Photograph by Philip King.
I have a lot to feel grateful for. Hours put into the creative side of the project are staring to pay off, I have doubled my studio space, and at the weekend I was treated to a photographic session (unexpected help in kind) in the studio by Philip King. All photographs in this blog post are by him.
I also have the most marvellous colleagues on the project and some exciting news in the pipeline that I can’t blog about just yet.
As I begin to turn the creative ship around and get my project management head firmly in place I’m thrilled to start sharing some images from the studio with a taste of what will be on offer, without (I hope) giving away too much.
I want to say how grateful I am to the Arts Council for funding this project and how important being able to take a little bit of extra space is proving to be for the creative work. I couldn’t have afforded to go for it without this support.
Having a bigger space has pushed the paintings on immeasurably and will impact on the quality of the final pieces. I’ve been emboldened and taken risks I may not have done otherwise. It has also given me the chance to see the works as a cycle and assess how they work as a whole.
The work is coming together!
I’ve had a lucky break. The opportunity to take over double my usual (somewhat cramped) studio space. This has transformed my ability to see the seven panels I’m working on in sequence, and in to see them all together.
Double the space is glorious. It changes everything – I can spread my wings and be bolder with the work. I honestly feel it has moved things on dramatically – together with the working through of ideas that the painting process brings.
I’m coming to realise more and more how I must feel my way. That for some of my responses I can plan, but for others I just need to work through it. Painting is thinking in this sense.
My motto last week for painting was – you have to break it to make it. I risked everything by reworking one panel which I thought was finished. It was a solid piece, it did the job, but there was one element that niggled. What replaces my original painting is a radically different and more emotionally powerful interpretation of this particular stage in Felicia Browne’s journey.
The two images below give a hint of progress.
A truly exciting two days on the object front! Yesterday I finally caught up with a contact who had been keeping some genuine 1930s glasses for me, and I was able to take them with me to the studio today.
They are more like the ones Felicia wore (as seen in photographs) than a previous pair I had managed to find during the research phase of the project. I’ll still use the older pair – as they fit a description of Felicia’s glasses by a fellow student at the Slade. The new pair are a wonderful addition and broaden what I can achieve in the final hang.
In the afternoon I got notice that a parcel had arrived. This was more exciting than I can say, AND I can’t reveal yet what this object – shipped from the US – is. I’m determined not to show the larger panels and their objects too soon. But it’s taking all the self-discipline I have! It’s for the 5th (additional) panel, which focuses on Felicia’s road trip to Spain. That’s all I can say – other than it is PERFECT!
So back to the glasses. The image above shows how they could be used with the final panel – here attached to the smaller painted sketch.
I’m delighted with them and can already see that they can even be worked on to enhance the layers of meaning I’m trying to incorporate in the work.
Sketch 4. Paris: Wandering Savagely. Bound for a major re-think.
Work on the project is proving intense. I’m in studio phase and working as many hours as I can on paintings – some of which sit! like well trained dogs, and some of which don’t.
By this I mean I can already tell that some are going to prove difficult to resolve, resulting in tussle of wills for which there is no doggie chew to bargain with. This is often the way – it is only the rare painting that arrives as a gift and lies doggo on first command.
But my 6 painted sketches are helping tremendously in the work on the first 3 larger panels – it’s my 4th that’s being tricksy.
Interestingly, it was by far the quickest (in sketch form) and, looking back, highly provisional.
So – chin scratch, head nod – comes the sage observation that if you have to work to a plan, it pays to plan more thoroughly.
This may be obvious to the casual observer, but something of a novelty for me in my painting practice. I’m intuitive and explorative in method – I begin usually without preconception or plan, but rather trust to instinct to draw on my research.
Already, Felicia is stretching me and teaching me new tricks.
The first 3 works are also those which incorporate Felicia’s line, and even carefully chosen examples of her figurative sketches. There has come a point in panel 4 where I no longer recognise my own work however, and part of the struggle is to orientate myself. Immersed in research material, entranced by Felicia’s drawing practice my explorations have now taken me too far for comfort in an exhibition context. The work still has to reflect who I am as an artist – albeit responding to another artist’s material. So I must step back in panel 4 and dig my way out a little to recoup my own thumbprint and regain what feels like the harmony of panels 1-3.
It’s been full-on this week in the studio, with progress on the painterly side. Unusually, my instinct is to hold back on sharing images of the larger painted panels, which will be shown at our exhibition in October. I don’t want to give it all away too soon!
It’s most unlike me to show such restraint! But there is something different going on with this project in my mind – the responsibility of working with Felicia’s archive, and working site specifically are both factors determining how the creative responses are shaping up. Additionally ACE funding informs my choices. Somehow in combination these factors are producing something different in both method and expression.
There are core elements of my practice which don’t change, but I am adapting (without planning to exactly) to the new circumstances this project brings. But then – this is what I do. It is part of my wiring to mould myself and be responsive – and in this work it is beginning to feel like an immense privilege to be able to do so. I’m guided by forces I can’t fully control – the unconscious as compass is a vital element I’ve come to trust utterly over the years, and it allows me to feel unquestioningly close to my material. I can throw myself in and abandon preconception but interestingly not restraint.
The only thing to reveal is that my six initial sketches will become seven larger panels to accommodate a additional narrative element.
The work (to be shown in the place of Felicia’s birth) will be exhibited along two naves of All Saints Weston, which boasts a most beautifully elegant and pared back interior. The panels are taking on elements of a secular stations of the cross, which has surprised me, but I’m excited to go with it. This work is not like any I’ve done before.
I’ve also been revisiting the object work side of things – an element of assemblage will be present and inform each panel.
My early (pre-funding) obsession with the Basque beret has waned a little, though my heart skips each time I see one in the myriad photographs that emerge of the period. A ubiquitous piece of headgear, I was delighted to read in Felicia’s MI5 file that the surveillance officers who watched her board the ferry to France reported that she wore a “grey costume” and a “black beret.”
YES! All my instincts had told me that this was a seminal object and now we know that Felicia not only recorded it beautifully in her sketches but that she also adopted it on her travels. I just know that once my panels are done, the beret will bounce back into my imagination and work hard to find it’s place among Felicia’s painted stages in her journey to that fateful bridge in Tardienta where she lost her life.
