I looked with some measure of horrified recognition at this photo in the course notes. In a place I used to live my table looked very much like this. I had a spare room that I used as an art room and I could close the door on it and walk away without first having tidied up. In theory I could have made quite large scale art in there, but I always found myself working in a few square inches amid the chaos of art materials from several pieces of work. Either that, or, more often than not, I would shove a load of stuff into a carrier bag and take it to make art in bed.
Things are quite different now, although I do still make art in bed at times, particularly when I’m unwell and in pain. Frida Khalo painted in bed so I’m following in a good tradition.
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| Frida Kahlo working in bed, 1952. Photo by Juan Guzman. |
Here is my bed.
One of the reasons I don’t work in the same place all the time and leave things out is Martha, pictured here. The other is Zoe.
They both have very curious paws and teeth. They seem to be particularly curious about anything I’ve just been holding. Art and cats don’t mix well.
Sometimes I work here. This is officially called the dining room, although not much dining happens in here. When I’m using lots of media or working on a larger scale, I tend to work here. All my art materials are in easy reach.
The cat issue still applies, so when I stop working I put everything away. Everything has a place so it doesn’t take long.
At other times, like now, I work in here.
This room is a cat-free zone so I can leave things out a bit longer. I often sew here, or work on my iPad. I can’t leave things out indefinitely because people come to see me and they need to sit down. That makes me pick things up and put them away.
I find that tidiness clears my mind and I can think and work better if I’m not surrounded by clutter. It means that I tend to work on a small scale; however, I do need to do this anyway. My focal length is quite short, so I need to be able to hold things I’m working on close to my face. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve poked myself in the nose with a pencil! This means that it’s not so necessary to have a table to work on. At times I do enjoy making something really big, measured in feet rather than inches. For this I put everything on the floor and lie down with it. I can crawl around the paper to get at different parts of it. I like working with soft pastels and mixed media in this way from time to time. It’s very freeing. Most of the time, though, I work from no bigger than A3 to the size of a playing card, but mostly A4. At times I also make larger textile pieces, very intensively stitched, and they can take weeks, or even months, to comp
In this room too, is the shelf where I keep all of my completed sketchbooks, art journals and handmade books. It’s getting quite full!
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