Kejoo Park

Favorite artist and why/how did she/her art or life inspire you?

If I had to name one, it would be Georgia O'Keeffe for two reasons. First, she was a role model - her lifelong pursuit, effort and dedication to her art is an inspiration for many women artists today. She worked uninterruptedly until the end of her life. Second, her pioneering modernism, radical depictions, and her wide range of themes - particularly the theme of nature and her expression of feelings and ideas.

Women are far less represented in galleries and museums worldwide than their male counterparts. As a woman, did you find it difficult to navigate the art world or did you encounter any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all women shows etc.? Why why not? Did you notice any changes?

It is so true that female artists have more difficulties in the art world. But I'm optimistic about the future: today there are so many talented women artists and curators. I believe and hope that the situation for female artists will change rapidly.

Yes, I support all women shows. We have been disadvantaged for so long. I think it's right to give female artists more support - just as male artists have been getting for far too long.

However, I hope that the main focus is on the work itself rather than on redressing gender inequality. We should be generous and reach out to as many people as possible, regardless of gender. We should embrace the whole of our society.

I've been fortunate to find a few galleries to represent me, considering I've been on a long hiatus from art - I worked as a landscape architect and university lecturer for many years before returning to art. However, it also means I bring new and different insights into my art. I didn't feel like I had more difficulties because of my gender - luckily.

The bigger problem today, I think, is the commercialization of art and how some artists work with this in mind.

 When did you first discover art? and when did you realize that you wanted to do it professionally?

I don't know when - even as a child I liked to do handicrafts and paint. I've often been told that I have talent. Naturally, I decided to study art when I finished high school in Korea.

Can you tell me something about yourself/your background?

I was born and raised in Korea. After high school, I went to New York to pursuit an art education. I went to the Pratt Institute, then to Cornell University - and studied art and architecture. I tried to work as an artist in New York. Faced with the harsh financial realities I decided to study landscape architecture - I thought it was an art and design related field and yet had a practical aspect to the real world - this was the idea of a then 24 year old young woman.

I studied with Peter Walker (the designer of the Ground 0 monument) and worked with him briefly, then I had the chance to work and live in Switzerland for some years. After that I taught landscape planning and ecology at the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany.

With each professional position (and change of location), I have gained a new awareness, a new perception and, above all, an appreciation for nature.

When teaching students, you must be structured. I don't always have to like someone's work (any kind of artwork). But it is important to see the comprehensibility of what one is doing. This is what I asked for from all students.

What themes or ideas do you pursue in your work?

Working in architecture, planning, theory and ecology, my topic automatically developed into the relationship between Man and nature.

Consequently, I developed my philosophy and attitude towards my work (of architecture, landscape architecture and art).

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you prefer an intuitive approach? Do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you focus on just one piece or do you work on several at once? How long do you work on each piece?)

After working and developing experience in all three disciplines, I automatically developed the idea that art should also be clearly structured - it should be more than personal feeling.

One has to have a solid concept or subject - consisting of knowledge, understanding of the issues at stake, a clear philosophy or at least principle or attitude, before letting intuition, feeling, our eyes and brushes take over the visual part of the art work: intuition comes from conscious and unconscious knowing/understanding..

My answer is that my working process is both research/planning and intuition.

In the subject of Man and nature, there are so many issues within that subject, especially environmental issues.

I follow many political and social discussions about the environment. I watch and listen to the demonstrations and, of course, the Fridays kids.

My theme is also a total work of art (Gessamtkunst). I integrate other branches of the arts; music, literature (especially poetry). I'm a classical music lover (I'm not a musician but I play the piano a bit) and I love reading poetry (I'm not a poet). So, I study specific music and poetry relevant to my subject and incorporate them into my work.

My last major series - ‘The Song of the Earth’ - was a painting series supported by music and poetry. Gustav Mahler composed the symphony with songs - ‘The Song of the Earth’. His songs are inspired by Chinese poems of the 8th century. It's about Taoist poems. Fascinated by the poems, Mahler rearranged the poems to incorporate them into his music. On the one hand it is a combination of art of literature and music and on the other hand it is a combination of the art of the East and West.

I have rearranged this magnificent work in my painting - and named it ‘The Song of the Earth.’ It was my attempt to unite all the arts in my painting.

How can one paint the great poems of the 8th century and Mahler's late romantic music? I feel that everything is pursuit and attempt.

I believe in the spirit of our time. It's 2022. Whatever I do should reflect the spirit of our time.

Therefore, my method - for example of ‘ The Song of the Earth’ is based on photography - mostly of lakes and ponds. The poems themselves were written around lakes and pavilions. I then make sketches on the topic. I work on the PC to combine these two different works. I digitally select the images I want to keep from both images. I enlarge and print them on canvas and start painting on them. The original image of photography and drawing almost disappear. Just a few traces and the essentials in the background. The brush stroke dominates: my works are mixed media. I often work on more than one work at the same time. Some works come quickly and for others I struggle. For the whole series of ‘The Song of the Earth’, including the research study work, it took me about a year and a half.

What were your influences? (Anything in history? A specific work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends? Literature?)

My influence is nature and its decay through Man. In America I was mainly concerned with the visual aspect of architecture, landscape architecture and art. Through my experiences in Switzerland (partly living in nature) and teaching ecology in Germany, my theme developed and gradually evolved to Man and nature. Within this theme there is endless material to work with.

Today we discuss the climate crisis a lot and yet we don't do enough. That is what led me to do the ‘Earth Project.’ This project is an installation with paintings and drawings. It's a project to invite all people, including those who don't usually go to see artworks in galleries or museums. I am trying to invite the public to participate in the project (the ‘Silent March for the Earth’) and the panel discussion ‘How We Want to Live in the Future - Man and Nature in Art.’

I think I succeeded to some extent. The response was very good. The young people involved in this project were very content.

Briefly, I will describe the main concepts of the ‘Earth Project.’ It consists of the idea that Man is a part of the Earth. This is a Taoist concept as well as being an idea of the European Romantic era. The viewer should be a part of the exhibition through, walking through it and viewing it.

The emphasis of the ‘Earth Project’ is on the duality of nature/cosmos and therefore also Man’s nature (Man has duality in his nature). This duality does not consist of two opposites but two sides which support each other to become a whole. I did half of the installation (a half circle form - stone hill/ convex -in the middle of which there is an opening where damp rises) at the outer wall of the Frankfurt Art Society and the other half inside of the building.  This part of the installation is a half circle made up of a body of water. Both parts are nine metres long - a radius of four and half metres. The reflecting body of water is black. It is accompanied by the sound of dropping water.

The installation is also accompanied by my paintings of ‘The Song of the Earth’ and ‘The Wander.’ Everything changes as one walks through the exhibition - the sound of water, reflections, one’s own reflection and the steam from outside – the stone hill/convex. It is to be lost and to find self within the total art.

Can you name a book that you would recommend to any artist? (Not necessarily art related) And why?

I tend to recommend poems because they go to our hearts and gently touch our senses, for their love of nature, love, loneliness: William Wordsworth (specifically ‘My Heart Leaps Open’), all the poems of Hermann Hesse (‘In the Fog’), Remy de Gourmont (‘Fallen Leaves’), W.B. Yeats, Alexander Pushkin, Rabindranath Tagore, Rainer Maria Rilke ...

 Do you have tips for other artists? Especially students?

 It is very often difficult to stay authentic and not go with a popular flow. But remember, your belief/principle/attitude should remain as a clear guide to your path and integrity.

Brett Eduard Zadravetz

Brett Eduard Zaravetz (born 1992) is a Canadian painter & mixed media artist, currently based out of Montreal, Quebec. His paintings, drawings and collage works are all imbued with the spontaneous gestural qualities of abstract expressionism while suggestive of some deeper hidden sense of iconography. His works often refer to a narrative or the figurative which is conveyed via a fragmented perception.

STATEMENT:

I never really know what it is that I’m about to make before I start a piece… 

So my studio practice usually begins with me taking more of an “automatic” approach to whatever medium I’m working with. Generating works rapidly and trying to establish some sort of rhythm. I place more of an emphasis on gesture and my immediate response to mark making rather than any internal thought process. I try to just tap into my intuition especially for my paintings and drawings where I usually don’t venture beyond this sort of automatic approach - though there are some exceptions where I’ll reference studies.

As for my collage process, it typically starts in the same manner. I create a batch of works in an automatic fashion but with the specific intent of cutting them up.  

Indulging a little bit into that child-like tendency I have to want to destroy something after having made it… not so much in a harmful way but more just out of curiosity… to see all the working parts. It’s that sort of prismatic or exploded view of things that has always been really appealing to me.

But perhaps more importantly it’s not until this part of my process where I'm looking through that “exploded perspective” and way of seeing that I usually begin to discover and draw out the more figurative elements of my work. The cut-ups really allow me to pull out and distill any signs or symbols that may have been hidden within the initial drawings and that I can use and bend to create some sort of narrative. It really becomes quite fun because the relationship of everything to one another is pretty much lawless and almost out of nowhere you can start to build up these almost spectral landscapes. The collages leave plenty of space for hiding things which you only discover after letting your eyes bounce around within the piece. In the end it’s mostly about maintaining a sense of play and continuing this process of discovery and letting the work reveal itself to me while I'm making it that I'm interested in. 

- Brett

Aisling Drennan

Aisling Drennan makes abstract oil paintings about the variable properties of oil paint, how it can be structured and the consequence of mark-making on canvas.

Working analytically the paintings are visual dialogues seeking the delicate balance between chaos and structure with a ruthlessness in how information is selected and deleted.

Each painting is constructed to a point of completion through a process of paint layering and specific application of vinyl tape. It is then deconstructed through the removal of tape, revealing painted under and over layers; a practice of finding and loosing the painting until visually robust.

Her practice is influenced by the abstract expressionist movement and the expressive content of her own experiences as a professional dancer.  Artists such as Joan Mitchell, Sean Scully, Fiona Rae and Willem de Kooning have informed her development arriving at its current state where the onus is on the physical act of painting.

 Drennan’s approach to painting is playful even irresponsible at times; a concoction of ultimate strife and ultimate indulgence.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I’m originally from the west of Ireland. I came to London after being offered a Masters in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. When I finished in 2014, I decided to try and base myself in London as I had built up connections with fellow artists as well as galleries that I wanted to nurture. My first studio was an old, smelly kebab shop on the Holloway road but it was free! Between working various jobs to support my practice I managed to find time to make work and soon I was getting accepted for exhibition and commissions and gaining recognition through shortlistings for competitions like the John Moores painting prize, VAO and Jackson’s Open.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

My mom is an artist (www.DoreenDrennan.com) so art was something I grew up with and naturally aspired to. I first had a career as a professional Irish dancer with Riverdance touring internationally for years before taking my place at art school but I always had my sketchbook in my suitcase. There are definitely elements of my dance career that have a place in my painting, for example, collectors regularly comment on the fluidity and sense of movement within my work. It was always a goal to go to art school and establish myself as an artist which can be a bit risk taking adventure. Committing to this career is a noble thing; it’s courageous to put yourself into a precarious position, trying to make it in an industry that has very few entrances, and even fewer moments of luck but I just didn’t want to do anything else.

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related)

 AA Milnes’ “Winnie the Pooh” was on my reading list for my Masters degree - I enjoyed it! 

“Inside The Painter’s Studio” by Joe Fig because I feel you always learn a little more about the artist when you get a sense of their studio space.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

 If it was easy everyone would be an artist - be realistic, work hard, stick to your guns and just go for it if its what you really want!

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

Joan Mitchell - I discovered her work during my BA fine art at GMIT, Ireland. Her work has been continually informative as well as inspiring for me plus she was one of the major female painters of the abstract expressionist movement from which my practice stems. I have a book on her work and regularly flick through it - the fluidity, palette and conviction of her work still continues to surprise me.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

I am very process based and pretty much follow the same path - I build up my visual diaries with studies, thoughts, comments, paint experimentations and then transfer what works onto canvas. I have a shelf full of visual diaries in my studio now that acts like a big back catalogue to my practice and visually explains all the work I’ve made to date. I really appreciate them and use them whenever I hit a ‘block’.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? Tell us about them/what are they about?

I have just been offered a solo show at the Graham Hunter gallery (march 2-15) here in London. This will be my second time exhibiting with this gallery and I will be showing work made during a residency I did last year at Cill Rialaig artists retreat in the west of Ireland. 

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‘ It’s absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities.’

These words from the film producer Samuel Goldwyn might  equally  have  been uttered by the painter Aisling Drennan, whose colourful, layered Abstract Expressionist-style canvases are a series of endless possibility, of unresolved experimentation, of contumacious contradictions. Constructing and deconstructing, concealing and revealing, Drennan’s mark-making creates both chaos and structure, a concoction of intuition and organicness, submitted to analysis, until some form of resolve is determined. Never a fixed conclusion, however, or, as Samuel Beckett writes: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’1

But, to the viewer, Drennan’s paintings are far from being failures. The vast, freewheeling swathes of paint sweep you up, taking you, willing or not, on a stormy journey, a rollercoaster ride, across and deep within  the  canvas, destination unknown. As painterly, or malerisch, as Drennan’s surface brushstrokes might be, there is nevertheless a depth to her canvases, with their partially visible  geometric lines and boxes, drawn in charcoal, à la de Kooning, leading you within, underneath the waves, drowning you in the intense primary colours that ‘pop’ against one another in a playful, sometimes seemingly reckless, way. ‘You have to have colour and light,’ Drennan exclaims. ‘My god! And yellow is just a feel‐good colour, really. It physically makes me happy to look at it.’ But reds and blues, ochres, and sometimes blacks, rear their heads as well, like animals from within, each opening a dialogue, interrupting, rejoining, and drawing the others  into  a  spirited  conversation,  a  song, or maybe even a dance. The choreography is free, but there is an underlying internal logic, a set of steps and movements that may be exploited and utilised in infinite combination. Drennan paints always at arm’s length, from the shoulder and elbow, avoiding the contrivance of anything produced too painstakingly close up.

Nevertheless, there is a beautiful concentration as she works steadily, aiming for the marathon, not the sprint. ‘Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.’2

The lyricism of a painting extends beyond the individual canvas, with one work leading on to the next, which is born, inevitably, out of a ‘niggling’ point of its predecessor, begun before its parent is fully matured. The process is empirical, as Drennan takes, reappropriates and develops: ‘There is no performance – it’s all one big rehearsal’. The subject she seeks to explore is the very stuff of painting itself: its materiality and physicality. The only narrative is a narrative of process, of exploration and development from one work to the next – from one layer to the next

– building up memories and traces, a series of wounds and scars, with new life blossoming afresh at each turn along the way. A work may take months to complete, as she applies masking tape, charcoal and coats of oil paint, before removing the tape, applying more paint, often time and time again, ever reassessing, redirecting, accepting the inevitable but entirely unpredictable happy accident. In an age of digital perfection, Drennan is an artist to whom the term ‘practice’ – with all the inherent hope, failure, and possibility – truly applies.

© Anna McNay, 2017

1 Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983

2 Gloria Steinem, American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist

Olivia O’Dwyer

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

My favourite women artists would have to be Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. Helen’s composition of just colour and plains have influenced me. Their strength when it was a difficult time to be a female artist, pioneering the way for us today, with their uncompromising attitude and fierce intellect. I admire a lot of female artists working today as well — my studio neighbour Helen Gaynor, for example, is great for feedback on my work and we have great discussions on the complexity of painting. I also admire artists like Alice Maher and Genieve Figgis who are representing Ireland internationally.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

I have been rejected, not because of being a woman but because I have made mistakes. I keep working and putting myself out there. The best advice you can give yourself is to keep working and the opportunities will come. Good luck comes from hard work. I have come across sexism, but not so much from the art world. I think it’s very much an even playing field in Ireland. There is great support here from both sexes. I have only been painting for about 5/6 years which is really like three minutes in the art world. I know it’s a long game. When I do get caught up or dissatisfied I just go back to the work.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

My dad was a painter and had a studio/gallery at home. I was brought up on the smell of turps and I modelled for classes and stage set designs. My dad would run competitions and I would enter so I’d say I developed an interest in art at a very young age. I went to Limerick School of Art, where I am from, but didn’t practise for years. I pursued other careers and had a family. I discovered I wasn’t very happy and fulfilled so I started to draw and paint again and really built my practice from scratch. I have been a professional artist for about five years now. 

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends?  Literature?)

I was just saying the other day that it’s very hard to know all your influences. Coincidentally, I then went to an artist talk given by painter Richard Gorman, he said something similar - that it’s impossible to really know what influences you. I just thought it was an interesting angle on the whole thing. I think work you see from your younger student days stays with you, like when you first see a Monet or Bacon - which for me was astonishing. But Frankenthaler for sure for her compositions, Robert Ryman for his use of whites. Lately I have really been enjoying Thomas Nozkowski and Forrest Bess. They are making me look at painting in a braver and bolder way, cause they are uncompromising in their approach.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

I soak up the landscape like a sponge. I went to Nepal last July and it is still giving me loads of images to work on like the temples and the Himalayas. I work in a series, in a motif which I build upon. I then manipulate any accidents and discoveries that arise out of that.

Different elements of landscape inspire me. I see certain “anomalies” in the sky that feed my work. The paintings also always allude to water, the waves and tones of water.

I read an artist saying that there is so much in the subconscious to draw from that we don’t need much more. I am in full agreement.

I tend to build up layers of varying tones and let it spill over the edge of the canvas. Lately I draw over the paint. It’s quite engaging, letting the pencil move across the canvas… very gestural, the lines almost appear hair-like.

I generally complete a painting in three days as I favour smaller canvases. In my recent solo show, the works were all 20 x 20 cm with one larger painting measuring 100 x 100 cm. I find working on a few at the same time helps keep your attention. It also feels exciting and fresh.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging?

Work work work, stay at it even when it seems like you are not making headway. I heard a great piece of advice from Maggi Hambling in an online video — make art your best friend, go to it when your sad, angry, depressed, happy or randy ... things like that stay in my head and help you. And be objective about your work, recognise what’s not working quickly. Stay alert, don’t meander through, doing the same thing. 

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? Tell us about them/what are they about? 

I have been invited to exhibit alongside works of the Arts Council Collection of Ireland here in Wexford. It’s a very exciting show with some of Ireland’s leading contemporary artists such as Alice Maher and Janet Mularney. 

oliviaodwyer.com

Suzanne Holtom

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

 I don’t have a single woman artist of influence but several, for different reasons at different times. Eva Hesse, for her intelligent and intuitive response to materials, she interpreted the reductive aims of minimalism towards a more affecting, empathic result. When I was on my foundation I saw a show of Therese Oulton’s work at Marlborough called “Lachrimae.” These paintings drew you in to sweepingly romantic spaces, with rhythmical, seductive surfaces, and intricate colour work pressed into the canvas. A tutor at the time dismissed them as being a bit crocheted, and I thought, on the contrary, that was the most wonderful effect, to crochet paint into form.

Looking further back Rachel Ruysch for the sheer intensity she manages to bring to those small yet breathtakingly powerful flower paintings and today Pipilotti Rist for immersing you in a world of epic sensuality. The Barbican Lee Krasner show was fantastic and more recently artists like Katy Moran, Amy Sillman and Cecily Brown have been important.

I was also very fortunate to have some exceptional women tutors at Cardiff and the Slade; Tess Jaray, Carol Robertson and Mona Hatoum. 

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

I think the ‘art world’ is difficult to navigate for many people, especially if you have little experience or connection to its workings. How to make your work visible and how to sustain your practice are pressing issues to deal with but also who to approach and how to do this ‘appropriately’ seems at times, shrouded in mystery. Many artists do not arrive at art school with connections to, or knowledge of this system and start by supporting each other in group shows. 

It is not only a question of women’s shows but what themes are represented within the work. In 2007 I was involved in a project called “Birth Rites” focusing on the politics and practice of childbirth. I was focusing my research on the hospital and personal experience, the relationship between technology and the body in child birth. I know the curator, Helen Knowles had a lot of trouble finding a venue for the work that was produced from 5 different artists. Childbirth, one of the most common, everyday experiences was just too difficult a subject to deal with for many galleries and still provides challenges for public presentation.

I think women are still under-represented in many collections but I feel that right now there may be some momentum to be showing more women’s work. In the last few years I have been to some retrospectives of important yet overlooked artists, Hilma af Klimt, Georgiana Houghton, Dorothea Tanning and Lee Krasner. I suppose the test is, if this is sustained and not just a fashionable moment. 

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

I was always busy making and drawing things as a child, before I knew I wanted to be an artist. I was also very interested in dance, and I suppose that physical, performative aspect of painting is something I still value. I made the decision at 18 to become an artist.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your leducational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I initially studied art a few years after leaving school in Birmingham. The subject really opened up for me whilst doing the foundation course at Bourneville College of Art. There were no significant role models or any idea of what an artist is or how a life in art could function, and so I just took a leap of faith and enrolled. I don’t really remember conversations of ‘career’ as such, I just wanted the opportunity to think about and make art. I pursued the BA Fine Art course at Cardiff, then spent some time in Kenya and returned to do my post-graduate at the Slade. I think you are always in some kind of education as an artist. More recently I have participated in off-site programmes with Turps Art School – the motivation is to continue to be in a dialogue about painting with other artists – particularly at times of change, renewal and transition in my work.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work? 

I suppose there is an overriding interest in the creative tension between content and structure of the work. I do think in terms of narratives and themes to each series of paintings but the actual process of making is also the key idea. There is as much obliteration and erasure in the development of the paintings as construction, there is a lot of improvisation and structures are tested as much as composed. My paintings can go through radical transformations in the making.

The stories in Ovid’s metamorphosis are a recurrent source and sometimes just incidental moments from my memory can get reworked into narratives. Scale is important, epic themes colliding with the trivial or commonplace. 

 In Fortune and Folly, a solo show in 2019, Velasquez ‘Spinners’ was a starting point for several paintings. The theme of painting and weaving was central, layers of paint building a tapestry like surface connecting swipes, smears and tangles into shifting images and spaces. The narrative source focused on Arachne and Minerva to consider questions of creative ambition, the intoxicating forces of power and transformation and the contested relationship between art and craft. The paintings attempted to create a flickering vision of female artistry and industry.

Phaethon and festivals of Venus (Veneralia) are important themes in more recent work. In Ovid’s story of Phaethon,  the impetuous son of Phoebus loses control of the horses and chariot of the sun creating chaos in the scorched and burning heavens and earth. Paintings by Rubens and the landscapes of Chuck Jones (Wiley Cayote and Roadrunner) have been instrumental for ideas of imagery, movement and theatricality. In ‘Changer of Hearts’ entangled marks suggest teeming appetites and sensuality, they play against inset visions of guilt and judgment as part of the ‘Veneralia’ series.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

I make a lot of drawings, sometimes fragments from other paintings where I am looking at spaces and compositions, structures or at interesting marks and gestures from animations. I may then use charcoal or colour sketches to develop these as a starting point towards a painting. However, a lot of changes then take place and I have a range of moves that I make as a performative approach to painting. These are sometimes considered and constructed, at other times improvised and intuitive – everything is in play. I never really know how they will develop and this tension, I have learnt, is an essential if nerve-wracking part of the process. There seems to be a balancing act between spontaneity, complexity and structural efficiency . 

The paintings are developed over weeks and months, I work on a few at the same time and the most difficult thing is when to stop. I now know that if I can leave a painting alone for a couple of months, then it is finished. 

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends?  Literature?)

 The wonderful thing about making art is you end up wandering into unplanned, surprising territories. The space and structures in Baroque painting continue to be of interest, in particular Velasquez, Rubens and Tiepolo but also the anarchic unpredictability and abbreviated forms in animations. 

 Over many years I have researched perceptual and sensory differences, particularly in autism from a range of scientific and biographical texts. I wrote an article for Turps magazine exploring these in relation to histories of early modernist painting, focusing on the radical experiments of Braque and De Kooning. This comparison explored ideas of fragmentation, overload of sensory information, and peripheral perception, features that are considered and developed in my painting process.

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related) And why?

 That is difficult as so many books have been important at different times but if pushed today then I would propose Austerlitz by W G Sebald. Simply a brilliant book; layered, complex, and visionary. It is also an incredibly visual book in its evocative descriptions of memories, impressions and experiences of the elusive characters. It is sweepingly ambitious and concerned with fragmentary, disorientating narratives and peripheral histories.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

Just keep going?

Amanda Doran

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

I am inspired by so many female painters I could never pick one. Chantal Joffe, Dana Schutz, Stella Vine, Alice Neel, Allison Schulnik and Rose Wylie were particularly a big influence on me starting out as an artist. I discovered my passion for figurative painting very early on and they paved the path for me from the very beginning. I learned about “ballsy” painting from them I guess, there’s a very academic playfulness to their work at times. They definitely lit the flame within me. 

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

 I grew up around art. My uncle is a painter and he was a teenager when I was born so I got to grow up around him as he began pursuing his studies and career. He always shared his process with me and I would spend a lot of time just sitting and watching him paint. He’s an abstract painter and he would often ask me "what do you see in that" or "what would you call this painting?" I’m an only child so by nature you live in your imagination for your entertainment, this is where my creativity flourished from quite early on. Growing up I was always creative; I loved performing, writing and crafting. It was the only time I felt comfortable and felt I could express myself so I always knew that that was what I wanted my life to be like. I pursued art after school because I felt it was the only thing I was really good at so to me anything else wasn’t even an option! 

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I am from a small town in Co. Wexford, I hated it growing up so moved away as soon as I could! I moved back home about 3 years ago and I absolutely love it! It’s the perfect place, it has changed a lot over the years and it’s a wonderful hub of interesting people and things to do. 

I left school at 16 without doing my leaving cert because it just wasn’t for me. I was bullied at school and found it really hard to connect with others growing up. I did a PLC that following year, still at only 16 years old and it was incredible. It felt like the first time I was living my life! Like the first time I felt I had a purpose. I knew I was too young to pursue college then so took a few years out, I worked and went back to study at 21. I graduated from NCAD with a first class honours in 2012, like a phoenix rising from the ashes! 

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work? 

My work is currently exploring contemporary ideologies of a modern day woman, from a female’s perspective. What does being a woman mean as it is being redefined by generation Y, social media, self-care advocates and well-being activists…. 

The aesthetics of what beauty is, more importantly what a beautiful woman is is changing rapidly. With countless social media accounts advocating body imperfections, championing our vulvas, breasts, bottoms, stretch marks, flab, belly rolls, body hair, emotional vulnerabilities, self-image struggles, self-worth battles and celebrating our sexual liberty, sexual proclivities and sexual self-exploration, being a woman in 2018 has been a very fascinating thing.  

In this work I wanted to rediscover this new type of woman, examining new approaches to self-image, redefining how not only we see one another as women but more importantly how we see ourselves. How do we relate? What do we relate to? I have looked back extensively to a lot of pagan ideologies and primitive tribal attitudes towards women within community/ tribal groups. I have taken a lot of the symbols, patterns and representations from various ancient cultures into my work almost as a way of paying my respects to my own ancestral female counterparts. 

This work is almost like re-writing well told stories, for modern day children to adopt a much healthier understanding of the importance of the woman in contemporary society and how to embrace a stronger relationship with ourselves as women. In a way I am re-imagining the old outdated perspectives of the ideal woman which comes from the male standards and now rebuilding the image of what the ideal woman is from a females standard. 

I have created a Utopia for women within these new works and here the female figures can explore and celebrate their sexual power, primitive urges, their strengths, weaknesses and their individual sources of power. 

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

 I intially start out by researching, usually from books and documentaries. I read a lot of books about mythology and folklore so that’s where my inspiration comes from lately. I like to take some notes but usually I read and study a lot of the imagery from artworks and artifacts from ancient cultures and I suppose when I feel some ideas brewing it’s an amalgamation of whatever I have been taking in over the past while. Sometimes when I get some ideas it will feed the rest of my research and I will steer myself in certain directions, searching out for particular subject matter. But I always reach a point when I subconsciously know I’ve taken in enough and now it’s time for the ideas to flow. I love my notebook so I’m always jotting down ideas, titles or little musings. Sometimes I will make some smaller works, maybe works on paper to get a feel for what direction the work is going in and then I might play around with some smaller canvases. In the early stages I quite like to collage; magazines, fabrics, sequins, jewels etc. 

With paintings, I like to work on 2 or 3 at time but if I’m really enjoying working on a certain painting I will stick with it until I feel it’s finished or it needs some breathing space for a while. I could make a painting in a day or I could be working on it for months. It depends how each one is going, it depends on my mood while I'm working on it or it depends how clearly I've visualised the work before I began to make it. 

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends?  Literature?)

 I'm half Italian and have spent a lot of time there when I was younger, I always admired the beautiful churches and magnificent statues and paintings. I have always been fascinated with mythology, folklore, ancient cultures, tribes and ancient traditions and religions. I adore the ideas of these wonderful fantastical creatures and women with otherworldly beauty and immense power.

In contrast to this I am also greatly influenced by the outcasts and weirdos of contemporary culture. I have always been an avid observer of subcultures and truly live by the quote from the infamous Dr. Seuss "why fit in when you were born to stand out?!" 

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related) And why?

I think it’s very beneficial to read about the artists that you admire. Whoever they are, if they inspire you or set a little spark off within you, study these people, admire them, soak it all up. I am currently reading Grayson Perry's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.' 

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

My advice would be to try everything. Every idea, get it down on paper even if you don’t follow through on it, if it excites you or thrills you write it down, draw it out, get it out there and that will entice more and more great ideas. Never be afraid of your ideas or think they're stupid and the bottom line is if it’s fun keep doing it!

It’s normal to fall in and out of love with your work, go with it, it’s a rollercoaster ride, so put your hands up and scream as loud as you can!! Woohoooooo!!! 

Instagram: amanda.doran.artist 

Facebook: Amanda Doran Artist 

Twitter: @amandadoranart

Special thanks to Amanda for her contribution to the blog as her interview was due up in September. And to all the other contributors who have been so patient and understanding during such a difficult time.

Luci Eyers

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

I’m not sure I can narrow it down to one woman, so I will start with Gwen John who I admire for the economy and fragility of line in her drawings. Looking at her work reminds me that it can be effective to keep things simple and pared down. A very different artist whose work I love is Nicole Eisenman. Her work is filled with inventiveness, humour and wide ranging references.

Historically the artist I am curious about is Antonia Uccello, Paolo Uccello’s daughter, who Vasari said “knew how to draw” but none of her work is known to exist. I’d love to see her drawings.

Two contemporary women artists who I have been lucky enough to work with and whose approach I find inspirational are Cathy Lomax, who is multi faceted in her involvement with the art world - as well as being an artist she works across media as a publisher, writer and gallerist creating platforms to support and show other artists; and Anne Ryan, an artist but also a generous and insightful teacher and mentor.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

 Whilst women artists appear to be increasingly visible in contemporary venues there is still a huge imbalance historically. Although the National Gallery has recently acquired a powerful self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi as St. Catherine of Alexandria (a scholarly woman who outwitted the leading philosophers of the time), it is still one of only 21 paintings the NG owns (they have borrowed a further 4) which are by women out of their collection of over 2,300 artworks.

All-women shows can be useful and interesting but it isn’t the only way forward. I am a mother of three sons, so I live in a house with four men, and this no doubt influences my non-combative approach which is to find common ground and proceed with sensitivity and respect for differences.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

 I didn’t come from a creative family but I was lucky to have both a good art teacher at school and an inspiring art history teacher. I drew in any spare moments I had from around the age of fifteen. I went straight to the Slade from school and so it took me a while to work out what I wanted to paint and to have the language to talk about it. It took me even longer to work out why art matters.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

 Drawing is central to my work. I keep a small sketch book and pencil with me always: from one end I set down very sketchy initial ideas which are really memory prompts; from the other end I record notes from exhibitions I see or quotes from books I am reading or from conversations and talks I listen to. I paint from my mind’s eye, often working in series. I usually paint either lots of small pieces that can build to a constellation or work multiple mini narratives into a larger compositional framework. The work is improvisational and I am continually responding to what is already there. I might have an overarching intention or aim for the work but the specifics are invented in the moment. I don’t quite know what direction the painting will move in during the day. I find this slight sense of uncertainty or surprise keeps me on my toes. As the work develops I slow down and take time over the decisions about balance, focus and resolution which can happen over months.

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends?  Literature?)

Narrowing this down I will briefly answer a couple of these. I spend time on the South Coast of the UK in a small seaside village called Pagham. One of my real pleasures is walking along the shingle beach and picking up things (like eggcases for rays and catsharks) and watching the migrating wader birds. I also love urban green spaces and observing the sheer survival of plants growing out of concrete and the disinterested coexistence between us and squirrels, pigeons and garden birds. The painting I return to most is a strange one in the Ashmolean, Oxford – The Forest Fire by Piero di Cosimo. It is teeming with animals escaping, spontaneously combusting fires uncontrollable by humans. Piero painted from his imagination but also from memorizing things he had closely observed. The details are beautiful in their shape, specificity and liveliness.  There are little mini scenes, some rendered as silhouette against light background landscape. The painting is full but also successful as a whole, it is also very humane.

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist?

 There is a wonderful recent book about the drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal called The Beautiful Brain. Cajal is thought of as the grandfather of neuroscience. He drew as an adolescent but chose a scientific career. Cajal used a microscope to look at neural cells and networks at a time when it was not possible to photograph one’s findings because there was not enough light passing through the microscope to be able to use photography. He had to draw to visualize his research. By drawing he didn’t record exactly what he saw but what he inferred from close and repeated observation. So although the drawings are incredibly beautiful in themselves they are also fascinating scientifically. I like the way looking and drawing can be seen to be so valuable as part of a process that is not art-related.

One negative thing I have found out about Cajal is in his book “Advice for a Young Investigator” when he advises young scientists not to marry artists because they are too unreliable and distracting – to give some context this was written in the late C19th.

 My art pick would be “The World New Made” by the artist and writer Timothy Hyman. His rewriting of C20th art focuses on figurative painting and moves beyond the usual canon.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

 Not to worry whether or not your work is on trend. Things come and go and there is little point in making work like everyone else.

Website: www.lucieyers.org.uk

Instagram: @lucieyerspainting

Vanessa Mitter

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?

There are too many to name. Currently, Jade Fadojutimi and Joan Synder. Both of their recent shows were exciting, intense and powerful.

I do have a thing for Niki de Saint Phalle. Partly, it's the psychedelic abandon that excites me, the refusal to conform to boundaries of good taste. The level of anxiety that her work deals with and evokes is fascinating. I think you can see exuberance but her work is highly ambiguous. I like how hard it is to categorize, and that by some, she is considered a marginal figure. She said "I tend to paint things I am terrified of". I see that. She confronted desires, fears, everything; many levels of human experience.

Most recently, Hilma af Klint's work intrigues me, although that might seem a clichéd thing to state, since so many people are now drawn in to her world. I first encountered her work at the Serpentine Gallery retrospective Painting the Unseen, in 2016. A lot has been written about her and her work since, but what struck me immediately was how contemporary her exploration seems, and also, the fearless commitment to it.

 I saw the retrospective of Agnes Martin's work at Tate Modern in 2015. I had never really seen her work before, or known much about it. That show has left an indelible and lasting impression on me. I think that, more than anything, what seemed to come across, apart from the bare stark poetry of the work, is a powerful belief in the path taken, often against all odds.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

I am not sure I discovered art, so much as stumbled upon it. As children, we just paint and make stuff. As time went on, I remember persuading my mum, who had zero interest in art, to take me to galleries to see art, and I recall forcing her to buy me these art books. I think I still have them. One is on Modernist painting, the other a huge tome on  Renaissance art. I must have been nine or ten years old then. My interest only grew and felt a bit like a nerdy obsession. I had no idea anybody else shared my fascination.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I am from the suburbs of London. Neither of my parents are English. My father is Austrian, my mother is Spanish. I think this led to a feeling of being both isolated from and intensely critical of what was surrounding me. Suburbia also led me to spend many hours alone, drawing and reading. I found the intense boredom of nothing to do made me create my own fantasy worlds. I now realise that suburbia is both a milieu and a condition or state of Englishness. I think I was naive about that, but it instilled in me a sense of horror of so many hours to be filled, often with television and drinks parties with parents' friends. In a way, I suppose I rebelled against that.

 My mother was or is a pianist. Music was a major part of my life. I played the violin, played in orchestras, played concertos with her accompanying me. That rigour and having to practise every day was probably something that helped, when it came to painting. You have a self-discipline.

On the other hand, my dad was a top chef. He used to take me around the casinos in central London, because he was head of all of the kitchens. Children were banned. I would have to hide behind curtains, sometimes underneath tables. I watched. It was another world. I took it in. So, I knew this other world existed, and it was as far removed from suburbia as possible.

I did my BA in Fine Art at Central St.Martin's, which was ghastly in some ways, but toughened me up in other ways that were, possibly, useful later on. I then completed my Postgraduate Diploma and MA at Chelsea College, which was an experience that pushed me to really consider what I was doing. I had to let go of a lot of detritus, a lot of influences, a lot of stuff that, ultimately, did not really hold my interest.

So you’ve mentioned that you founded an all female art collective called LaLa. Can you tell me more about it? (Why did you found it? Who came up with the idea? Who else is involved? What are your goals? )

I founded the LaLa Collective in June 2018 with the artist Paige Perkins. We have some shared interests. We discussed starting an all-female art collective in my studio in Hackney Wick. Very rapidly, the conversation became intense and quick-fire. We take as our figureheads the Modernist artist and writer Mina Loy and the visual artist Viola Frey. They were influential, but have disappeared in to a strange cul-de-sac. They are probably there now, sipping tea and arguing; a place where quite a few female artists seem to end up, once dead. So, they represent that idea of slipping into obscurity or already being sidelined, somehow.

LaLa sounds like a child singing. This is deliberate. We also wanted to evoke a sound that is a bit like Dada, but more feminine.

 We have collaborated or exhibited with some of the other exceptional international artists in the collective before. They are Ulli Knall, who now lives and works in Austria, Christiane Bergelt, who lives and works in Germany, Doireann Ni Ghrioghair, who lives and works in Ireland.

We have constructed, written, pieced together an exhibition proposal for the collective called La La La La La.....We are excited about where this might take us. We may ask other artists to join at a later stage.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work?

 Currently, I am making a whole series of paintings, exploring the unseen world made visible. As a starting point, an alter ego named Juana Ana de Bonbon (part saint, part child, part medium) is instinctively mark-making. She is of her time (eighteenth century) and of her place (Mallorca, in particular, where my mother is from). This allows me a freedom to be something 'other' than myself; to call upon images, instincts, experiences that I do not believe to be completely my own. I find some of the paintings surprising. They are not what I would have expected to make. This creates a sense of anxiety, but also of urgency. I am interested in the poetic; the metaphorical; not the concrete. This is one way of exploring that world of associations, some of them also culled from poetry by Mina Loy, in particular from The Lost Lunar Baedeker.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

My process is very intuitive. I often start by using images, sometimes cut out of magazines. I also cut out hand-printed Chiyogami Japanese paper and paper I have painted myself. This paper is often moved about on the canvas. Then, it is pasted on to the canvas; then painted over. Sometimes, I start with an idea, sometimes not. An image often 'becomes' out of a process of accident, alchemy and chance. There are many layers to my paintings, some of them buried. Sometimes, I totally repaint a painting, but what is underneath is important. I do not want to remove it. Maybe a tiny hint of colour peeps through, or a pattern from collaged paper.

Often, word associations play a part. Sometimes, I will start with a couple of words or a line of poetry. I write a lot, so this could be from my own writing. The associative power of those words is echoed by the process. So, for example, years ago, I made a painting, which took as its starting point the opening line of the poem in 'Ariel',  by Sylvia Plath; Words 'Like axes, after whose stroke the wood rings, And the echoes!' I cut in to the plywood surface of the painting. T'he marks, the performative gesture of swinging the axe and cutting, the motion, the word associations, all came together. I also make performances, which sometimes confront historical ideas about painting and about poetry.

There are often hidden autobiographical references in my paintings. These are sometimes attached to a separate character, archetype or alter ego, such as in a painting I made called 'Havisham'. Not giving the game away is part of the trick. I do not necessarily want the images to be immediately legible, or to make sense to a viewer.

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related) And why?

Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Sylvia Plath's Ariel, Emily Dickinson Selected Poems and Mina Loy The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Also, William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when?

I am working on various curatorial projects at the moment, collaborating on them, including a potential painting show, which I would co-curate, and the LaLa Collective show. I co-curated an Arts Council funded exhibition last year with Ben Westley-Clarke called Frivolous Convulsions at Turf Projects. I have done quite a few performances, and curated live art events. For the Turf Projects show, there was a performance element, and I commissioned the now eighty something year old Stuart Brisley to create a seven hour durational performance for the show.

A couple of upcoming exhibitions of my work are currently in discussion. A recent painting of mine was exhibited in the Creekside Open, selected by Brian Griffiths in June. Also, I was recently shortlisted for the Mother Art Prize. The exhibition of the twenty shortlisted artists' work was at Mimosa House, Mayfair in May. It was an exciting show to be part of, with some truly exceptional artists in it. This was curated by Laura Smith (curator, Whitechapel Gallery), Elizabeth Neilson, (Director, Zabludowicz Collection) and Marcelle Joseph (independent curator, collector and founding director of Marcelle Joseph Projects) and organised by Procreate Project's founders, the pioneering Paola Lucente and Dyana Gravina.

My website:

https://www.vanessamitter.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/vanessamitter/?hl=en

Links:

http://www.creeksideopen.org/index.html

https://mimosahouse.co.uk/

https://www.procreateproject.com/

Links for LaLa Collective Members: 

https://cargocollective.com/doireann

https://www.galerie-lisihaemmerle.at/tag/ulli-knall/

https://cargocollective.com/doireann

 https://www.paigeperkins.co.uk/

Melanie Comber

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?

Prunella Clough. She was my personal tutor when I was a student at Wimbledon School of Art in the early 1990’s. She was very private and unassuming but could analyse an idea with razor sharp precision, her words were never intrusive and would never hinder a piece of work that you were trying to make, but she always made you think around the idea, and about ‘other possibilities’ which might facilitate ‘chance discoveries’. Her words still shout loudly in my ears when I am working in my studio almost thirty years later.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

It is my ambition to be a good painter. I want my work to speak for me, I never think of that voice as female, I think of myself as an equal player. I am not a painter who wants to make work about being a woman, it's about so much more than that.

I have been fortunate in my experience of the art world, I have dealt with many good people, and on the whole have always been treated fairly and with respect. I have benefitted from equal opportunities participating in exhibitions, where for me I want my work to have a voice which can withstand any competition.

My worst experience of being treated very poorly has been by a female art dealer who trampled and stepped over me to further her own career whilst shouting about being a female champion. Bad business behaviour is unacceptable from a man or a woman.

I am hesitant about the current trend of all ‘female’ exhibitions, while I understand why it is happening, I would prefer to see some interesting, engaging exhibitions, where strong work is the sole focus, not the human behind it.

Black Hole, 2019. Oil and pigment on canvas, 160 x 150 cm.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

I have wanted to ‘make’ things since junior school. I was a loner at school, and then I discovered glueing and pasting, drawing, painting and making, and suddenly I felt an energy that transported me outside of myself to another place, from then I just knew that I wanted to make my life about chasing that obsession.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I was raised in Kent in the 1970s by parents who allowed me to follow my dream with their full support. I was also lucky to be taught at a girls grammar school in the 1980’s where encouraging female equality was paramount. Subsequently I had strong self belief systems instilled in me which have assisted me when navigating the often lonely and frustrating isolation that being an artist can bring.

Following school, I completed a foundation course at Maidstone College of Art, a BA Hons Degree at Wimbledon School of Art and an MA at Chelsea College of Art. I left full time education in 1994.

Once I left college I was very fortunate to begin exhibiting work fairly swiftly and I was taken on by a gallery in Chelsea the year after I left college, which supported my practice and allowed me to find my feet working as an artist in the real world.

Space and Time 3, 2019. Oil and pigment on canvas, 130 x 110 cm.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work?

My intention is to create works which allude to an experience of place, incorporating personal associations and visual notations. Attempts to create monuments of emotional experience, interpreting my experience, making notes, recording phrases or conversations held in that place, recalling sensory experience, attempting to capture a moment in time that I can then reflect upon during the painting process.

But I also want to make paintings about painting, I am very reluctant to pin down an explanation for the making of a work, it is a physical experience, I am guided by my emotion, my physicality, by sounds and smell, by the pure joy of the material, by past experience, by the process of play...those things can’t be written down and explained, they are instinctive and they come to my hand as a language that I speak through materials being laid down onto canvas.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

My painting process involves the application of very thick oil paint and loose pigment to a surface. The paintings are worked vertically, propped up against the wall and I draw and scrape into the painted surface using a variety of tools and brushes to create a three dimensional landscape which stands proud from the canvas surface. I then dust loose pigment across the surface of the work to illuminate every mark achieved through the painting process.

A typical working period for a painting would be three to four months, I work on a number of paintings at any one time, and I allow the works to inform each other as a group. Paintings evolve from a history and experience of painting, I don’t make preparatory work, preferring to battle it out within the work, but I do have a very strict rule that once a painting is complete, I move onto the next one. My instinct is usually strong, and sometimes the painting will run ahead of me, I won’t fully understand it, but it will feel relevant to leave it and hope that I will understand its meaning in the weeks to come.

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends? Literature​?)

Moon landing... Spacemen... John Donne.. Anselm Kiefer.. Abba.. Robert Rauschenberg.. Frank Stella.. Andrea Mantegna..The Northern Renaissance.. Landscape.. Journeys.. Illuminated manuscripts... Photography.. Flight.. Cartography... Geology..Geography.. Snow...Dust..Stories..Conversations...

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related​) And why?

“The Artist’s Handbook Of Materials and Techniques” by Ralph Meyer published by Faber and Faber.

A bible for technique, material and process: “Search For The Real” by Hans Hofmann. Just read it…It’s magic.

Stars and Stripes, 2019. Oil and pigment on canvas, 80 x 90 cm.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging?

Be sure that you want to commit your life to enquiry and making things.

Try and establish a network of people who you really admire and whose opinion you respect. Hopefully many points of view will come your way but it is essential to know which voices will be really honest and tell you the things that you need to hear.

Working as an artist generally means that you will be self employed and you will need to learn a range of skills to facilitate this. I would advise students to ask questions of the people that you come across at Art school, how do they do things? I would also advise getting your name onto studio building lists as these can often take years to become fruitful, find out about good art suppliers, set up an Instagram account, network and talk to people. It can be isolating being an artist, keep in touch with other artists, meet up for coffee. I have found Instagram to be an incredible tool for linking with other artists and interacting, there are huge networks of other ‘makers’ within reach through social media.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? Tell us about them/what are they about?

I currently have work in a two man show “ Space and Time” at Knightwebb Gallery Battersea: www.knightwebbgallery.com

Jerry Saltz once said on Instagram that he wanted to know about an “artist’s dreams, paranoid fantasies and ideas about other art” in interviews ... Shoot!! Tell us all!!

If it was as simple as that to write those things down, I certainly wouldn’t bother to try and paint.

Studio Image Acme Studios Childers Street Deptford London 2018.

Yvette Blackwood

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

Charline von Heyl for her fiercely playful and unexpected choices, always fresh, fantastic harsh colour, mixing organic and hard-edged shapes, she takes symbols out of context using them for their visual qualities alone. I rate Laura Owens for similar reasons, her tricks and complex wit. I picked up a brilliant zine, The OG #11 ‘Metamorphoses’, by Amy Sillman at her recent Camden Arts show, she timewarps politics, plays with language, image, perception and mythology. Paula Rego, for her brave and unapologetic use of her own fear and the variety of defiance in the facial expressions and poses she creates, women studying/watching women, subverting gender roles, demonstrating power play.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

The truth of this starkly remains, but it’s not a barrier I’ve experienced. Maybe because I’ve remained for the most part outside the ‘art world’ showing work in independent and alternative venues. I do support all women shows mainly because I’m looking to relate, to find behaviour that might be familiar, or with which I can empathise or feel uplifted. I went to the ‘Women Can’t Paint’ show at Turps, it was impressive, there was a lot to love. I think changes are happening all the time. Activists, such as Guerrilla Girls, Pussy Riot, The Exhibitionist, keep the conversation going and make people/galleries accountable. It’s important to keep making the work whoever you are, persist, put yourself out there. 

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

The idea of being an artist has always been in my head, but my severe social anxiety has held me back. It’s been a long, painful, complicated and continuing education out of hiding. Growing up in Brighton in the 80s and 90s was a brightly coloured assault course. Music was key. Outside of my deeply political family I was surrounded by creative hedonists seeking to express themselves, they’re burnt into my memory. 

When I was 5 years old, I was the youngest of 4 kids in the school chosen to draw a design to be transferred onto a melamine plate, it seemed like a big deal at the time. The kudos I received at school was polarised by the odd reaction when I took it home. My first lesson in how the same image can provoke opposing reactions, whatever the intention. That moment seems defining. 

I remember sitting outside dad’s broadsheet looking at Steve Bell’s strips and leader slays. The only art at home at that time was a very small repro of Constable’s Flatford Mill (‘Scene on a Navigable River’) and a large print of a grey bridge over grey water. The art I saw elsewhere in Brighton was mostly street art or kitsch. 

 My first experience of Schiele’s work came via an Athena poster, crouched among all the usual men holding babies, cheeky tennis players, bands and film stars. The harsh black isolating lines, sickly flesh and imploring stare were magnetic. I spent countless hours poring over art books after that. I painted and wrote all over my bedroom walls. 

In 2010, when I was living in Camden, a friend of my flatmate came over, saw my paintings and unexpectedly asked me to join her art collective. In 2011, I started my own collective. I learnt a lot from all the artists I worked with and the exhibitions we created over the 4 years it ran. The performance artists, sculptors, installation and sound artists were a revelation. My partner is also an artist and he’s a fantastic support and inspiration. It’s taken time to know how to be an artist for myself, but it’s here. 

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I studied Art History and English at York University. I’ve pinballed all over London (and a year in Australia) since 2002. I’m at my happiest in Deptford, South East London, with a studio at Art Hub, Creekside. I’ve just been selected for the 2019/20 Turps Banana Offsite Programme. 

York was walls inside walls inside walls, endless avoiding-leaving-the-house parties and low-key raves in the old post office and a converted church, sliced through by a neck wrenching art history trip to sunglasses after dark New York. Saw some Warhol, Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman at MoMA or the Whitney, or similar. (I’m going back later this year with new eyes). I moved back to Brighton after university then fled to London and bootcamp life lessons during which I wore only black, red and grey. 

I qualified as a picture restorer and spent some time in a private studio but decided that path wasn’t for me. I moved to Brisbane, of all places. A year cut off from almost everything I knew. The vast strangeness and audacious attitude of Australia left a distinct mark, everything is new and possible there. After I returned to London, I started the collective which changed everything for me. 

I haven’t studied Fine Art, so I’m a self-taught painter. My dad had an insatiable lust for life and new experiences. He didn’t go to university but taught himself 6 languages. He loved to self-educate, he lived life his way. 

I start at Turps in September, I can’t wait. I’m also going on an Arvon course In Hebden Bridge this October, Hybrid Writing – writing in unchartered waters, tutored by Tania Hershman, Maria Fusco and Kristen Kreider. 

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work? 

I’m interested in moments where control is disrupted, moments of change or potential change, notions of inclusivity versus alienation, the human condition and intense relationships, family as society, betrayal and reconciliation, loss and recovery. The micro-macro of it all; the power and optimism in the unspoken language of colour. I use paint to create somewhere and something else within this age of anxiety. I’m addicted to the freedom through ambiguity that abstraction provides and fascinated by ideas or choices where norms are subverted, how negatives, mistakes and accidents can become positives. 

Anxiety greatly informs my work. I became interested in the recesses of the brain where memories and fears are formed. Thinking about what the voice of the amygdala and hippocampus might look like, the physical shapes and connections, how unconscious activity may escape and hang in the air between us. How inputs are consumed, filtered and reworked into visual outputs. Artists as catalytic converters. I have an ongoing series of paintings, Limbic sprawl, based around these ideas.

What have been your influences? 

I love colour-saturated cinema or films which use colour as a device, human interest/dysfunction, horror, black comedy, and magical realism films. Wim Wender’s Paris Texas. Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch. Kubrick, Lynch. Jorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Lobster). Agnès Varda (Faces Places, One Sings The Other Doesn’t). Joanna Hogg (Exhibition, Archipelago). Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Nymphomaniac, The House That Jack Built). Cronenberg (Videodrome, Naked Lunch), Ken Russell’s The Devils, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. John Waters. Lynne Ramsey’s Morvern Callar. Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, This Is England, The Virtues). Roy Andersson’s absurdist multi-beige ‘Living trilogy’….  

There’s a scene in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest where Harding loses it when he’s being questioned. While he tries to speak about universal truths the other patients spring to life. Chief (the narrator in the book) is the perfect silent, omnipresent but displaced watcher. This scene was used to create an exhibition with the collective, we took inanimate and living sculptures out of context to interact in new ways, with comic and alarming results. 

So many artworks. Schiele and Otto Dix, back in the day. Francis Bacon. Von Heyl’s P., Cargo,Corrido and Happy End. R.B. Kitaj’s Cecil Court, London W.C.2. (The Refugees). Laura Owens’s Untitled 2012 from Pavement Karaoke. Janiva Ellis’s cartoon explosions. Tinka Bechert’s cuts and swipes. Elizabeth Chisolm’s surveillance gaze. Jules de Balincourt’s Moving Mountains, Moving Tribes. Tony Oursler’s Self Portrait in Yellow. Paula Rego’s The Betrothal triptych and The Family. Georg Herold’s contorted fetish sculptures. Zander Blom’s rockstar approach to dinosaur ownership. Henry Hudson’s recent nothing sticks to nothing show, an immersive painting without paint. Ben Jamie’s oozing and tearing. The blurb written by David Northedge that accompanied Ben Jamie’s Comfortably Dumb show is bang on.

The pleasure-seeking colours of Brighton have influenced me. The mysterious landscape of my Irish ancestry. And my gran’s place still exists vividly in my mind. I spent a lot of time there drawing, reading, listening to records and Welsh mountain secrets. Her long orange-green-brown hallway, blue rinse, pink nail varnish, turquoise-yellow-red kitchen with twin tub earthquake, tabloid tit rags, bingo cards, Lambert and Butler silver, plain and pearl, stockings and suspenders, pelmets and tiebacks, gladioli heavy with peach, bright green baize and whispers of snooker (Taylor, Interesting, Hurricane, Dracula) in a gold-black-burgundy front room, my uncle’s provocative books and mags, stacks of vinyl, no dust on the needle. It was a haven away from the world. 

Books: So The Wind Won’t Blow It All Away by Richard Brautigan is a beautifully slow and sad novel, the art of repetition and elevating of small details, a study of lost souls, completely of its time and devastating. I love Brautigan’s psychedelic but earthy vision. Patti Smith’s Just Kids, for her dedication to the art life and honesty. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, peculiar doors of perception. Tania Hershman’s surreal science meets art flash fiction. Caroline Bird’s wise, deft and darkly comic poems. Ali Smith’s Spring experiments with disruption, hope and light. The Late Hector Kipling, Thewlis’s art poke, the twisted inner dialogue of the painter. Interaction of Color by Josef Albers has cheering weight. Narrative is important to me, even though I paint abstractly. I like the idea of an intensely silent protagonist. While noise has colour, colour shouts without sound. 

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

Oof. Well, I’m an emerging artist, so this is advice I give myself which might work for others (I’m still working on it). You’ve cavorted under the pier for long enough, swim in the sea before it evaporates. My mum has recently started painting, it’s never too late. Question everything but question and answer yourself first. Accept faults, be supportive. Recognise loops, make new chances. Throw yourself in. Work on what you have rather than what you don’t have, it’s surprising what arrives. When life hurts, use it and rework it. Seriously not seriously. I’ll have an open studio in December, come and have a chat.

Miranda Boulton

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?

One of my favourite women artists is Gina Magid (www.ginamagid.com). I stumbled across her work by chance when traveling in my early 30’s. She had a show at Acuna Hansen Gallery in downtown LA. I fell hard for her work. It was a transitional time for me having left my job and home in the UK. I was seeking out inspiration and other ways of seeing. Her work holds so much that inspires me. Her mix of materials silk, sewing, gloopy and smooth paint, layering of images and areas of solid colour and negative space. It felt fresh and punk, her free association of images manages to feel playful yet deep and thoughtful at the same time. I have since emailed her and thanked her for the inspiration. One day I would love to do a studio visit with her in New York.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

I always wanted to be a painter. On my father’s side both my grandparents were artists. My grandfather passed away before I was born but I was very close to my granny. I grew up with paintings all around me with my granny telling me stories about her days at the Royal College. Being an artist was mysterious and exciting, it was always a possibility for me. My grandpa’s studio was still in their house while I was growing up, she hadn’t cleared it out. I used to go in there without anyone knowing and just stand and stare and imagine him painting, taking in all the paints, brushes and canvases. There was this romance in my head about being an artist and I knew it was what I wanted to be.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I grew up in Ipswich. Art and history were the main subjects I was drawn to at school. Back then I didn’t feel confident enough in myself to pursue fine Art at university. I saw friends going and falling out of love with their work and art. Instead I took the Art History route and went to study in Sheffield. It was a fantastic course and opened me up to theory and critical thinking, but I still hankered after the materiality of paint and making my own work. I did various courses throughout my twenties. I wasn’t until I hit thirty that I decided it was time to really go for my dream. I went traveling with my husband to US and Mexico for six months. When I came back I set up a studio and worked part time, so I could focus on painting. I had two children in my thirties, I was determined it wouldn’t take away from my painting and being in the home actually gave me time to explore and develop my practice. When they were small I would put the video monitor on them while they slept and go to my garden studio to paint. Having time constraints made me more decisive and productive. When my second son was one I started on the correspondence course with a new art school, Turps Banana. I thought one year would be enough, three years later I was ready to leave. It was just what I needed, a deadline every three months, critical input and the opportunity to meet other painters. Many of whom I have exhibited with and are now good friends.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work?

There are two main theme strands I explore in my work. The first is concerned with subject matter. My work focuses on the nature morte of flora. For me flower paintings contain everything, life, death, drama, birth, it’s got the big life events covered and the everyday. It gives me a vehicle to experiment with the formal elements. I have enjoyed exploring the history of flower painting through my work recently looking at Dutch 17th century painters such as Rachel Ruysch, Morandi and Winifred Nicholson.

The other strand is to do with my process. I paint from memory and have developed over the last three years a distinct process for obtaining my imagery. I look at images on the internet late at night and commit them to memory. I take in my feelings, the glare of the screen, synthetic colours and my thoughts at the time of viewing. I try to hold these as closely as possible and then paint from the memory the next morning. I feel that my conscious and unconscious are closer at night when my mind is uncluttered. It is my unconscious responses to the images that I am most interested in exploring through the process of painting. I am painting away from the memory and towards a more instinctive response where the outcome often surprises me and takes on a life of its own. I do all my working out on the canvas often wiping off the layers and working through the memories in real time/space.

Through this process it allows me to explore my perception of now and simultaneously my remembered experiences. New paintings are often overlaid on older works creating an archaeology, which I think of as being like timelines on a tree. Sometimes I paint from the same memory over and over, noting how the present can filter and manipulate. It is the layers of memory, which I am interested in exploring through the process of painting.

What have been your influences?

I am just going to brainstorm here, in no particular order:

David Lynch films, Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon, Patti Smith, Blondie, Matisse, Vlaminck, Amy Sillman, Derek Jarman’s garden, Frida Kahlo, Philip Guston, Francis Bacon, Richard Diebenkorn, Sylvia Plath – The Belljar, Joan Mitchell, John Berger, Cy Twombly, Paul Nash, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Charles Bukowski, to name a few.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? Tell us about them/what are they about?

After being quiet for the last year things are a bit crazy at the moment. I have a two person show ‘Double Time’ with Jane Pryor opening at Arthouse1 on 6th June, runs until 29th. We share a studio, this exhibition explores the deep communications that come from sharing time and space:

“Through years of visits to each other’s studios, and now sharing a creative space, Miranda Boulton and Jane Pryor have developed a visual simpatico. They have very different processes, but there is a compelling resonance to their work. Double Time explores the gap where these vibrations merge; that is, the space between studio sessions, layers, gestures and marks. Crucially, it uncovers the place where looking, thinking and remembering unite.”

I also have a painting in the Creekside Open and have just found out I have been accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Orange Light, 2018. Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.

Silver Streak, 2018. Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.

Sideways, 2018. Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.

Tumbling After You, 2018. Oil on canvas 120 x 100 cm.

Waves, 2019. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm.

Before an After, 2018. Oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm.

Amaranth, 2019. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm.

Teetering, 2019. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm.

After M, 2018. Oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm.

Catherine Cassidy

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

It would be hard to isolate one favourite woman artist but I could mention a few where I love their work and their vision and their bravery. By bravery I mean their sheer indifference to the zeitgeist and their dogged commitment to what they really want to do. It’s brave to be like that...to face the possibility of non-recognition in an art world that favours high visibility, supercontacts, sales, profits and profile.  I would immediately think of older women artists as I can see their wonderful strong and long pathway and dogged continuity of vision over time.

Rose Wylie (UK), Louise Bourgeois (NY), Carmen Herrera (USA), Sally Gabori ( AUS). Sometimes they may have worked without recognition for a long time, sometimes late painters, newly arrived or sometimes a legend. It’s the power of their individual vision that I see shining through. This is what art-making is about. First you make it for yourself, then you aim to ensure its connectivity to others.

This is the powerful thing about the women artists I’ve mentioned- that amazing connectivity of spirit.

I think women shine in this area. It’s a generative, visceral thing... .we lead generative, visceral lives, lives that correspond with our bodies, with paint and colour, life and death.  It’s something so very far apart from technique and concept and it says something about the world, about bodilypresence, whether its landscape, scupture or abstraction, its very much of the world. Think Frankenthaler, Rothenberg, O’Keefe, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, May Moodunuthi, Thelma Burke and all those above. All pure animal presence.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

The question of under-representation of women globally is a difficult and distressing thing to address. I’m quite fed up at times with being female. It’s still such an obstacle by the fact that we are still talking about in 2019! .... there’s such a long way to go for women all over the world that it seems a bit precious to be concerned with women artists in the free world. As long as most of our institutions, workplaces, governments are primarily still headed up by men with what seems like disastrous results we still have an equality fight on our hands. But women are demanding their rightful place and voice everywhere now. Its just that all this demanding is really very tiresome and distracting, all this defending and fighting for what should just be there. Being male, of course means you can’t know how this feels, you may think you do, you may defend and uphold women’s rights but you don’t know how it really feels to be constantly addressing it and living with this inequality, having always lived with it, this thing that’s always there.

So male dominance anywhere has to be challenged head on and so here we are answering this question, making art and defending women’s making of it- we have to make our presence known as people, art-makers, painters, not women. It’s the wrong end of the pineapple. That’s why I don’t support all-women shows. I don’t want to be lumped in with other women, some sort of art-breed apart. I am a painter and I want to show with other painters in general. I don’t aspire to be part of a painterly ‘sisterhood’. I can’t relate to that at all. It sounds absurd to me – sort of reverse sexism. Any measures that isolate women and hold them apart is absurd to me, doesn’t get us anywhere. I want to be on an equal playing field thank you.

As women we may bring something different to that playing field as I’ve suggested above but in the end all artists are just trying to make the most successful image they can. How they get there can be very diverse.

There’s such a long history of painting being a male-dominated practice. Biologically, men have had that time in spades. Painting is a greedy beast and it wants all of you. If you don’t give it, you will not find out what you can do, You need to work 24/7. I think that’s why we now see the proliferation of older women emerging with amazing, fully-formed work, both indigenous and non-indigenous., they now have the time, the time to allow themselves to be gobbled up by their practice if they so choose.

Its such a blast to see this happening, this is where its coming from as far as I’m concerned and where collectors should be seriously looking.  

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

I don’t remember ever being conscious of ‘discovering’ art. It was and is part of my whole life. I always did it. I had access as a child to all art materials, a woodshed for sculpture, a library for looking, thinking, reading and dreaming... and dream I did, I looked at illustrators, made books, painted in oils at 10 yrs old, roamed the bush, was isolated but very free and was mad about any visual response I could lay my hands on.. I became an auto-didact at a very young age and had my own visual language strong inside me. 

I finished high school, wanted to go straight to art school, which were then true dens of iniquity, to the max, not necessarily fostering professional careers but certainly fostering a culture of disobedience and disruption- good stuff for a thinker....and generally perceived as turning out no-hoper bohemians.  

My formal art studies continued on in fits and starts according to family life and I ended up doing a Masters in Painting at NAS in 2010. Mainly I wanted to challenge myself on a painting idea, that of Metonymy in Contemporary Landscape Painting. Basically this concerns the psychic return of place without description. Once I hooked into what a metonymic response was,  my research led me to the Sung painters of 10thC China, the first abstractionists in thought and practice. I was so hungry to defend it to myself. But I knew I would have to also successfully justify my beliefs in both a thesis and in my own body of work. But I also knew it was so powerful it was going to then hold up my work forever. 

It came to pass just like this and I emerged with what I wanted from my work so strong in me that its now just part of how I think and work everyday.

I am told my work is powerful and if it is, its because of this belief in a psychic return of very important visual signals, things that we’ve forgotten or devalued. 

Its not irretrievable.

It’s just a matter of finding it again. 

Its also what I teach in workshops, how to find it in yourself, how to recognise it really, drag it out from under all the guff and logic that has been laid over it ( by men huh! ) for millennia.

Greek logic, the science of sight, perspective, colour theory, good god, it goes on forever. Nothing whatsoever to do with deep connective human response.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I come from country Victoria. My family were some of the early colonisers of the Central and Western District. Wheat pioneers from Prussia. And others were part of early Hobart and the Victorian goldfields. I’ve seen a lot of space and flat country under floodwaters, driven great distances, been very aware of the silence of forests, lots of river gums standing in water, unmade roads, night-driving, caravan in tow. I live south of Sydney and have my studio at home. I guess I am self-taught to a degree, I’ve certainly had more years teaching myself than I’ve had at art school and all that working things out on your own was really valuable to me.

It made me rebellious, self-initiating, confident that I always have images in my head and that they have worth. Basically all the things an artist needs and not necessarily anything that can be taught.

I saw an interview a little while ago with the German painter Georg Baselitz in which he stated that artists must discard everything. 

Start again. Clear the decks. That is their duty.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work? 

I don’t really believe in ideas or concepts. 

I think they’re a death knell for painting and too much is made of their importance.

I’m happy to be challenged on this.

Everything comes, finally from the painting itself, the doing informs everything. If you don’t submit to the will of the painting but instead push your conscious mind onto it, you will lose the game, be invaded by the subject and often by logic.

Bonnard was strong on this, don’t let the subject invade you, don’t let specifics take over, stay with what he called, ‘the first idea’. It’s a fine line between thinkng and not thinking. There are many decisions to be made very quickly as you work, these need to be made for you by the work itself. 

So learn to listen up and shut up. 

Starting with an idea or a concept is like planting yourself all over the work before its even born. 

Painting is a generative thing, it gives birth to itself. I firmly believe in the ‘animal’ – our unformed base nature as opening the door to this birth.

We just need to step aside and get out of the way.

As human beings its hard, we like to control things, like to think we can make all the decisions rather than just wait to hear them. 

This is a quote from “ The Worlds Body” by John Crowe Ransom from a Twombly catalogue:

“Images are pre- intellectual and independent of concepts....the image is the raw material of ideas.....the material cause.”

It cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness which ideas can never claim.

An idea is derivative and tamed. 

The image is in the natural or wild state and it has to be discovered there, obeying its own law  and none of ours. 

We think we can lay hold of the image and take it capture.... but it is not the real image but only the idea with the character beaten out of it.” 

That’s pretty much it for me, keep out of the damn thing, it has an energy of its own that you just need to recognize and travel with.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

My influences are everything really, every living thing. I love the Japanese concept of ‘ mono no aware’. – that is, all living things have being, even the rocks and the flowers of the earth.

I paint life, living things, energy, also light, air space, illumination.

I use stuff called paint which has energy of its own and some sticks.

It all goes down to form new life, new forms, new energy.

I Iook at the landscape a lot, make small non-descriptive works that hold some of the presence of the thing I see.

I just keep looking and thinking,  

Seeing and not thinking.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

Know what you want from your work.

Don’t paint for the market.

Inform yourself.

Be there everyday.

As far as your work goes... be prepared to fail, fail, fail.

If you can’t hack this forever don’t do it.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when?

This year I have just presented a solo show PLASTIQUE in Feb/March at Dungog Contemporary. These were all large format paintings of South Coast work.

March 30th sees some of my work in MODERN LOVE, a group show of abstraction opening at AK Bellinger Gallery Inverell opening March 30th. 

AK Bellinger Gallery will also be presenting my solo show ‘dearErth’ in Sydney at Project Gallery 90 in June. Final dates for this coming up soon.

In October, Work/Life Kiama will be curating a 4 month long show of south coast paintings. Final dates later in the year.

Emma Roche

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

There are so many…. Amy Sillman, Lynda Benglis, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas all for different reasons. The last few weeks I’ve been into Hannah Wilke’s gum photographs. Dumas and Sillman’s writing as well as their work.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? 

I think it’s difficult for all artists, men and women – I don’t think anyone would say they find the art world easy to navigate. In terms of all women’s shows – I support them in that I was in one last year - a show called ‘Women Can’t Paint’ at TurpsGallery which took its title from Georg Baselitz’s interviews in der Spiegel and the Guardian (2013 and 2015). I really enjoyed being part of that and it was a gorgeous show.

I do think all-women shows can be problematic though, for a few reasons, mostly because often they seem to be added to a gallery’s programme as a kind of box-ticking. Last summer in Dublin there were quite a few all women shows but summer is graveyard territory and once autumn came the same galleries were putting on male solo shows back to back. Some galleries are also representing a larger percentage of male artists but that’s the same all over the world. There are exceptions but statistically that’s still the way it is, unsurprisingly.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

Probably first year in secondary school. I was lucky that the art department at school was really supportive and going to art college was taken seriously and presented as a real option.

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (egwhere are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

I’m based just outside Gorey in Wexford, Ireland. I did my BA at NCAD in Dublin, MA at IADT, Dublin and recently the TurpsBanana Correspondence Course.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your practice? 

Everydayness, materiality, abstraction, figuration, bad painting, irreverence, pattern, formal systems, authority, figure heads, bosses…..

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

It depends on what I’m working on. I have a large piece that I’ve been working on for the past three months and will probably still be working on it for another 3. I like when the process goes beyond intuition – if I’m really immersed in making, properly sucked in, the materials kind of take over. I work on several pieces at one time, always. It’s pretty haphazard when it’s going well.

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related)

And why?

Sweet Nothings by Marlene Dumas – essay called ‘Women and Painting’ – more of a poem really and SO good.

Virus by Linda Stupart.

Right now I’m reading a book by T’ai Smith called Bauhaus Weaving Theory and there is an essay called ‘Pictures Made of Wool’.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

Be patient, realise that it’s a long game and don’t take compliments or criticism too seriously. 

Surround yourself with other artists if you can.

Wear gloves and masks and don’t get cadmium paints on your skin/mouth/eyes – it is poison!

Advice from students can be good too!! – younger artists are often far wiser than we give them credit for and less cynical. 

What has been your biggest challenge in pursuing art?

Time and money. After my MA, which was quite theory heavy, I took a long break where I wasn’t making work regularly and working a full time job– being away from the studio was brutal.Isolation is necessary for me to make work but it can be difficult so finding that balance is important too.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? 

Not right now. I am making work for this year and have a few studio visits coming up so let’s see.

Cherry Pickles

Born in Bridgend, Wales, I did a mathematics degree in Northern Ireland before going to art school at Chelsea and the Slade. After that I had various bits of art scool teaching and residencies, most substantially; Falmouth School of Art, Corsham and St Andrews University. 

In the early/mid 80's I had the chance to live in Berlin and got to see the groundbreaking  "Zeitgeist"  exhibition in the ruin of the Riechstag. 

At about that time I moved to Wales and started teaching at Cardiff Art School and did some drawing workshops in Como, Italy. The first was with Gerhard Richter and the following year with Eric Fischl.

After Italy I was invited to take part in an International Artists residency at Omi, in Upstate NY. I was surprised and impressed by the way Americans were able to paint as if there were no problems attached to it.

I have had several Greek Government Scholarships where I travelled the country extensively sometimes with my family and sometimes alone. I also exhibited the work there; initially landscape and then self portraits.

I taught at Cardiff for a number of years and took time out to do a Residency at Altos De Chavon,  a very strict and impressive art school in the Dominican Republic. The school was housed in a replica Italian village designed by Felini's set designer and ranked as one of the 9 best art schools in the world.

More recently, I did the Guston McKim residency in Yaddo, which is one of the oldest artists and writers colonies in the US. It's former residents include; Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Guston, John Cheever, Truman Capote, Patricia Heysmith etc. I used some of these characters in my self portraits, and with the help of other residents, re-enacted some scenes which may or may not have happened between them.

I'm currently teaching at the Royal Drawing School London and painting in West Wales.

Kay Bainbridge

Kay Bainbridge is a painter who is inspired by and captures moments from nature. From this she invents painted landscapes where questions and statements can coexist. She aims to evoke emotions such a wonderment, melancholy and awkwardness. 

She was born in Scunthorpe , North Lincolnshire and is still inspired by the landscape and light that she grew up in. She studied Fine Art at Winchester School of Art and  Cambridge School of Art and has exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions. She currently works and lives in East London. 

Upcoming shows - Open Studio as part of Pump House Artist Collective at Bow Arts, Norton Quays, Royal Albert Wharf, London E16 2QP

Thursday 14th March 6-9pm 

Saturday 16th March 12- 6pm 

Solo show 2019 with Daphne Francis Gallery, Birmingham date tbc

Artist’s statement:

“A painting comes into being when ideas and the act of painting coincide’ Ilse D’Hollander (1991)

The subject matter of my work is the process and physicality of oil paint and how it can be explored and presented to express inner and outer worlds. This usually means a meeting on the canvas of visual displays of colour, shape, light and forms with inner emotional experiences and memories. I have devised a formula to try to best facilitate this process and which allows a conversation to materialise.

The formula is not rigid and is used as a kind of DNA or acts as a social structure might, from which the process can push and pull against.

The conversation is about asking questions about the process; changing, adding and taking away, in the hope of achieving some sort of resolution, where all the elements of the process can coexist.

Before the painting is started and the formula is applied, I make observational drawings and studies. This is my source material and is usually something I see that resonates, or a visual event, of which I feel the need to explore further. This inspiration comes from nature, the internet, film or photography. Often the sourcing is also influenced by the changing of the seasons and memory.

The formula consists of a loosely painted grid, an abstract pattern or an old painting. Directly onto this I paint marks taken directly from an observational drawing or study I had made previously. The conversation can then begin about the direction of the painting, the push and pull against the underpainting, the crossing and re-crossing of the border between outer and inner, between actual and symbolic worlds. Sometimes the underpainting is barely visible in the final image but always adds to the layering, and within this, clarity emerges, but it is important as this stage to keep the equilibrium and not overwork, as the symbolist Stephane Mallarme describes

“To name an object is to suppress three quarters of the enjoyment of the poem, which derives from the pleasure of step-by-step discovery: suggestion, that is the dream…to evoke an object little by little, so as to bring out a state of the soul or, inversely, to choose an object and bring out of it a state of the soul through a series of unravellings”

Often, there is also a conversation in my work between the natural and the man-made and between the self-contained and the non-contained. I’m particularly intrigued to explore the meeting of all these notions within the space of the canvas and that by asking these questions within the painting, it may lead to bigger political and environmental questions arising from the work.

W

Parasol, oil on canvas, 42 x 48cm (2018)

Roadside Tavern (Moonlight ) , oil on canvas, 40 x 46 cm (2018)

The Need to Coexist, oil on canvas , 40x 46 cm ,(2018)

Bird Swarm , oil on canvas, 40 x 46 cm (2019)

Flatlands, oil on canvas, 46 x 40cm (2019)

The Moon and Two Trees, oil on paper, 30 x 42 cm (2019)

Emily Royer

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

I don’t have one favorite but a few that I think about a lot: Kiki Smith, Mamma Andersson, Rosalyn Drexler, Alice Neel. Kiki Smith’s sculptures from the 90’s made an early impression on me because they are so raw and open about aspects of being human that we try to hide, of living in a fleshy body that excretes, and leaks, and decays. I saw Kiki Smith speak once, she was inspiring and also seemed very nice and relatable. It was really great to hear this person, whose work you learned about in art history books, and be able to imagine being friends with her. The first time I saw Mamma Andersson’s work I felt crushed. Her work, the feelings it imbued, accomplished everything I was striving towards. I got over it of course, but it was this feeling of-  “This work is so good, I shouldn’t even bother painting any more”. Rosalyn Drexler and Alice Neel are very different painters, and I wouldn’t say that I paint like either of them, but every time I go back to their work I find I learn something new. 

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally? 

As far back as I can remember I’ve loved making things, drawing and painting are my focus now, but when I was young I did a lot of crafting as well, like stamping, making bracelets, sculpey figures and so on. I remember in high school, sitting in class and being absolutely mesmerized by a poster on the wall of the Toulouse-Lautrec painting “At the Moulin Rouge.”  There was a feeling of being transported to another life, of looking through another’s eye, all while sitting in some banal classroom. It was something that felt powerful and magical, and I felt that I wanted to be a maker in the same way. Still, I don’t think I realized until a bit later that I could actually go to college to study art. When I did see that it was a possibility, I already knew that was what I wanted to pursue. 

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (egwhere are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?) 

I am American. I grew up in New Jersey, and attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I studied Illustration. I chose that concentration because I felt it was the best path to a good technical education, but found that my primary interest was not illustration per se. I sometimes do album artwork for bands, which I really enjoy, but for the most part I wanted the content  of my work to be self-directed, rather than initiated by clients, as it is in most illustration. After finishing college I continued to make work but never pursued a career as an illustrator. For a number of years I worked at an art center for adults with developmental disabilities. There, I worked with some really amazing artists. Most did not feel self-conscious about what they were making or how it would be perceived by others. There was no sense of “trying,” just a devotion to making and a joy in being creative, I really admired their attitude and try to bring more of that into my own mindset. I still live in Philadelphia. There is a great art community here, and it is probably the most affordable big city on the east coast of the states. Here, I have been able to maintain a studio and pursue my art while working mostly part - time and freelance jobs.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work? 

In a very broad sense my work is about the experience of being human. I think a lot about the dynamics of relationships, the difficulty of communication, the tensions between our inner and outer lives, and the role memory plays in our understanding of ourselves and our experiences. Our feelings and experiences are intangible and transitory, so in creating these paintings I am trying to capture and visually represent those feelings that make up our lived experiences yet evade the eye.

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?) 

I often work from photo references. My process today more or less has its origins in a series of drawings I made 13 or 14 years ago, based on family photos that my mother found at my grandparents home. Up until that point, I hadn’t seen many images of my family as younger people. It was interesting to see these family members in such a different light, to imagine how their lives, and personalities, and relationship dynamics had changed before I even existed. I drew from the figures in the photos but reimagined them in other settings. From there, I began culling imagery from both photos that I found in thrift shops or the internet, as well as old photos of my own family. Recently though, I have felt less compelled to seek out these types of images, and more interested in what is around me in the present, using my own life and memory as  source material. I still use photo references but now they are often people or things that catch my eye and I snap on my phone. I am constantly collecting imagery and frequently go back through my piles and files of images. Through that process the image that is right for that moment will find its way to me.

I will make some sketches before beginning a larger painting but I won’t get too detailed because I find that scale changes things a lot. I will draw the basic composition on the canvas in graphite or pastel and start the painting when I am satisfied with the drawing. Sometimes a painting will take a more or less direct route from start to finish, but sometimes it will go through many changes and unforeseen directions before its completion. I find that it is important to let a painting rest so that I can really see it. I tend to work on 3- 4 pieces at once, having more than one painting going at a time lets me take a break from an image while continuing to work. Also, sometimes the answer to a problem with one painting can be found in another. 

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related)And why?

Not Knowing -  the Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme, or perhaps my recommendation is specifically for the title essay. Much of this book is about the experience of writing but it is applicable to any creative activity.  In the title essay, Barthelme beautifully and humorously writes about making art as a process that begins with not-knowingwhere the mind will go, and creating a story to find out. “Art is a true account of the activity of mind” he says, this is a quote that I find inspiring and reassuring in some strange way. 

Alexandra Darbyshire

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?

Alisson Schulnik is pretty amazing. She's fearless with impasto oil, her colour mixing and placement is inspiring and her subjects captivating. Alisson's 3D animation videos commissioned by/for the band Grizzly Bear are so imaginative. I look at her work and feel nothing can stop her fierce creative drive.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?

It's tough to say when I first discovered art because I was always painting even as a small kid. Discovering artists' work, well, I suppose I started taking notice around the age of 12 which was also when I started taking serious extracurricular painting classes with instructors outside of school. From the age of 12 my interest built momentum, and then one day when I was 15 I remember deciding, knowing, saying out loud, that I was going to become a painter. It was pretty liberating, especially because it was the age where my high school began putting the pressure on students to sort out what college programs to apply for later on in year 12. I feel lucky that I knew so young. 

Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)

 I am Canadian, now based in the capital city of Ottawa, and I grew up on the East coast of this huge country. I studied fine art at OCAD University (Toronto), and spent a year at OCAD's Florence campus studying Renaissance art. I also studied for a year at the National Academy School of Fine Art in NYC, and most recently I completed the correspondence course with Turps Art School in London. Having said all that, I look back and feel I taught myself a lot of what I know painting wise. School was more of a time-out for me to lay it out and play it out in my head, in a workspace void of all the stressors and distractions of the big bad world outside.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work?

My current painting series “It Fell From Earth” springs from fragments of the world we inhabit, bringing together a collection of small encrusted and gloopy oil paintings, and collage work assembled from torn and painted pieces of paper, sometimes stitched or taped together. The work is presented as a conversation around the unknown, while vaguely referencing the things that surround us. Some artworks could be interpreted as microscopic/biomorphic phenomena, or outer space life forms from another planet, another cosmic dimension, or dreamscapes. The imagery ends up hovering somewhere between reality and painterly fantasy, organic life and dystopian form. In turn, I aim to allow the viewer to ponder all these worlds and atmospheres through my work in a way where the point of origin isn’t clear.

Describe your process!

Recently I have chosen to just walk into the studio and engage in unresearched free fall to see what happens - I'm going with my gut and it is purely in the moment. I used to spend ages researching and making photo-collage paint studies which I would use to create a much larger version of as a finished painting. Not having a blue print to call upon and live up to has been tough at times but it can be rewarding all the same. I usually work on about 10 to 12 pieces all at the same time, but only 2 or three are up on the wall at at once while the others are put aside to dry and to let my eyes and mind rest - that way I can deal with them with a clearer idea of where I should take them next once they've had a chance to dry. Some can take a few weeks to come together and others can take months, but none of them are worked on every day during those time frames.

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends?  Literature?)

I think that the history of painting, travel, films and television have all shaped a great deal of the way I approach my ideas, compositions and colours. To me they have been fully immersive experiences when they captivate my imagination. I cannot say that there is one tour de force artwork or film that I look to, but it's the accumulation of constantly engaging with these art forms over my lifetime which inspires me to create a spark of my own.


Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related)
And why?

"Girlfriend in a Coma" by Douglas Coupland - it's a visually descriptive novel of well observed reality and nostalgia rolled together with sci fi, dystopia, and the fighting human spirit.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging?

Just keep making a lot of work, and keep at it, even when it’s not working and you feel like you are dragging yourself through a trench of futility. You will gain higher ground eventually if art truly is what you want to do as a life choice.

Far from summer. Oil, marble dust and wax on canvas , 12 x 6 cm.

Pattern Fatigue III. Oil, marble dust and wax on canvas, 50 x 40 cm.

Love Duster. Acrylic, oil and wax on paper stitched together with cotton thread, 83 x 53 cm.

Detail shot of “Love Duster”.

Voodoo Child. Oil and marble dust on canvas, 9.5 x 5.5 cm.

Cold Drive, oil and wax on canvas, 50 x 40 cm.

Pattern Fatigue IV. Paper, acrylic, oil, marble dust and wax with cotton thread stitching and masking tape, 164 x 140 cm. 2016.

Paige Perkins

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

There are so many wonderful female painters, many of them my contemporaries, that it’s impossible for me to name a favourite. Anyway I was a dancer before I became a painter, so one of the most enduring female artists for me is the dancer/choreographer, Pina Bausch (d.2009) Her work looms large in my psyche: it’s dreamlike, uncanny, seductive, visceral, tender and cruel, humorous, surreal and absurd. The adjectives can give a sense of the style, but the only way to really appreciate it is to experience a performance by her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal. The pieces are full of surprising juxtapositions like a stage covered with soil or water, or flowers…an unusual mix of performers, old and young, some not even dancers but each with singular character.Unexpectedly, the performers will sometimes speak or sing fragments of song, which was unheard of before Pina Bausch pioneered a new mode of expression that she called Dance Theater. She was a radical and innovative choreographer who stuck to her vision even in the early days when audiences were booing her off the stage. Sometimes the scenes on stage might appear chaotic, yet somehow the works convey their own inner logic. I love the utter strangeness of it and not understanding on a rational level, but feeling something true inside. This might not be unusual now in contemporary dance, but in the early 1980’s it was astonishing to me. Pina Bausch had a deeply intuitive working method that began with a broad idea but no plan. Instead she asked her dancers loads of questions about their feelings and things connected with whatever the broad idea was, and then collaged ideas together as she went along. I also work without a plan, trying to distill something out of chaos. 

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

I have found the art world to be confounding and frustrating at times, although that could be true for anyone. The obstacles such as less representation in museums and galleries that you mentioned really do exist for women, despite higher numbers of females coming out of art schools. It’s insane really, and I think it’s even deeper and more nuanced, because women have internalized the gender disparity for so long that we often aren’t even aware when it’s happening. I have occasionally gotten a sense of a ‘boys network’ around some guys with bravado and a ‘clubby’ feeling among certain male artists that makes me as a female artist feel shut out. It’s not a nice feeling and makes me feel uncomfortably ‘less than’. Things are certainly improving now, and I’m a fan of all-women shows and initiatives. I’ve benefited from these, and was recently in an all-women show with New Art Projects at the London Art Fair. I’m also a member of a brand new international female art group called Lala Collective, and of course I’m talking about this right now thanks to Crow of Minerva! I believe positive discrimination is necessary to redress the balance so that a deep and lasting shift in human consciousness can take place.

When did you first discover art? and when did you realisethat you wanted to pursue it professionally?

  My first memory of art was sitting on my grandmother’s lap and she drew a picture of a witch for me. It was like magic and I loved it. I did art classes off and on during school years but I was more into dance and had dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer. In reality I’d started too late and was not very musical, so I switched from dance to painting at my liberal arts college, but it didn’t occur to me then that I could pursue a career as a professional artist– I thought it was what other people did! I remember feeling like I didn’t have much to say after college and didn’t really know what to do with it at that time. Besides I was living in Manhattan in the early 1980’s and was more interested in the nightlife and Studio 54 than anyart studio. It was ten years later, once I’d become a mother that I had a lightening bolt moment when I decided all at once that I was going to be an artist, no matter what. It was weird actually, but it was a very strong feeling. I stayed up most of that night drawing a self -portrait. It seems that once I’d become a mother I found plenty to say, and was connected to feelings that I’d previously avoided through drugs, alcohol and fast living in New York. Once I’d married and was living in the English countryside, I had some help with the childcare that allowed me some time for art even when my kids were very young. Now they’re all grown and I’m a professional artist. I feel very lucky.

What themes or ideas do you explore in your work? 

I’m looking for enchantment and mystery in my work, maybe some lost childhood wonder, so I explore aspects of the Carnivalesque, where ‘normal’ life is upended and the borders between fantasy and reality, animal and human dissolve and absurdity rules. I’m fascinated by the ‘otherness’ of creatures and our relationship with them. We must have a relationship with them. Enchantment and unseen horror, the beautiful and the grotesque also figure in my work, I believe all things in nature have spirit, which makes me an animist I think, anyway I’m interested in magic and energy and pagan beliefs and lore, myths, folk stories and fairy tales.  

What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)

I’m very disorganized, I can’t/won’t make clear plans or outlines but I get by in my own way.

Intuition is hugely important for me, it’s strong and I’ve learned to trust it. When I start a painting or drawing I don’t really have an idea of what I’m going to do and if I do it always changes along the way. I work in a low tech, ad hoc way and the only photography involved are the phone snapshots of the work as it progresses. I don’t have a hierarchy of materials, I paint and draw on cardboard, found objects, bits of scrap wood and stretched as well raw, loose canvas. The mix of materials is important to me and I like to play around with combinations of works in various forms. In my studio there ‘s one wall covered with scrappy drawings and sketches, sometimes they will feed into paintings but not directly. I don’t usually make preparatory sketches – too organized! but sometimes I’ll make rough sketches in order to work something out while I’m painting.Everything changes and morphs along the way, the thing is to know when to stop. As any painter knows it’s very easy to get carried away and kill a painting, I’m ace at that. I’m very messy when I’m working but the chaos is important to me, it allows for openness and possibilities. Intuition also guides my research, which is free-range: reading, watching, looking, listening to whatever draws my attention until I become aware of a thread or vein of possibility and I begin to make connections. I don’t really know how I do anything and each time I begin something new it feels strange. I’ve gotten used to that now so I just go ahead anyway and see what happens. It’s great to be surprised, I’d probably get bored if I thought I knew what I was doing.

What have been your influences? (Anything in history? A particular work of art? Other artists? Landscape? Movies? Family/friends?  Literature

I’m a cultural magpie, taking influences from a broad range of things. Some artists delve deep into a particular subject, but I have a short attention span and I just need enough to spark my imagination. Landscape is important to me indirectly and loosely through memory and imagination, a kind of personal psycho-geography. Sometimes a memory of a place will come up, Texas for instance, where I lived as young child, and will lead to imaginings of the American southwest, or New Orleans, where my mother and grandmother lived in genteel poverty for a time before I was born. The stories of their lives could’ve been written by Tennessee Williams and probably fuelled my love of Southern Gothic literature in general. So landscape becomes dreamscape for me, and it’s based on a personal or ancestral connection. The first artwork that made a big impression on me was a framed print of the Annunciation by Fra Angelico that hung in my parents’ house. I was captivated by it, the tiny flowers in the garden, the strange and colourful wings of the Angel, the golden ray of light with the dove floating in it … It was magical, and eventually it led me to study early Renaissance art in Florence for a summer. I listen to the radio a lot, and I like contemporary poetry, especially female poets like Sylvia Plath and Dorothy Molloy, to name just a couple, for their rawness and ferocity and startling imagery. I like the writing of Flannery O’Connor for the same reasons. I love Angela’s Carter’s books and short stories and I‘m into fairy tales, folk culture, and outsider art. I like melodrama in films and gothic fiction because it’s ridiculous and I’m attracted to the absurd. David Lynch is hugely important to me, especially the film Blue Velvet, with the best opening scene ever! EdvardMunch is one of my favourite painters and always will be. I like Japanese surreal literature for its strangeness. I‘m attracted by the European Romantic period, and the sensual relationship with Nature during that time. I’m drawn to the romantic myths around music and the personal lives of Robert Schumann and Gustav Mahler, both of whose wives, Clara and Alma, were also talented composers but their careers were stifled by the chauvinism of the period. When I’m working I can’t listen to classical music because it’s demanding, but I can listen to minimalist music like John Adams and lots of Southern blues and rock. It’s important to connect to nature but I need to live and work in the city where you can absorb culture almost through osmosis, even by the advertisements in the tube. It’s a rich mix. 

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related)

And why?

I wish I could think of something more original, but I’m going to cop out and recommend an art related self-help book. It’s called, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. I would definitelyrecommend it to every artist, whatever stage you’re at. It’s full of interesting stories about the working methods of many well-known creatives, as well as wisdom garnered by Twyla Tharp from her long career in contemporary dance. It’s always inspiring, you can dip into it randomly and usually find something appropriate for whatever problem you might be grappling with at the time. It doesn’t matter what kind of artist you are, there really is something for everyone in this book.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging? 

I wish you the blessing of a deep and genuine interest in your own practice to sustain you through the vagaries of the fast-moving and fickle art world. Being an artist is a lifelong, slow burning occupation, so we need to be able to withstand the passing trends and weather the rejections until the tide might shift in our direction for awhile or maybe longer. If you’re truly into what you’re doing, all the rest doesn’t matter.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? 

I’m in a group show ‘Repurpose/ Reverse’ at Studio1.1 Gallery

February 8 – March 3, 2019

 Shoreditch, London, E2 7DJ

http://www.studio1-1.co.uk

In March, ‘Everything’s Wrong, Ain’t Nothing Right’ with Jonathan Lux, Sophie Mackfall, Rae Hicks and Katheryn Maple at the Assembly House Galllery, Leeds, LS12 2PL

March 20th thru April 3rd, 2019

https://www.assemblyhouse.art

On 28th March I’m having a very brief solo show called ‘Zebra Kitten’ - for one night only!

6 – 9 PM at LUVA Gallery

LOCK UP VISUAL ART – a pop up gallery dedicated to exhibiting diverse contemporary UK artists

Behind James Campbell House, E2 9QE London 

https://www.facebook.com/LUVAgallery/

Instagram: luva_gallery

Hestia, oil and acrylic on canvas, 102 x 87 cm. 2018

Good Morning Sunshine, oil and acrylic on canvas, 170 x 120 cm. 2015 - 2018.

Twilight Zone. Oil, acrylic, wax crayon on canvas. 170 x 120 cm. 2017 - 2018.

Lightening Bugs at the Rodeo. Oil on canvas. 170 x 140 cm. 2016 - 2017.

Hinterland. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 87 x 102 cm. 2018.

Liz Doyle

Liz Doyle lives and works in Donegal in the far North West of Ireland. 

Her work is expressive and often experimental, with her latest works becoming increasingly abstract. Taking her main inspiration from a long line of artists through history who have spent their time pushing the boundaries of what it means to paint. These include Goya, Turner, Cezanne, Picasso, Frankenthaler, both De Koonings, Mitchell, Pollock and Krasner, Diebenkorn and Motherwell.

Liz has had an exciting year in 2018 with the selection of a piece (through Instagram!) for a group show at Mark Borghi Fine Art, in Manhattan NY, which in turn led to the invitation to a solo show in their Bridgehampton, Long Island, NY gallery in October, and then the request for more work for their Palm Beach, Florida gallery. She is now represented exclusively by MBFA in the USA.

She has a solo show coming up in the summer at Green Fuse in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland and is actively looking for other galleries in the UK and Europe, particularly London, Berlin and Barcelona

e. liz-doyle@live.com

Instagram @lizdoyleartist

web. www.donegallizdoyle.com

USA. www.borghi.org

‘Do you have a map #1’, 70 x 70 cm, oil and cold wax on board.

‘You can be as rude as you like #1’, 100 x 80 cm, oil and cold wax on canvas.

Untitled diptych, 80 x 160 cm. Oil and cold wax on canvas.

6 ‘poured paint’ pieces on board and canvas on the drying wall of Liz’s studio. All 6 are now at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Palm Beach, Florida.

Face off, 100 x 250 cm approx. on unstretched linen, oil and cold wax.

Mary Tooley Parker

Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you? 

My favorite woman artist is Loretta Pettway, one of the quilters from Gee's Bend, Alabama, in the deep south of the United States. Hers is not a household name, though her works were recently featured at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Her quilts are astoundingly powerful and unique, and her use of color and abstract shape is striking. Her work rose out of practicality and necessity, assembling cast-off clothing and materials into quilts to keep her family warm. But she, like other women of the Gee's Bend quilting community, had the ability to transform this utilitarian craft by imbuing these functional pieces with spirit, individuality, and deep beauty.

Women globally are far less represented in galleries and museums than their male counterparts. Have you yourself found the art world difficult to navigate as a woman or have you come up against any particular obstacles and how did you deal with them? Do you support all-women shows etc..? Why/why not? Have you noticed any changes?

 Since I only started showing my work in 2012, I've really only been involved with the “art world”for a few years. I have often felt supported by other women artists, both on social media and irl, but I  haven't personally run up against any male-generated obstacles that I am aware of. I have,however, noticed a marked prevalency of bias against textile arts in the art world—I believe because of its being associated with “women's work.” This elitist misogyny seems to be softening, especially in New York City.

When did you first discover art and decide you wanted to pursue it as a career?

To me ART is a broad term and I don't think of it primarily as visual art. I've been involved with the arts for a long time, though I never thought of myself as an artist until recently. I studied classical piano for 9 years as a child, was a modern dancer in NYC after high school, worked in the art departments of Vanity Fair and GQ magazines, and then got into fiber arts, especially rug hooking. After I started showing my hooked textiles locally, I was encouraged to pursue art professionally in 2015. Receiving a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts played a key role in that decision. It was very validating and gave me more confidence that what I was doing resonated with others.

Tell me a bit about your background!

I grew up in Westchester County, New York, about ½ hour north of NYC. After high school I lived in New York City for 20 years, pursuing a career in dance, and then in publishing at Condé Nast.Then I left the city and moved to a more rural environment farther north. At that point, with a house and child, I was able to more seriously dive into fiber arts of all kinds. I took up quilting spinning, weaving, dyeing, and rug hooking. I started out hooking with a local group and quickly realized this milieu really suited me, and I came to focus on it because of the tremendous joy it brought me. I  learned more and more through extensive reading, online research, and going to big hooked rug shows. I have done a lot of experimenting with design, texture, materials, color, and historic rug-making techniques during the past 16 years of working in this medium. For this reason, I consider myself mostly self-taught.

What subjects/subject matters do you explore in your work? 

My work is mostly very personal, drawing from my family, my memories, local history, and my immediate environment inside and outside. I hope to show the viewer things they may not look at or think about in their daily lives.

Describe your process! What’s a day in the studio like for you?

 As mentioned above, I have done a lot of research on rug hooking and its origins, as well as other 19th century  rug making methods. I studied the designs and construction methods of primitive rugs made from used clothing cut up and pulled through a burlap feed sack foundation made to keep floors warm; works of beauty created by untrained women artists. I also studied dyeing so that I can create colors as needed in my work. This learning included color theory, various dyeing techniques that achieve different results, and the contrasts between synthetic dyes and natural dyes.

I favor an intuitive approach always. I can only work on a piece that gives me a buzz of excitement when I think about it. I usually start with a sketch and then enlarge it, either on the computer or using a grid. I only work on one piece at a time, though I always have a bunch of other projects going on too, like knitting, spinning, basket weaving, that I turn to for different moods or locations. My smaller hooked pieces can take about a week, larger ones a month or more, depending if I want to spin some yarn to use, or need to dye certain colors, or if there are other additional activities involved in its creation.

What have been your influences?

I am mostly influenced by early primitive rug images and other “folk art.” I love the simplicity and unabashed honesty of these pieces created for purely personal expression and satisfaction. I'm also often inspired and motivated by artists I follow on Instagram. I think it’s really wonderful to be able to see so many contemporary artists working in real time, and I've found a very supportive community there. This is especially important when living in a rural area instead of a metropolitan area.

Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist?

I recommend the book “American Hooked and Sewn Rugs—Folk Art Underfoot” by Joel and Kate Kopp to anyone interested in folk art or the history of textile art. It is a fabulous compilation of images and information about this early American art form, written by two well-respected antique dealers in New York City. The work featured within is extraordinary when you consider the lives the makers led and all the other work they were required to do to survive. Also you will note that much of the work is surprisingly contemporary in feeling.

Do you have any advice for other emerging artists?

I know there is a lot of advice out there about how to be a “successful” artist, with tips on how to achieve that. My advice is to turn that on its head. Do what excites you, motivates you, andmakes you feel something. Keep doing that and following what you truly love and it will take you to where you need to be. You may not be a “successful” artist, but you will be a successful ARTIST.

Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? 

I am currently exhibiting at the Silvermine Guild galleries in New Canaan, Connecticut, throughFebruary 6. I will have work in the Small Works show at Five Points Gallery, also in Connecticut,from February 1-23. And I will have a solo show at Viridian Artists Gallery in Chelsea, NYC, from May 21 to June 15, 2019.

See more of Mary Tooley Parker’s work at www.marytooleyparker.com and follow her on Instagram @m.tooley.parker !!