The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts is currently showing an exhibition based on ‘the artist’s studio’ and has invited artists across East Anglia to upload photos of their studios to a flikr photo stream. I think this is a really nice idea (except, why restrict yourself to East Anglia?). So I took a few snaps and uploaded them today. See all the photos on http://www.flickr.com/groups/sainsburycentrestudio.
Fifteen stretched canvases arrived today! I want to spread them around me and glory in the sense of promise they hold (if I was a dog I’d be rolling in them like fox poo). I want to sluice oil paint around and twist the brushes and rags across it and immerse myself in slicks of colour. And what did I tell myself yesterday: must do more monochrome on paper….! What to do… I think a bit of both.
Also: I feel so excited and flattered – one of my art heroes has read my blog, and he likes it! (And he said nice things about my work too). James Elkins is the author of my favourite book on painting: ‘What Painting Is’. It’s really worth a read if you’re a painter, or if you want to understand painters.
Someone from firstsite (a contemporary visual arts organisation, based here in the East of England) came to the studio today and we discussed ways to take my ‘Alice’ project forward. It’s so great that they want to be supportive. I make the work; they’ll help me get it into venues as a touring show. She’s gone off to research and identify galleries to approach; I now need to come up with a good title and also crack on with making the pieces. The aim is to get 20 large works on paper. I’ve already done six, some of which have been seen on this blog, but I’ve decided I want to eliminate colour and just work with monochrome, so none of the six will form part of the package. The only precedent for this (monochrome) is the short residency I did at firstsite a few months ago. I have the appropriate anxiety about this (what if I can’t pull it off?) which should make for continuing boundary-breaking as I’m sure to keep coming up against the ‘sod it, it’s hideous, I’ll have to do something drastic to it’ which occasionally leads to breakthroughs… (And also, sadly, often leads to crumpled messes in the bin!)
Migraine’s gone now, so I’m full of energy. Just got to make sure I spend that energy in the studio now, and not on the hoovering…
Metaphor. Someone said yesterday that if you can find a metaphor for a problem, and look at the situation from that point of view, you’re half-way to solving it. I like that.
Another friend has a theory that good art is metaphor, bad art is simile. He reckons it’s very straightforward. Personally I don’t think I can define art in blanket terms like that. I think art can be so much in the eye of the beholder. (An example: I was in someone’s studio a while ago and was transfixed by the paint splashes on a small patch of floor. It seemed to me to be so much more lyrical and successful as a painting than any of the works on canvas… except that, of course, it wasn’t an artwork at all, it was neither consciously created nor held up as a piece of art.)
Anyway, right now the main metaphor in my life is that of an axe crashing through my head – I’ve been suffering for three days with an awful migraine. I want to get in the studio but there’s no point trying to make art in this state: with a migraine, my way of looking, thinking and acting gets narrow and tedious. Idea: maybe I should work with the axe metaphor somehow, and imagine the positive aspects of what an axe can do – opening up, loosening, freeing, and releasing pent-up energy…
BBC Radio 4, the artist’s friend… What I love about Radio 4 is – well, lots of things. Most of all, it’s the way I can hear other creative people speak, particularly writers, but also visual artists, dancers, choreographers, musicians, etc, etc. It opens up fresh ways of looking at things, which after all is what creativity is. I know several artists who listen while they’re working.
However – unless I’m doing something routine such as stretching canvases or something, I don’t have the radio on when I’m actually in the studio, because it takes me into a different space. I need music whilst I work, but it needs to be somewhat familiar to me, and reasonably predictable (i.e. an album, not ‘shuffled’) so that I can be present and responsive with my work in a particular way. Having said all that, in doing these portraits recently, I’ve found that it’s okay to have my sitter watching a DVD or listening to a comedy CD [What I’ve Learned About Portrait Painting Lately, Part Umpteen – make sure it’s comedy, in an attempt to stop the sitter looking too mournful…].
Top choices for studio CD’s vary, I go through phases, but probably the most enduring is the Cocteau Twins.
Time to stop blogging and get in the studio…
Emma Cameron grew up in the Scottish Highlands, studied Fine Art in London first at Camberwell School of Art and then at Central St Martins, and now lives in Essex. She has had ten solo exhibitions to date. Visit www.emmacameron.com for more details. Emma is also an Integrative Arts Psychotherapist (UKCP registered) and works in private practice in London and Colchester.
