FIONA STANBURY

Landscape of Choices,

oil & acrylic on canvas, 91 x 61 cm, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

What are you working on in your studio right now?

 

I am making a series of black and white paintings and small watercolours, to explore compositional questions that have emerged while working on some of my recent larger canvases.  I like the way that painting opens out new concerns, new questions and meanings, and I enjoy being pushed to explore further. As these 'notes' are smaller than many of my oils, the change of scale allows me to reassess the picture arena very fast, and make changes quickly. They also result in a lot of 'spin-off' drawings, which are very small, and generally play with compositional ideas. These feed back into the canvases. I will use these small works as a starting point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you describe your working routine?

 

I like to start as early in the morning as possible, to have at least 4 to 5 hours to paint without the distractions that usually come later in the day! I work in series as I like to allow ideas to bounce off one another, from canvas to canvas. This way I don't get blocked by any particular canvas, and also elements from one may suggest ways to resolve another painting.  When I am working, I have about 5 or 6 canvases around me, and various notes and sources of reference scattered across the floor. There's a lot of coffee drinking going on. As I paint, one or two canvases pull me in and I will work intensively on these. They possess me, even when I'm away from the easel.

 

 

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

 

At the moment, I work in a corner of my flat by a north facing window, with a view onto my patio area. I don't get distracted easily, and the strange thing is that the view out of the window doesn't influence my work. I tend to be quite focused on the questions and dilemmas brought up by my sketches and notes, and inner images. I also like to work with my painting on the floor, and walk around it, especially when working on large canvases.

 

 

 

 

 

Studies, watercolour on paper, 29 x 21 cm

 



 

 

 

 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

 

I trained at 17 with a very good landscape painter. She taught me so much about oil paint and technique but when I went to Art School I suddenly discovered that it could be used in a multitude of ways for self-expression, and to reflect ideas and experiences. I used to work a lot in the landscape, with oils and watercolour, but then my hand and eye wanted new things that had to exclude certain landscape references. My previous way of working had suddenly become restricting.

There are several doors of entry for me. Sometimes I work in black and white or watercolour to catch images which were suggested by earlier painting experiences or elements that are evolving in my mind. A lot of these drawings and watercolour notes are semi-automatic. Other times I may start from a word or phrase or from areas of colour that resonate with meaning. I often like to lay colour on the canvas and see where it leads.

 

I tend to call my works 'Inscapes,'  'Paintscapes,' or 'Landscapes of Choices,' as these titles reflect my interests.  For me, painting is a like a journey through a landscape of doubts and adjustments. It is multi-layered. Colours become trails of searching, doubts, and adjustment, until an image has a particular resonance for me, which may be an equivalent for landscape or more often an inscape. Sometimes shapes or juxtapositions of colours on the TV or in newspapers will suddenly suggest a starting point. I start by working into wet gesso, and let the paint layer itself, or I work onto a coloured surface. At a certain point the image makes its own demands and starts to offer possibilities for development. I keep in mind that it is an 'Inscape,' though if some other references enter the work, that's ok too.  Sometimes the traces of a horizon line enter the work, sometimes the space becomes its own entity. I like the idea of paint choices, erasures, adjustments forming a kind of paintscape, so instead of alluding to actual places it refers to a journey through paint. I have spent most of my life travelling, and my first memories are from when I was 3 and living in Lagos, Nigeria. I remember well the deep shadows and bright colours, so always at the back of my painting experience some memories filter into the work and direct the use of the materials.

 

I make most of my judgements away from the act of painting, when I will ask 'does it work?' At the same time, I don't want to base my judgements on formats or past experiences, I want the painting to offer its own terms. I also like to make my own canvases, because I like particular shapes.  Long rectangles allow me to express the sense of a paint journey, and I like squares because they challenge my response to certain compositional dynamics. I like contradictions, off-balance compositions, and the contrast between impulsive calligraphy and stabilising shapes, and large areas of calm. I like changes in scale, to trip myself up! My work undergoes many changes and points of destruction, until it 'feels' right.
 

 

 

 

Spring Valley,

oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm, 2012

 

 

 

What are you having the most trouble resolving?
 

I always have trouble resolving the colour transitions and composition, and have to work a lot to find the painting! At the moment, I am being very strict about what I allow in the painting, so there's a struggle for simplification and much over-working.

 

 

 

 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

 

I'm not as experimental as some artists as I like the qualities of oil and acrylic and find that they suit my needs. My paintings often emerge from the dialogue between thick and thin paint, acrylic layered with oil paint, frequent scrapings with a large palette knife, and generally I like to push my materials around. I want to try out oil sticks, and am trying out various mediums that can be mixed with oils or acrylics. I find a whole breadth of possibilities within these materials but at a later date I may experiment more.

 

What does the future hold for this work?

 

I want to explore calligraphy and drawing with colour much further. I have just been selected for a Mark Rothko residency, at the birthplace of Rothko in Daugavpils, Latvia. I am one of 15 artists from different countries to be selected, and I am looking forward to intensive studio time, discussions, and artistic debate. I believe that this interaction and new environment will challenge my artwork, and help me to explore the possibilities of colour further.  Also, working with other artists always opens up new questions and horizons.
 

 

 

Is there anything else you would like to add?


I'd like to thank you for including me in these interviews, and to say that reading about other artists' working experiences and ideas challenges my own ways of working and has been very positive and helpful. I have really enjoyed answering these questions.

 

 

 

 

Edges,

oil & acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HELEN O LEARY

Shapes of disappointment,

Paris 2010,

Egg oil on wood

 

 

 

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I’m just back from three months of being on the road; my gut response to the studio upon landing was one of bushwhacking, pairing down and getting rid of things that went too far or didn’t go far enough, with a fresh eye searching for the spare and dense.  I want the architecture of my paintings to be even lighter, and have to have more of an overlap with my personal world. I spent the first two weeks deep cleaning the studio, piling things high in the alley, erasing, and shedding, and getting back to the bare white bones of the studio. I re-mudded the walls, and am ready to go.

I’m thinking a lot about visual poetry, story telling, and the shifting gears between painting, visual wit, photography, and found text. I spent the summer working on a collaboration with my daughter Eva O’ Leary in Ireland about the current uncertainty with the economic downturn, and I’m taking the conceptual armature of the summer and translating it back into painting.

Our summer was a car full of cameras, a few clothes, a well marked map, and for three months we attempted to find the ‘back story’ of ‘uncertainty’ present in co-existing realities, economic: emotional, sexual, physical, etc. with photographs, texts culled from the Done Deal (on line broad sheet, the equivalent of craigs list) with its continued possibility of material gain and dating sites, with their grandiose promise of love and stability. This work will take the form of book and painted constructions, but as of now it is still very much a work in progress.
We are currently in the process of editing photographs and deciding on the next step of our collaboration. It was a great studio break, completely surrounded by invention and imagination, fabulous people and epic landscape. I fed my soul and came back ready to re-think the current trajectory in the studio. 

My work uses my life as subject matter, at middle age and mid career, post nuclear family, my continued unpacking and packing, belonging and retraction of homes between countries. I locate my work between the moments of material and emotional certainty, the short shelf life of predictability, both laughing at and questioning the structural prosthesis of conventions established through economic, cultural and gender constraints. Currently I’m interested in the uncertainty present in any economic downturn or change, between youth and middle age, and in the rupture between external and internal life. I look outside and within the tradition of painting for content, and lately been looking at the form inherent in sean-nos singing, (lament) for its economy of form and the content and meaning inherent in it’s frugal self containment, and have used a similar self containments in my approach to painting.

 

 

 

Bushwick Studio, NY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you describe your working routine?

First thing in the morning are my best hours in the studio. I get to the studio early and love the quiet that I find there. I divide the day into working bits, morning is when I look, and sit with the work. I trust these early morning intuitive decisions, yet un-jaded by the events of the day. I know if something is working in that first glance, and make the big decisions with a fresh mind.

Afternoon and evening time varies usually a lot more physical moving in or around the painting.  I sometimes make my constructions in the metal shop, which is loud, metal on metal, anvils, noise, public, and takes a different kind of energy. The armature I construct is important, and is the silent backstory, it takes a lot of time, welding, riveting, hammering etc.  It’s also a learning curve which I enjoy, as I’m very much a painter, and flattening out the purpose of shredded filing cabinets, knitting needles, umbrellas, bits of my car, house, and life is a way of putting my life and painting together in an uneasy wobbly relationship. I wear headphones and safety glasses, it’s a uniform, and creates an insular protected world, which is appealing.  It’s a real work out, and I like the compression that is achieved when I make a small scaffold or object out of the splintered familiarity of function. These hammered scaffolds create a matter of fact backstory of support for the suspended exterior more vulnerable thinness of the world of cloth.

I like to learn new things, to go back to the beginning; I teach at Penn State University, so it’s logical to take classes and learn new things, clay, metal, writing, and then figure out how to fold it back into my painting.

 

 

 

 

PA Studio

 

 

 

 

 

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studios vary and I ‘break them in’ so they become very safe personal private spaces. I have two, one in NY and one in PA where I teach. I travel a lot and I have developed a way of working when away from the home base. In many ways picking my work apart into small lots was a direct result of my peripatetic life, and it has very much influenced my practice. I have two floors to the studio in PA; it is an old wooden barn with two floors and a lot of natural light. I sleep in both my studios, I like living in a painting. My garden is right outside and I take breaks to weed, or build make shift supports for plants. I do all of the dirty work down stairs, the spills, the spreads, the hacking, and bring drawing or small details upstairs to see them in a pristine setting. My studio in New York is in Bushwick, has an elevated train right outside my window. It’s bright, different from the quiet of PA. There is a hectic world outside my door, and calls for different sparser sort of work. My life is usually on the go, inside out, physically making or unraveling stuff, my working routine is as fragmented as the work I produce.

 

 

 

 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

 

 

 I am very much an intuitive thinker. I need stuff, materials, goo, beauty, and need my body to be involved in the process. I make things that rely on how they are made, and I want the story of their making to be evident in the final product.

 

The starting idea has to come from some nub of absurd truth in my life. I whittle in the studio, rooting for meaning in the attempts and failures of every day, with paint, with thread, canvas, and wood and aluminum.  Something will catch my attention as a storyline, and then I search the materials that could expand the meaning. I need laughter and absurdity to be a part of the process, if something makes me laugh when I make it I know I’m on the right track and it might  just be good.  I have books on how to make paint, old archaic recipes, supports etc. and collect how to do books. I want the reassurance of the ordinary to be present in the simplicity of materials and in the collections of unglamorous gestures that I catalogue.

 

Painting, when good, in its unfolding process, has the capacity to blow my heart right open.

 

 

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

 

 

My  collaborations, artist books, constructions, painting, collections of vernacular language I find in the world on a daily basis, I want this to be all the one work some day. I take worn out language and re-work them, found texts, images, and change the context so new meaning is reached. I always feel its close, but I’ve yet to put it together. I construct worlds, and the world I want to construct is bigger and more articulate than the ones I have managed so far.

 

 

 

 

Outwack 2011-12

detail

steel, aluminum, wood, ceramic, gold and platinum lustre, oil on linen

 

 

 

 

 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

Yes, I love materials. For the last project, OUTAWACK, which was a series of small paintings suspended on hammered armature, I made thousands of my own ceramic pins, which I lustered with gold and platinum. I took a class and thrived on the sensitivity that clay offers. I wanted the piece to be large, huge, epic and heroic, through many small moments, piecemealed together somewhere between tent and painting, and it was important for me that I made absolutely every last bit in the show.

 

That work was long in the making, it came out of my internal and external life, movement between countries, Lyme disease that has been a battle, the absurd changes of middle age, divorce, the failing Irish economy that seemed to back drop my changing life, and my long commitment to the interrogation and expansion of painting.

 

I experimented a lot, playing with the many notions of supports and surfaces. I knew I wanted thin and wobbly, so I started with a very broad of possibility, and took it from there.

I have used glass, (in collaboration with Sarah Schwartz), made my own mirrors, loving the alchemy of pouring silver nitrate onto glass, used etching where to make my own legal pads, encaustic, made my own paints, chalk grounds, everything is fair game. I try to come to each material with a question mark of what else it can do or how else I can use it, or reclaim it and some how give it new meaning. Right now I’m focusing on welding and hammering, metal, whittling, and thinness. I don’t really know where it will take me, but I trust my instincts.

 

 

 

 

 

Places I've lived, 2011-12

egg oil on cardboard, board, linen

 & platinum pins

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does the future hold for this work?

I have an idea of what it will look like, but, I know how I work and I deviate from plans with great enthusiasm. I want this next work to be more like an Opera, embracing spectacle, in my own homespun way. I know I’m ready to make a book that will work with the next piece.  I have a lot to learn, and am readying myself to confront a new question mark. Most of all, want to remain vulnerable, un-rigid, and open to ideas and experience.




Is there anything else you would like to add?

Listening to Shane Mc Gowen and the pogues in the 80’s clarified for me the power of language and opened up the possibility of re-inventing poetic tenderness without nostalgia. His stories of being alive sung through the rich cadence of lyrical Irish Folk music with a good splash of punk emboldened me to harness my nagging doubt and extreme optimism as viable tools in the studio. It opened up the possibility to own the pure pleasure of paint as my first language.

Thank you so much Valerie, it was lovely to sit down and share my studio with you.

 

 

 

Grand Indistinguishable Facts 2011-12

paint, linen, aluminum, gold lustred porcelain, steel,

encaustic on wood, encaustic on cardboard

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOM BARNETT

Untitled (Sky)
pigment on paper on board
 122 x 94cm

What are you working on in your studio right now?

Since March this year I've been making new works that are concerned with the memory of a trip to India from the previous year.

 

Can you describe your working routine?

I have two very different tempos in my studio. While the thinking, preparing & finishing can often take along time & at a slow pace the mark making & physical gestures are predominately fast & often frenetic. However, although a painting is made up of these quick actions, it may have multiple layers that are in turn punctuated by long periods of slow reflection. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

 

I always attempt to maintain some neatness & order but in reality if my studio isn't a wash with pigment, paper scraps, pencils & pastels then I'm not really busy. I find the best works inspire some chaos but coming from an ordered beginning.

 

 

 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

 

Pigment & the action of spreading it around beautifully flat, clean plains is a key process at the moment. The moment that an inspired decision takes hold of previously methodical tasks is where a work begins. Before that its memories, photos, dreams, wider reading/looking etc. After its colour and shape inspiring a response.

 paper

 

 

 

 

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

 

The difficulty of transposing the simplicity of small sketches into large scale works.

 

 

 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

 

I used to use anything & everything & embrace the endless choice that gave me. Now I enjoy giving myself parameters within which to work. All that energy spent respecting different materials can now be focused on the subtler differences within one material, one subject. Like light, tone & feel.

 

 

 

 

Untitled (Train)
 pigment on paper on board
153 x 122cm

 

 

 

 

What does the future hold for this work?

 

There is a familiarity to work I made when I was younger in the desire to work again with colour, line and layers. But the inspiration was my trip to India & so I plan to go again & develop this body of abstracted landscape painting further.

 

 

 

Untitled (Brown)
pigment on paper on board
153 x 122cm

 

 

 

 

 

 

PETER GEERTS

 

 

Mononolgue Interieur II (from the series Monologues interieurs)

oil on canvas, 167 x 167 cm

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are you working on in your studio right now?

 

 

At the moment I’m working on a series of paintings which are composed paintings from different parts. Some of them are assembled to a single work -which I did before- others are arrangements. It is a new development in my search for a clear formulation of what I call ‘Synthetic concretism’: a synthesis between constructive and expressionist elements in painting.

 

 

 

Can you describe your working routine?

 

 

I paint as much as possible, I wake up and go to my studio till late in the evening. I teach art for three days a week.

 

 

 

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?


For six years now I have a large studio (90 m2) in an old school-building on the ground floor. The large and high walls in this grand studio give me the opportunity to work at different pieces at the same time.  I can view several paintings hanging aside each other. This gives me the opportunity to ‘arrange’ and study the whole in a quiet surrounding.

Nevertheless I think the picture you want to make is ‘in ones mind’: in the former, much smaller studio for example I made a painting which was arranged of five panels of 1.50 x 1.50 cm each! (Life, Primal Urge, Love, Art, Death) I couldn’t place them next to each other in that small studio, only when it was put on view in the Stedelijk Museum Zwolle I myself saw them for the first time as I had them in mind. Later I made even larger paintings here (4.00 x 1.20 cm.) which could not fully stand up because the ceiling was to low so I painted them on the floor. When they were exhibited I saw the monumental power of it as I meant it to be working.

Since my work developed in a more monumental way -as well in size as image- there was a need for a larger studio, especially high ceilings and long walls. The first grand project in this studio was ‘Lost Innocence’, it is dedicated to the victims of the Srebrenica Massacre: a painting of 130x130; a painting ‘White Flames of Sorrow’ 300 x 280 cm.; a triptych 180x450 cm.; a triptych 170x310 cm.; and a triptych 200x420 cm. In this project the subject was a great European tragedy on witch I felt an inner need to express myself about it through my work. I worked for two years on it. For the first time I had the space I need for my work. Nevertheless I think concentration and self-criticism are the most important and decisive aspects that counts in an artists work.

 

 

 

 

 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

 

 

The elements of which I want to a painting to be built of, I always have in mind when I start, but I also allow myself the attitude to arrange and play with them in the process of the work. Often comes the idea of a second or third painting/as part of the result. The concept is clear; the formulation of it in real colour, shape, composition is a process.

 

I usually start with a thin, transparent layer and than look at it with a critical eye: the adventure begins…! I intervene and look again: paint-look-paint again, and look again, at a certain point the elements are on its right place or are near a point of the tension I had in mind for the painting. From that moment on it is the painting itself that tells me how to complete the finishing touch. It’s like the birth of an image: I’m always a bit surprised myself, because although you have an idea in mind, you can not be in control of all the effects from what you do. It shows it to you during the process. Balance of colour, shape and size you can never foresee in mind.

 

 

 

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

 

 

The most trouble I have, I think is to maintain the distance to my personal affections and dislikes. In a way I consider painting as a schizophrenic action. To create a really true painting you have to be with yourself, at the same moment it has to speak a universal transcendental language. It takes a long self-critical attitude towards your interventions before you can consider the painting is finished.

 

 

"Composed painting" in the studio, untitled,

oil on canvas, 200 x 290 cm

 

 

 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

 

 

In the past I worked with different materials, in fact I made assemblages. But for me, as a painter, the restriction of the paint itself is the best way to create a clear image.

 

 

 

What does the future hold for this work?

 

 

I guess the work will evolve in an even more clear formulation but in what direction it grows you never know. I’m working on a painterly solution of the synthesis between constructionist and gestured/expressionist aspects, an integration of these two opposite approaches to a whole. Also I hope that the recognition will bring the work to good exhibitions, after all a painting is a visual thing and it is meant to be shown and seen.

 

 

 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

 

 

Well Valerie, thanks for the opportunity to express myself on your blog, I think it is a nice initiative that reaches people around the world. Art feeds people and is a great need!: it makes ones mind open and breaks barriers and prejudices and can touch people in a way nothing else can.

 

 

 

 

 

From the project "Lost Innocence",

oil on canvas, 180 x 450cm

 

RALPH HUNTER-MENZIES

"abstract composition" 2012,

oil stick and oil paint on board, 21 x 30 cm

 

 

 

 

What are you working on in your studio right now?


I am working on a series of small works, all 21 x 30 cm and three works that are 60 x 42 cm. I find it is simultaneously productive and undermining to work on a series; each work informs the next and they create a conversation between themselves, but at the same time you have to be constantly trying new colour combinations and marks out, making sure they have their own voice. This is partly why I work on larger works at the same time; it makes me look and paint on a different scale, which makes it harder to just become comfortable with one size and therefore disrupts the likelihood of copying what you may have done in previous works.




Can you describe your working routine?


I find it beneficial to go to the studio two or three times a day, in bursts of about three hours. I also tend to go in some days and just sit there and look at the works, sometimes not making a mark for a few hours. I have spells where I will make works and move works on very quickly and then other times it might take a lot longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

I am on the fourth floor of an old cricket bat factory looking North over London. The way the building is used and managed all seems a bit anarchic and I would say this has definitely affected the direction of my works in the sense that my painting process has become far looser. The energy in the building is incredible as it is filled with a few dozen churches, artists, a nightclub and a theatre group.

 

 

 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

 

 

I start working very quickly, putting down marks in acrylic paint. I then use oil sticks or oil paint and work around or on top of the lines that I initially made. This process goes on for months and the palette in the paintings changes numerous times. I find the whole process of making these works extremely optimistic as any mark can be changed and it allows me to be spontaneous with my painting.

 

 

 

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

 

 

I think the majority of the paintings I am working on fluctuate between being sublime or grotesque. This is a point in my works I long to be at because it lends itself to so many possible outcomes. I love being challenged by the painting, so all works are always a trouble to resolve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

 

 

I go through periods where I will paint with just acrylic or just oil paints. I think not knowing or perhaps forgetting how a certain medium handles or dries is key to creating a painting that looks different. Essentially, it increases the likelihood for mistakes or unusual things to occur.

 

 

 

What does the future hold for this work?

 

 

I expect the unresolved ones to slowly, in a way, complete themselves. I need to spend a lot of time with them, looking and letting my eyes figure them out and bringing different marks in where needs be.

 

 

 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

 

 

Thank you Valerie, It has been a pleasure.

 

 

 

"abstract composition" 2012,

oil stick and oil paint on board, 21 x 30 cm

 

 

 

 

 

WARD SCHUMAKER

Blue Dot, collage, 10 x 6 ", 2012

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I’ve been working on a series of small painted sculptures I call Dumb Boxes. Back in 1965 I got my first apartment, in San Francisco, a block from Haight Street. I’d moved there from the Midwest after getting in trouble with authorities who’d threatened to jail me for creating pornography. Because of that, I stopped showing people my personal work for the next 35 years or so, and destroyed or lost most of it as the years rolled by. At any rate, the very first thing I did in the sixties was create a group of minimalist sculptures out of cardboard adding words and photos cut from magazines. Jump ahead to January of  2012: we got a chance for an apartment in Manhattan for the year and to celebrate, I decided to reproduce those cardboard boxes in wood. I dropped the photos, and instead I painted them with gesso and acrylic.  It’s been very satisfying to finish up a project started some 45 years earlier.

 
Can you describe your working routine?

Paint. Paint out. Paint. Paint out. Despair. Get back to work. Paint, paint out, paint—wait! I think that works. Stop.
As many hours a day as possible.  I try to take off Sundays.

"Dirty projects room" San Francisco studio

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

The studio in San Francisco consists of three small rooms: one for drawing, one for computer, and one for painting (we call it the last our dirty projects room, and it is very dirty). In New York, my wife Vivienne Flesher and I do our illustration in the dining room of our apartment and we have a painting studio in the garment district: 300 square feet with one window, no running water, no computer, no connection to the web. So in San Francisco we’ve got everything we’d want, including food, garden, place to nap, each other.  In New York it’s minimal, nose-to-the-grindstone, all attention on the work.  We’ve got no history here, no old paintings or sketches lying around, no friends asking to see the work. And that means focus is always on exactly what being done now. That can be both helpful and not.

   

New York studio

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I like to work on a very defined, consistent group (ex: the Dumb Boxes, a hand-painted book, large canvasses), then follow that with a group of things that veer wildly in different directions (ex: my collages). The first group is often defined by subject (names, a text, an image) or by the way I apply the paint. I work on as many pieces as I have space to lay out for drying. Most important and most uncomfortable is that once a direction is decided upon, I have to be willing to drop it when that Other Thing takes over––intuition, divine guidance, whatever you call it—that thing that almost everyone I respect seeks: the moment when one feels he/she is not in control, that something separate or higher or deeper or more knowledged has taken over.



What are you having the most trouble resolving?

As usual: finding out what I really want to see that perhaps I alone can/will make.

 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

When I paint I especially like to use paste for a medium, I learned to use it at a book-making class and I love the syrupy fluidity of it, the way it changes as it dries: that change prevents me from every having complete control of it and that is something I appreciate. Lately I’ve really liked working with gesso on wood, there is something so quiet and absorbing about gesso and sandpaper

Group of dumb boxes in NY studio

Archipelago, 14 x 6 x 6", 2012

What does the future hold for this work?

George Lawson Gallery in Los Angeles has scheduled a show of these sculptures in November 2012 and I look forward to that, in part because I have such respect for the other artists that George exhibits.  But as for the work itself: I really don’t know.

 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

As an illustrator I always had an audience, it comes with the job; but as a painter who started showing at the age of 60, I feel a great appreciation for those who will take the time to look at my work.  So thank you for the interest.

Disappear, acrylic on paper, 48 x 34", 2012

TERRI BROOKS

Rising Sun, 2012, oil & enamel on paper mache, 94 cm approx

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I have just returned to Melbourne after a month based in Florence and Frankfurt . While I was away I visited many museums, the two that have stayed with me were the Kunsthaus, Zurich (for the Cy Twombly sculptures) and the Emil Schumacher Museum in Hagen. I got several ideas while I was away from the studio which are a development on the ideas I was working on before I left. So my current work stems from this. I also have a request for two big paintings, which is almost a commission, based on my earlier gestural work. So two lots of work are going on in the studio right now, which is a little unusual.

Two Diamonds, 2012. Oil, enamel, pigment

and PVA on canvas, 2x37x37 cm

Can you describe your working routine?

I paint for some hours nearly every afternoon. I do admin stuff at night or in the morning. As well as this I spend time thinking about painting and looking at other artist’s paintings on the web.

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studio runs across my property and is as big as I could make it. I also have a storage office room in the house. I built the studio (which is a shed) in 1999 as a place where I could make a mess. The natural light is not great and this affects my work during the change of seasons twice a year due to the reflected light.

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I walk several times a week for health reasons in my local environment or anywhere. In the studio marks I make remind me of marks I see in the environment and I start reflecting on what I have seen on my walks. Sometimes I get a flash of an idea, or a leap and this is what takes a painting to another plain. I work on several pieces at once and there is no one way of doing things. Some start from a thumbnail sketch of a clear vision and others come from a general conceptual space. Sometimes a better idea presents itself in the process and the ability to carry this through is the challenge, the excitement. Some flop when the idea is not strong enough and I get lost and it becomes a torrid affair that ends in the bin.

 

"‘slip board’ is the sort of thing that I am attracted to in my environment"

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

When a painting is resolved. It takes a lot of time deciding that. I have three places in the house where I hang works. Some works can sit for weeks while I ponder whether they are finished or not. If they go back to the studio it must be with a ‘prepared to lose what is there’ approach.

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I need a changing muse of materials (to keep the experimenting and therefore the work interesting and alive). At present it is multiple panels, shaped canvases and paper mache.

 

Memory Sketches

What does the future hold for this work?

I am trying to capture the essence of my local place, but hopefully it is also a generic place, the city.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

The theme is always constant, and that is nature in the city, or nature reclaiming the made city and the random abstraction therein.

 

ZigZag, 2012. Oil, enamel and pencil on canvas, 153x153 cm