ARTISTS TALKING

# 31 [28 May 2010]

On a whim (meaning: not working on any of the three studio projects I feel I ‘ought’ to be working on...), I thought today I’d try something new: drawing in a concertina-style sketchbook directly from film stills. This was inspired by a video on YouTube of a dance piece called ‘Faun’. The two dancers have extraordinary fluidity and strength to their movements. I also love the sturdy muscularity of their bodies.

My paintings and drawings never usually take photos as a starting-point, but when I went to see Jenny Saville’s reproduction drawings series at Gagosian recently, I felt that she’d probably used photography as a part of the drawing process, and it had worked really well. Saville's work had a sort of true inner muscularity to it, a sort of integrity and authenticity that I don’t often detect when an artist has used a photograph.

Today's work is not to be compared with Saville's, for lots of reasons including the fact that it's on a much, much smaller scale. I'm interested in what I've done though; maybe it's the start of something...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKWXFoLqYeg&feature...

# 32 [7 June 2010]

 For various reasons I haven’t been in the studio making work this past week, and I miss it.

On Tuesday I drove 23 paintings to south London for a solo exhibition. There was no-one at the gallery to hang the work, and their hanging system is bizarre: lines hanging down from a high rail, to which hooks are attached. Endless fiddling is required to get the lines in the right place, and the pictures level. I hurt my knee recently, and it means that going up and down ladders is not easy at the moment, so I was really glad to be accompanied by Daisy, the current intern from firstsite, whose help was invaluable. This is one way that regional arts organisations can really help artists – just by putting them in touch with people who can assist in practical one-off situations like this. I had a bit of a panic early on because it looked as though I’d brought far too few paintings; but actually an exhibition generally looks better with more space between the works, and it turned out to be just right – phew!

On Thursday I went back for the opening, which wasn’t as well attended as I’d have liked because it turned out the gallery hadn’t sent out personal invitations other than advertising it in their brochure. Moral: be careful where you show, and make sure the gallery does their bit! To be fair, it’s a venue which gets used by a lot of people (so the work will be seen, which is bound to be better than having it stored in the studio) and their commission is low, but I think that in future I’ll be careful to check the details of what a gallery does and doesn’t offer to do.

Actually I think I’m probably just grumpy because I have moved on a long way from most of the work that’s on show in this exhibition, and my concerns and love are now in the body of work I’m currently engaged with.  I’m going to get into the studio now...

# 33 [8 June 2010]

I went to a meeting last night which was organised by someone from firstsite (visual arts organisation). The aim of the meeting was to keep artists up-to-date with their plans for developing their artists’ support programme, and to invite comments and suggestions. We heard about a short-residency series in Hastings some years ago, which sounds wonderful... The artists doing these short residencies were expected to do something that would move their practice on in some way, doing something new and different. I found myself daydreaming about what I might come up with, given a few days in such a space... I had a taste of it in December when I was part of a firstsite project called ’15 artists, 15 days’ and found it really did move my practice on; that was just a single day, so imagine a series of four or five days... What would I do? This week I keep having a mental image of paintings/drawings on huge sheets of translucent paper hanging across a space, so that people move between and round them...

One of the unanticipated side-effects of doing this blog has been that I often read the other artists’ blogs too, some of which are really interesting and thought-provoking. I’ve just been reading Judith Alder’s blog this morning, and I’m reminded of how enriching it can be for me as a painter to connect with the work of artists who work in other media. Maybe one day I’ll even find myself collaborating with another artist, imagine that...

Okay, now I’ll head off to the studio to see what happened yesterday in there with ink and charcoal. It seemed to be working at the point when I left it, but looking at it with fresh eyes could be painful. Or exciting, of course – I must keep hopeful!

# 34 [11 June 2010]

I was invited by the University of the Arts London alumni association to go to my old college, Central St Martin’s, yesterday to make drawings for a project they’re doing called ‘Mapping the Move’. The college will be moving to brand new premises next year, and people have realised that there will be a massive loss involved, namely of the Southampton Row building, which in many ways is quite the loveliest building I know.

So, along with about eight other people I turned up yesterday morning with some drawing things. After a very brief introduction, we were left to go our separate ways within the building. My first visit since I left, I think.  What an experience... I expected to find it interesting, not to be completely overwhelmed, as I was, with great raw gushes of emotion! I don’t even know what it was all about; I think I’ll be musing on this and trying to unpick it all for quite a while.

My time at Central was really mixed. I chose to go there initially because I loved the building, and I wanted to be in the very middle of London. And there was an awareness that my grandfather (who died before I was born) had taught lithography there for a time, so I suppose I felt some kind of sense of familial connection, however tenuous. Oh, and I’d seen one of the tutors on a TV programme about artists, which had impressed me greatly (and in fact he turned out to be probably the only tutor there that I think I ever really got any useful teaching from).

I found myself focusing on small details: stained and cracked corners of beautifully-laid floors, original glass which had gently shifted shape over the decades causing the view of the Sicilian Avenue opposite to meld and shimmer, gracefully curling handles of window fastenings that over the years that had stood many sessions of painting and repainting, the cone-shaped metal pitcher in the etching room covered with layers of dripped straw-hat varnish. And the big, grand statements of architectural splendour: the stone window seats, the vaulted stone ceilings, the elegant windows, the stunning stairwells. I watched students amble around the corridors chatting, just as I had, and mucking about in the computer room. They stood around on landings speaking into their mobile phones and gave every impression of taking the place for granted, just as we had. I think I had felt the building to be a kind of supporting mother, absorbing its children’s expectations and hopes, and it spilled some of them back to me yesterday.

The archive wants to keep all the drawings made. I don’t think much of my little sketches, but I may well work into or from them in some way. As well as drawing, I took a lot of photos on my phone. Why on earth didn’t I take a proper camera - I don’t seem to have a sensible way of getting photos off the phone at the moment, or I’d show you some. I think that sometimes (no, often) a photograph can be a lot better than a drawing, though there’s a lot to be said for going through the process of making a drawing, it really is a unique way of looking and reflecting on what you’re seeing. At one point I became transfixed by a bundle of orange wires streaming through a clumsily knocked soot-black hole on their journey between one room and another, high up in the corner of a hallway. It evoked all sorts of thoughts about the nature of things hidden and exposed, and about changing situations. The wires led to the computer room, which had been the 2^nd year painting studio when I was there.

I felt absolutely drained afterwards.

# 35 [15 June 2010]

One of the hardest things when making art is putting aside all thoughts about pleasing one’s audience. Notions of how I imagine a certain type of viewer might react keep creeping into my consciousness as I’m working. I try quite hard to disregard these thoughts, and keep searching for what it is that I am trying to express.  My paintings need to be coherent, and honest, and direct, otherwise what’s the point? Plus, who is this imagined audience? Is it the people at the High Table of the Art World, the major galleries and the funding bodies and those who influence them; or the smaller galleries who take (or might potentially take) my work; or curators and writers; or my fellow artists; or the people who’ve bought my work in the past; or my family and friends? It’s ridiculous to try to work to please any of these, in no small part because in pleasing one set, you probably automatically alienate another!

I painted in the studio today with a huge sense of relief, because yesterday all my precious studio time was taken up with going to east London to collect work that didn’t get into the Threadneedle exhibition. I have to keep brushing away the questions that bubble up in my mind, the ones that go along the lines of ‘Why didn’t they ‘get’ it?’ People look at my work and they must see something different from what I see, there’s clearly something fundamental that somebody (them or me) doesn’t get. Ah well. There’s lots that I just don’t get. Elizabeth Peyton’s work, for example.

Here’s the painting I was working on. I don’t know how close it is to being finished. Could be almost there; could be that I’ll end up obliterating the whole thing... We’ll see. Today, I like it.

# 36 [1 July 2010]

I’m the ‘Visiting Artist’ this week at a girls’ school in Gloucestershire, partly working with some of the pupils, and partly working alone on a piece on paper, 7 metres long. The pupils are very lucky, because they have had real animals to work from: various dogs, a barn owl, two tarantulas, and a tortoise. The girls are coming up with some great work, and they’re loving the experience.  As far as my own piece went, I was very anxious for the first couple of days that it wasn’t working, and was dull and predictable - but eventually exasperation took over and once I’d made a few drastic changes (including obliterating a figure that I’d spent hours sweating over) and fought with it a lot, it began to turn around. I ended up with landscape in it too – unheard-of for me. I feel like the week has allowed my practice to move on a bit, as I’d hoped it might but had feared it wouldn’t. More residencies please!

# 37 [17 January 2011]

Finally I have taken the plunge to 'go frameless' and it seems to work well in my current show, 'The Vivid Gaze'. The exhibition is actually in a bistro, not a gallery; I've never shown work in this type of venue before, and was a little hesitant when they first asked me, but it's proved a great way of getting the work seen by loads of people. People keep coming up to me and giving feedback about the show, which can be really interesting.

http://www.jardine-bistro.co.uk/

Regular readers will have noticed that I've had a 6-month 'sabbatical' from blogging. Somehow I felt a need to become very quiet and private with regard to my work, and my relationship to the art world (in its wider sense). I had begun to feel a bit disgusted with the aspect of being an artist that involves using words rather than paint, and particularly with anything to do with marketing. But of course some marketing is essential if you want to encourage the flow of work through and out of the studio, whilst earning enough money to keep going... It's a problematic area for me.

And my website, www.emmacameron.com, is ages out of date, because I need to spend a lot of time and probably money on reconfiguring access to it (ever since I got a new laptop there has been a problem, and even the geekiest friends have admitted being stumped about how to solve it, after hours of trying...). I resolve to somehow get it sorted this month though!

# 38 [30 January 2011]

The local visual arts organisation, firstsite - soon to have an amazing new space which they are careful not to call a ‘gallery’ (!) - has set up a Collectors’ Group, who came to visit me a few days ago. I felt quite embarrassed at the state of some aspects of my home, like the horrendously uneven ancient concrete of the driveway, the marks left by logs all over the walls near the wood burner (we’ve just run out of chopped logs to put there) and the patio covered in patches of soapy water from the washing-machine which has struggled to get through the temporarily blocked drain... But of course, being an extremely polite set of people, they refrained from commenting on what to their eyes may have looked a little squalid. Sigh. It’s at times like this that I can see more of the plus sides of having a studio in a ‘proper’ block of artists’ studios.

Anyway, the Collectors’ Group came, and I showed them some work, and took them into the studio, and talked about my work, and they seemed to go off quite content. In fact, they went off to have lunch at Jardine bistro, where I have work on show at the moment, so hopefully they felt that all fitted in well. It’s odd not having feedback though. Perhaps I’ll try and get some, somehow.

I’m funny about talking about my work. Friends tease me because I’m usually deeply reluctant to do it. But sometimes, if I sense a genuinely interested audience, and I’m geared up to talk, and the environment is calm and quiet enough so it’s not a strain to be heard, in the end I find loads to say. But I always want to emphasise that painting is painting, a different language from speech, and words can never be adequate to express what is communicated in a painting. Words can sometimes help as signposts, though, I suppose, to help guide people towards a deeper understanding of what the painting is saying.