statue

Work in progress, acrylic on canvas. The actual statue playing the lute stands at the entrance to one of the mazes at Hever Castle (where Anne Boleyn grew up).

sequestered

I love looking at other people's studios and hearing how they work. Blogs like from the desk of..., and Terri Windling's 'On Your Desk' posts are always interesting, also books like 'Artists' Houses' and 'In Artists' Homes: The Living Spaces of Contemporary Artists' and, of course, artists' own blogs, like Rima Staines' Into the Hermitage and this multi-talented artist who experiments with making her own iron gall ink and sculpting from the skeleton out. Harry Ally so impresses me in this video, working quickly among all those other people *and* in front of a camera.

It's amazing how different artists' spaces are, and their ways of creating. Actually, I think part of my fascination with Harry Ally is precisely because he works so opposite from how I do, his paintings and drawings are so free and large.

So, here is where I work (you can click on the photos if you'd like to see more detail, hopefully I dusted well enough!):



Sketches strewn over an old suitcase (because if I put them tidily away I forget about them), a couple paintings-in-progress, a little house my mum built (a simple one, most of the ones she makes are more complicated, she also does lovely water-colour paintings of bits of architecture), and to the left the door to the teeny balcony (it can fit either one chair or a pot of jasmine, I chose the latter).



The work table: more sketches, bits for some boxes and tiny shrines (underneath the bank bag are the littlest micro-bits hiding from the dusty winds that sometimes blow in even when the door is closed), a tiny village a 6-year-old and I are slowly constructing along with mini paper dolls and their even smaller clothing, and a wind-up toy I love that throws off sparks as it rolls around. I found the table itself on the street, it has lovely barley-twist legs but a sheet of plywood on top (with 'danger' still on from its former life) so I don't have to worry about protecting it. Note the lovely view of stucco - nothing to distract me there! (The view from the balcony is more treehouse-like - hibiscus, palms and jacaranda, a fountain down below and over the trees distant skyscrapers.)



Some possibly finished pieces hanging out on the built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (I love these shelves!), another old suitcase barely visible bottom left.

The rest of the tour would include a small easel, an antique Arts & Crafts style table I use as a desk, an ancient cloth-covered trunk (all three found on the street), a chest of drawers with old fruit crates (avec labels) stacked on top as shelves for supplies, and bright silk longyis from Burma and cotton sarongs from the Philippines, gifts from a sister and a friend, covering big cushions on the futon because this is also the guestroom.

Also, numerous postcards and other flotsam and jetsam from vide greniers, gifts, and scavenged and found bits on the desk and shelves and tucked away in the drawers.

I feel very lucky to have this room, and I am completely dependent on it because I can't work around other people. At all.

I don't know whether it's because I am too distractible to create around others or too self-conscious, probably both, but it makes art classes and retreats awkward (I practice the techniques but can't actually make a piece of art) and group paint-outs or sharing a studio impossible.

And I can't work in short bits of time, or with interruptions. Portions of an hour are useless to me, especially when I am doing the initial sketches for a painting. Sometimes I work for hours before I start to get what I want, then when I do I don't want to stop for more hours until I'm finished (which means if I start in the evening it can be early morning when I finally put everything down). When planning the moving parts or secrets of the boxes I build it's like I'm making an invisible path in the air, so as soon as there is an interruption it's completely gone and I have to start at the beginning. And unlike the wonderfully free Harry Ally with his big brush and crowbar my paintings are built slowly, in layer after layer of washes and detail.

So, back to work here...

90%

This is one of the pieces that doesn’t seem to be quite finished, but I’m not sure what it needs. I keep going across the room to look at it, but the solution has not jumped out at me, so I will let it sit a while then try again. It’s funny how time can change what one sees in a work.

I am listening to a frog out in the woods while I work but the birds are quiet now. I’m going to take a dozen of the apples weighing down the trees out back and make a crisp, then take the fiendish hounds for a long run on a trail nearby, they weren’t with me for the last two months of travelling and the one I adopted last year didn’t do so well with the separation (she stopped eating and lost a lot of fur). The dogs I’ve rescued from shelters seem to do worse when I’m away, plus she is a dominant dog and doesn’t like the boss being absent, so long walks now that I’m back are essential.

Hopefully the time outside will be enough so that I can look at the pieces I’m unsure about and know what they need.

sisyutl

This is not finished yet, the 3-headed monster needs to be integrated and I’m not sure how I feel about the absence of writing.