Back at the Kitchen Table
“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” Gaston Bachellard
There is party anticipation in the air, or more accurately P.M.T. party-music-tension. My live-in Technical Advisor is ensconced in his room and having trouble with his mixing. I am painting at the kitchen table, wet-in-wet sploppy, dribbly watercolours, jewel bright and luscious. I have stolen this small piece of time, snatched this moment. I should be hollowing out fifty potatoes, micro-cleaning the toilet and freshening the dog. But I’m not. I am in a blissful reverie, a liquid meditation that pours onto small sheets of watercolour paper. The doorbell, rings daughter and granddaughter appear and charge the air with chatter, seasonal segued music wafts down the corridor, “Not Jonah Louis” we shout in unison. The unattended dog wees lengthily onto the washed floor.
The studio is less important than other things, like the burning desire to paint. If you don’t have this disease, you can’t catch it from a nice studio.” Warren Chiswell
I make coffee and Neskquick, we sit sipping and verbally unpack minor crises. The girls watch the brush moving and the paint spreading outwards in feathery lovliness: Life Blood lll. The pace of the chat slows and watching the process of Life Blood 1V daughter says “Hmmmm…tax discs, nice.
“My studio has a personality of its own. It can be a monstrous clutter from one end to the other or, at times, the very model of simplicity”. Harley Brown
The kitchen table has been nourished over the years with spilt food and various art materials that have leached into its old bones. Like the dog it is elderly and infirm but sentimental attachment prevents us from the relevant terminating options.
“Once in a while I don’t know why the ‘ease’ in easel seems a lie. For there are times when I find more ease holding the canvas on my knees.” John Engle
I have a perfectly good studio and I do use it for special large or particularly messy projects but often end up migrating back to the kitchen, the hub, where life flows along with all its attendant irritants, distractions and humannesses. My work needs this life force to run through it, around it and occasionally to overwhelm it even, but is as necessary as (life) blood.
“I thought the only way you can get into things is… through the basement… exactly where my studio was … I could creep upstairs and snatch at things, and bring them down with me… where I could munch away at them.” Paula Rego
The studio is for reflection, retreat and sanctuary but if I was there all the time I would dry up and my mind would become entirely impractical and float away on over- intellectualised ideas.
“A studio is a good place to smoke your pipe.” Joaquin Sorolla
Of course the studio is a mental space (in both senses!) and can be wherever I am. Since I started painting again all this seems so obvious. My blog did that.
“I am braving the cold again and walking the 100 yards to my studio, where I will turn on the heating and head straight to the nearest cafe…” Brian Crawford Young
A very happy Christmas to you and yours.
Next-watercolour portraits, yes really.
