Artist Rebecca Price has been working with musicians in preparation for her project at St George’s. She begins her residency blog:
The Colour of Music, Rebecca Price
The launch of ‘The Colour of Music’ is now less than a week away, but happily I now feel more on top of things. The combination of the Easter holidays and all those extra bank holidays hasn’t been brilliant for getting organised. Much as I love spending time with my family, I’m unfortunately not one of those relaxed people who can get on with their work while the hubbub of family life goes on around them; I really need the house entirely to myself, in order to get anything useful done.
After an epic journey to Scotland (Sutherland; the part that people down here don’t seem to realise exists, north of Inverness) we came back spiritually refreshed, but each suffering from different stages of a bad cold. The next hurdle was a rather time-consuming birthday party for my daughter, involving running a puppet workshop. Although these eleven-year olds mostly made a reasonable job of sewing up their puppets, none of them was to be able to thread a needle, so I spent a wall-to-wall morning squinting at needle eyes. I must get some glasses sorted out.
I was beginning to wonder how on earth I was going to get everything finished for my show in time, when some well-placed school days came to the rescue, and I now feel back on track. I think I have more or less finished some paintings that I rather ill-advisedly began before Easter. I always have a bit of a panic before an exhibition, and think I don’t have enough work. But the resulting last-minute paintings usually turn out to be real turkeys and don’t get included in the show anyway. For some reason, at this late stage, it always seems to be a great idea to begin a painting combining dark pinks and orange. True to tradition, I’ve done that again this time.
I decided that watching the Royal wedding this morning might combine quite well with getting my mirror plates done. In the past I have always avoided any national events like this which involve massed outpourings of emotion, but then it occurred to me the other day that maybe it’s a little odd to have absolutely no recollection of TV coverage of any iconic events, so I dutifully sat down to absorb some historic significance. It all seemed very pleasant, though I could have done without the ladies on ITV gushing on about nipped-in waists. I do wonder sometimes how women can expect themselves to be taken seriously while squealing with excitement at what are, essentially, just clothes. Anyway, the mirror plates are all sorted out now, though apparently I interrupted a crucial bit of the vows by asking my husband if he knew where the centimetre-long screws might be.
Last night I was out till quite late, drawing another quartet. I have been practising on some quartets that I know, in their own houses, before my project at St George’s begins. There seem to be two completely different approaches I could take; a) doing studies of the instrumentalists in action, and b) painting my responses to the actual music they are playing. At present the results are so completely different I’m wondering if it makes any sense at all to do them both, but I think I’ll leave an open mind about it to start with, and just see if anything comes of either of them.
I have now managed to book most of my Open Studio Fridays with kind volunteers, willing to come and practise or rehearse in the church while I do studies of them. The project is quite exciting, in that I really have no idea where the work might go; also rather alarming in that I need to produce something
coherent for the closing event in ten weeks time……
