I won’t keep boring everyone with stories of transport problems, but I am starting to think that the best residencies are probably the ones where you are actually resident somewhere, ie, permanently in situ and not needing to commute to/from home. My last word on the subject: a big thank you to the person trespassing on the railway tracks this morning who delayed me by 90 minutes.
Once I finally arrived at the Centre for Drawing this morning I continued work on the wall drawing I started yesterday. I spent most of the day on this, until I ran out of mapping pins and was forced to stop. It was a tolerable annoyance to stop prematurely as it gave me the opportunity to return to a more investigative way of working, which I’ve been enjoying this week.
It’s fantastic having the space and time to test out ideas as soon as I have them. Normally I have to wait hours or days until I’m able to develop new ideas in the studio. By this time my mind has often moved onto other thoughts. It’s quite possible that I’ve forgotten potentially brilliant ideas while doing everyday mundanities like washing up. This afternoon’s new idea was to make a drawing in white cord on the white studio wall, hoping that the sunlight would move across the drawing and it would change with the movement of shadows cast by it. The amazing sunlight from my first day in the space remained elusive today, so I started a white drawing in the hopes that we have a change in the weather soon. In the meantime I used directional light from a digital projector to illuminate the drawing – it looked nothing like sunlight but was interesting anyway. I think that much of the work I do during this residency will be developed in my own studio afterwards. This is one of the good things about writing this blog – it’s a brilliant way for me to remember all those ideas I have before ‘normal’ life gets in the way and I forget them.
