Just to clarify at the outset, I rent my studio as do the majority of other artists I know, if indeed they even have a studio space. However through the payment of rent there is a sense of ownership – albeit on a month to month basis. The space can be engineered, arranged, neglected, and shared at the will of the artist who is in charge. I have gone through stages of having studios and then operating from the kitchen table or home office but one thing remains constant is the appreciation I have for the opportunity to rent a spaces in a commercial setting. For it is being the outsider within such an environment that I find so interesting. Seeing industrial processes and equipment, the immediately overwhelming smell of solvent which I quickly become accustomed to, the colour of the plastics being used, the scale of the work being produced. My space looks like it used to be the draftsman’s office, with partition windows into the adjoining workshop and a view to derelict land beyond the road in front of the building. There are other artists there but I rarely see them, if ever. My studio tends to be a solitary space, well all except for radio 4, the artist studio staple.
