STUDIO JOURNAL 10

From 15th May 2022 newsletter

For the last couple of weeks I have been working in the studio on compositions on paper as well as making gesso for some small panels plus sourcing a supplier for some large 150cm and 180cm panels. I’m excited about this supplier, they make bespoke poplar plywood panels. Their poplar plywood is sustainably sourced, PEFC and FSC certified and is approximately 40% lighter than birch plywood. In my push to make my creative practice more sustainable I’m looking for panels which don’t use tropical hardwood ply and as I said before, birch ply stocks come from Russia. They’re also made in the U.K..

STUDIO JOURNAL 9

From 1st May 2022 newsletter.

After much clearing space and decision making, the studio partition wall is down. The space has completely changed dynamics and I no longer ‘walk like an Egyptian’ to get in. Incase you don’t get it, I just quoted a song title - I’m now prompted me to look up the video on Youtube AND share it with you! The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian

Below are some photos showing progression of the studio interior wall dismantle.

Plaster board off

Posts and strengthening beam in, white paint next.

With this renewerd space I can start creating work for my solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery, a public gallery space in an old nightclub in Swansea, Wales, so lots of different and interesting spaces to fill. I’ve all sorts of ideas, including a 3-D painting installation, so now in the studio I can stretch out a little more. It’s very exciting.

However, I am in desperate need for a more permanent studio and painting store. Currently my work is stored in a static caravan, it isn’t ideal but it is somewhere seperate to the work space. I regularly empty two dehumidifiers and just recently I encountered a second leak. I’d say that storage is always an issue for artists, the work often takes up half of a studio space. So with this new leak I have lost a further 8 works on paper plus their frames. The previous flood brought damage to many large canvases.

Sharing a less glamorous side to being an artist, here is one of the damaged works, from my Ash Series.

Sooo, away from the Gloom…

I’ve been reading about quantum science and the quantum field for sometime through the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, he also covers epigenetcs, neuro-science and meditation. It’s so interesting. When I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work but I read, including artists writings. I’m re-reading books In Praise Of Painting by Ian MacKeever RA, Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’. The new publication by Pace Gallery, Agnes Martin - The Distillation Of Colour, has arrived today. I am so looking forward to reading it. I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online. 

This week I’ve been making composition drawings and working out ideas for paintings for my solo exhibition in 2023. They're part of an Energy Field and Mapping series.

Mapping 1, botanical ink on etching paper, 23x24.5cm

Mapping 3, botanical ink on etching paper, 23x24.5cm

STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From 3rd April 2022 newsletter - Drawn to nature

Here on Friday morning in South-West Wales, we woke up with melted, hardened, snowy hail. Crunchy under foot, the school run brought back memories of Scottish winters driving through creaky snow laden roads.

I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, in an area of rich soils and deciduous forests, between the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains and the sea. For some years I spent every weekend during winter with the Cairngorm ski club; season pass strapped to my arm, balaklava and hat pulled high to protect my face from the often fierce and bitter weather. In fact, lunchtimes were regularly spent thawing out our gloves and balaclavas under hand driers whilst eating squished semi-frozen egg sandwiches.

However, when the weather was clear and dry, it felt like the most beautiful place in the world. More corries than peaks, deep and snow covered, it was a place where you looked down rather than across or up.

Infact, the Scots don’t call their hills mountains, they’re hills. I think there’s a modesty to it, they aren’t towering and grand like the Alps. Yet within this modesty belies an awe. They are awesome in the true sense of the word and having spent some time away now from both Cairngorm and Nevis Range, on occasion to return I have been humbly brought to a standstill.

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In 2007, whilst travelling from West Cornwall to an artist residency in the Northern Isles (Shetland), I stopped near Inverness with some great friends. One of them, Mandy, lent me her book Findings by Kathleen Jamie. Handing it to me she told me I should read it. It took me half of the book before it fully got into me. And it got me.

While I was doing my fine art Masters I was looking for books to see how writers tackled the subject of nature and landscape. I read Thoreau, Emerson plus other great writings but they were not what I was looking for. I wanted something to really resonate with my approach. Kathleen Jamie’s Findings led me on to discover The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. The difference in these writers to the previous readings was what I was looking for. Less conquestorial, more about place and the poetics of it.

Cairngorm from the A9

The Living Mountain is a personal account of being in and knowing the Cairngorms. In the studio this week, listening to it this time around, it is sympathetically read with a voice which lulls one into the miracle and beauty of nature.

I quote The Living Mountain, Chapter 11 : The Senses

‘For the ear the most vital thing that can be listened to here is silence. To bend the ear to silence is to discover how seldom it is there. Always something moves. When the air is quite still, there is always running water, and up here that is a sound that one can hardly lose, though on many stony parts of the plateau one is above the water courses. But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute and listening to it one slips out of time.

Such a silence is not a mere negation of sound. It is like a new element and if water is still sounding with a low far off murmur, it is no more than last edge of an element we are leaving, as the last edge of land hangs on the mariners horizon. Such moments come in mist, or snow, or a summer night when it is too cool for the clouds of insects to be abroad, or a September dawn. In September dawns I hardly breathe. I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there and I in it. ‘

Passing the Eastern edge of the Cairngorms on the A9.

I have another friend, who now lives at the foot of Ben Nevis. She is a geologist and mountain guide to put it lightly. Her current job involves a walking commute to a very specific area of Nevis Range to monitor moss and grass. Her walk to work is 6 hours one way. She used to live in the Cairngorms and told me once that she doesn't get lost there, doesn't actually need a map and compass (although she’s got a heid enough to take one). She said, even in fog she knows every rock and can find her way.

Now this, is knowing a place.

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It is difficult to better the mountain and sea air and they are places that I have always been drawn towards.

All of these photos have been included because I have always really appreciated how both fog and snow rub out features (and sounds) in the landscape, altering distance and scale. Everything becoming visually simplified.

One of my favourite south-west Wales beaches local to us.

And yes, it is a secret!

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STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From newsletter 27th March.

Vignette (study), 34.5 x 61cm. Botanical inks on gesso panel 2022

I’ve got some grreat news.

After a lengthy and meticulous application for an Arts Council Wales grant, I have now received an email saying that my application has been successful. Hurrah!!

The grant is to create a solo exhibition to be shown at Elysium Gallery in Swansea in 2023. It is a large space and I have lots of ideas. I plan to have two painting installations, one with 3-Dimensional work as well as individual paintings and diptychs. The grant will enable me to commission and collaborate with other creatives as well. For example, I’ll be able to get some professional photography of my work a video documenting my process and a sound commission for an installation. It is very exciting and lots of work to do.

More information about the project will be unveiled over time. The exact date is yet to be confirmed with the gallery, I really hope you will be able to come for the opening night or during opening hours of exhibition. It will of course also be documented online, for those who can’t make it.

Oak gall ink and gesso on paper.

I’ve made a start by making some small studies on gessoed paper, board and panel and although when I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work, I’m currently re-reading books ‘In Praise Of Painting’ by Ian MacKeever RA, ‘Agnes Martin’ by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, ‘Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’.

I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online.

Studio table

STUDIO JOURNAL 7

From 13th March 2022 newletter.

I've entered the Void.

I'm piecing scraps of paper, notes, scribbles, rushed doodles, gathered in pockets and bag, stacked in a corner of the studio table. Ideas yet to realise, to consider, to get me back into where I was, what I've been thinking but unable to attend to.

There's been a gap in my studio making….A big gap.

Peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows of one kind or another are normal within a creative practice, I've learnt to navigate these according to their nature. However, I haven't made any paintings since last July (Somewhere to live with my family became THE priority, to get into the 6 year long renovation before winter really hits.).

This feels somewhat like an confession. And it is a painting space to re-enter…hence the Void. Gulp.

I’ve been through the plans chests, deep into the drawing archive. The drawings below are a selection ranging from as far back as 2002 until 2021.

And I’ve started putting layers of gesso ground onto paper and birch ply panel, to ready for working on.

But while renovating and grasping at the void while trusting that all will keep flowing, I’ve been listening to lots of books. I Really recommend this one:

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, by Mary Gabriel.

It’s been a fantastic companion in the studio while I organise the space; fun and insightful.

It really is a remarkable account of life for those who became the New York School in 40’s and 50’s in the U.S., taking over from Paris as the epicentre of modern art. It’s told utterly in the context of politics, depression, war, American art tradition, the oscillating positions of women in society and the propaganda around this. It provides a much needed documentation and redressing of some of the major female Abstract Expressionists putting them in their rightful position, at the heart of the movement.

These women really led the way for where we are now and what an inspiration they are.