay in her art; painting, sketching and even some sculpting are her mainstays though she is well versed in a substantial range of craft hobbies, too. Organised to a fault (largely thanks to her mother's scatterbrained approach to life causing her to adopt her father's level of coordination when it comes to paperwork and the like) she maintains her gallery almost single-handedly and when she's working she works hard though she enjoys it hugely.
WEAPONS: None.
PRIZED POSSESSIONS: While there is no one particular brush that she uses for her painting that Gwen would consider prized or sacred in anyway she does keep to one particular brand of brushes and replaces her set with the same kind every time; she doesn't throw out her old ones either and keeps a box of all her old brushes, they're labelled by year so she knows which ones she used for which paintings, sentimental as that might seem she likes to have the tie between the brush and the painting maintained. Most things that hold emotional meaning for her are fairly standard; she has a lovely black and white photograph of her mother, her father's old wristwatch and countless letters and bit of jewellery that belonged to this grandmother or that aunt. While not an openly possessive person, Gwen places Harrison as one of the most important things in her life; though she hasn't said it yet thanks to past relationship experience, she loves him and would do practically anything for him. Something happening to Harrison would most certainly leave her heartbroken.
HOME(S): Six months ago Gwen moved from her apartment into her boyfriend's loft out at The Colony where she has her own studio space and does a lot of her painting.
HISTORY: Gwen Severeine Roberts was born in Washington state to an American bank manager and a Swiss actress who had emigrated from her home country as a young woman and found success through her good looks and charm and, of course, her acting prowess. They had their only daughter quite late compared to most couples, when Agnes Roberts (stage name; Aina Severine) had come to a place in her career where she felt she was ready to give up working brutal hours and start a family she and Paul moved up and away from Los Angeles to a small town where the schools were good and the houses big and traditional, in short the American Dream. It was there where Gwen grew up uneventfully, happy and perfectly average. From time to time her mother still took acting jobs, she fell into the niche of a middle-aged woman who still looked utterly stunning on screen and was cast in the hard hitting, edgy roles that a younger woman couldn't handle. It was surreal seeing her mother in movies, Gwen went to only one premiere in her teenage years when they visited New York as a family for the launch, but largely she saw her mother in re-runs of old cameo appearances in television shows. By contrast her father was the rock of the family, calm and controlled, a traditional banker who liked to work things out by hand, Gwen would play hide and seek in his office while he worked.
Art was an obvious talent of hers from a young age, starting with colouring insides the lines and up to producing college level projects as a high school sophomore it was clear that he was always going to go into that field and her mother in particular encouraged her to follow her passion. Gwen graduated with an art scholarship to the New York School of Art and went off at eighteen to pursue her career, knowing early on that it was hardly going to be the easiest road but with the support of her parents, telling her she could do it she had a good deal of self-confidence. Of course the standard of work required jumped up massively and she was grateful for her high school art teacher pushing her so hard early on; Gwen spent three years in a mosty-caffeinated state, pulling all-nighters and inhaling more turpentine fumes than anyway really ought to. In the end though she graduated with flying colours, she had pieces in the student show every single year (including her freshman year, which earned her as many enemies as it did friends) and was praised for her unique take on the world. Over the duration of her higher education she had exactly one boyfriend whom she was with for six months, until she discovered that he wasn't interested in her so much as her talent as an artist and her success at getting her pieces into the university showings.
From there she moved to Los Angeles. Most, if not all of her life had been spent in the north of the country and not only was LA another cultural hotspot it was sunny and hot, and though her mother insisted that she pack about eleven bottles of sunscreen for her incredibly pale complexion Gwen was keen to move down there and see what she could make of herself.
It wasn't smooth sailing all the way, for the first eight months she was a waitress and lived in a crappy apartment with another couple of struggle just-graduates (both actresses) and from there she managed to break into the art world... as a waitress at a gallery in the Skirball Center. It seemed to make sense, she spent most of her time in that building anyway and working there meant she could roam around checking things out in her own time as well. It was during her time working as a hostess there that she decided one day she would own a gallery on the premises, Gwen even started planning how she would decorate it and what sort of atmosphere she wanted it to have, she would eye up the gallery spaces on her lunch breaks and on her way home, thinking about where she would put the benches and how she would spot the art and how she would run classes during the days to teach people watercolour and oil techniques and even the more homely crafts, how she could get guests to come and give talks. It would be a diverse cultural hub. Gwen just had to get there.
Strike two in her romantic history occurred around this time, too. It was a ridiculous repeat of her college boyfriend actually, but as was her nature Gwen gave the guy she liked so much the benefit of the doubt, which in the end only served to hurt her when she realised he was using her to get ahead in the art world. It was about then that she made up her mind never to date a fellow artist again. Gwen decided she couldn't trust them.
When she wasn't working or dreaming up colour palettes for a gallery she didn't own yet she was painting, she would go down to the beach with her easel or else up to the roof of her building, she would paint landscapes or abstract and emotive pieces and as she aged and matured so too did her artwork. Of course she was one of a hundred young artists in the city and she knew that, she sold very few pieces early on but persevered despite that and after nearly four years, three apartments and a twelve different roommates she finally applied and won an art grant for her plans which had been formalised and drawn up, a space chosen for the gallery on the ground floor, the rent decided on. Everything was starting to shape up and she was so excited to have her own gallery at last, she couldn't even believe it at first. Soon enough she had the labourers in the place, they removed a wall and opened up the main gallery area more, she refitted the lights, painted the walls and did most of it herself where she could to save on costs. When it was ready for opening, after some time spent gathering together her first showing of local artists and drawing comparisons between them and a traditional Parisian style, she invited her parents down. It was a surprising success, Gwen had been prepared for any number of crises but the whole thing went off without a hitch; she had a string quartet, there was champagne, it was a wonderful evening and the review the next day were excitingly positive. On the whole.
Still she wasn't showing her own work, focusing on making the gallery a success rather than promoting her own career as a painter; she helped a handful of young artists out in the starts of their careers and the gallery began to gain notoriety for the classy, elegant evenings. Gwen started art classes, teaching watercolours and oils in small classes once or twice a week, then she started letting the space out during the day for other classes like knitting and jewellery making, on weekends she ran (and still does run) parent-child craft afternoons, painting plates and making things and by the time she was twenty-seven the place was almost exactly how she imagined it, a hub of artistic expression, making art accessible to everyone, not just the connoisseurs who came to the evening functions to buy the expensive pieces. It was while she was playing hostess to a charity fundraiser that she met her current boyfriend Harrison Charles.
While slipping away from the gallery floor proper to firstly catch a breather and secondly to call the caterer and ask why she had only received half the order of champagne she had put in for that night she stumbled across a man poking around the back storeroom, one that mostly held her own pieces, covered in dust sheets and tucked out of the way. Harrison was extremely charming and she found herself blushing rather easily around him, laughing and flirting through their conversation until she had to excuse herself to make the phone call, forgetting rather quickly that she had been intending to shoo him back to the gallery floor. Unfortunately she didn't see him the rest of the night, whether he left or whether she was just too busy with running the evening but it wasn't long before their paths crossed again. Gwen was teaching a watercolour class one afternoon when he came by and stood at the back and when she had finished explaining the exercise for the class she went over to talk to him. Harrison asked her for her number and the rest, as they say, is history. They began dating and after a year together, Gwen's longest and most stable relationship, they moved into together, or rather she moved into his loft out at the Colony.
In the last eighteen months with Harrison -- though she doesn't necessarily think the two aspects are related -- Gwen has started to find recognition and success with her art, she's not entirely sure how she feels about it since all the best artists are dead long before their art is truly understood and interpreted but the simple fact that her work brings people joy and that they are willing to pay for it and display it in their homes makes her very happy, she feels extremely honoured and a little shy and flustered every time one of her paintings (or, more rarely, her sculptures) is sold but it never fails to excite her either.
What she doesn't know is that Harrison is a werewolf, they haven't been together nearly long enough for her to notice his lack of aging, though she does think of him as old fashioned in some ways, Gwen has always assumed that is just his upbringing, from his suits to his pocket watch she finds his entire gentlemanly demeanour endearing. Finding out that she is pregnant however is the biggest aspect of her immediate life; not knowing what Harrison really is and therefore not knowing what the baby is puts her at risk for the time being and only time will tell what effect the revelation of that truth with have on not only Gwen herself but her relationships with Harrison and ultimately the life of the child that she carries.