Corner of the Studio Print

‘The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.’ Chuck Close There is no doubt that having an area or a room or even part of a warehouse (recommended for that Bohemian state of mind) dedicated as a personal studio is a cherished space for most artists. Having this space/area for your studio gives you the luxury of not having to put everything away, but just leave things out as you flit from one painting or drawing to the next, and then back again as what you just did to or saw in the drawing should work well in that painting as well. Chuck, (see quote above) is absolutely right. I have found that it’s all about hard work. Just get started and fly into it and things start to happen. Don’t get precious with anything, just throw it on and wipe off what you don’t like, and keep the process going iteratively. Now, there is a caveat to all of this, which I found out early in my career. Before you throw yourself headlong into a new piece, it’s advisable to have done a few things first. To start with, I had to learn some skills, ie take tuition, read reference books, study the work of experienced artists etc. I still do these things, and don’t expect that I will ever cease to continue to learn. But you still have to get started rather than wait for things to happen, so it’s kinda a chicken and egg sort of thing. As my painting career progressed, I realised that if I wanted to get in ‘the zone’ as they say, where everything practical about painting goes into a sublime auto-pilot, and the painter is consumed by artistic experience surely dictates that I must be able do it all without having to think about it, which in itself means that I have had to put in the hours to bring my skillset up to scratch as well as I could. It also meant finding a suitable ‘space’ or studio to work away from the interruptions of the world at large. Over the years I have been fortunate to have had many art spaces, both personal and shared. All, for the most part were great fun. Sometimes it helps to be part of a group, and other times it’s better to be by yourself. I can be just as happy out in the countryside painting old farmhouses by myself, or inside in a room with other artists working from a life model with Bach playing gently in the background. This was the environment back at the Julian Ashton Art School down at The Rocks in old Sydney. A time I enjoyed immensely, as were the three years I spent at the University of NSW College of Fine Arts. Both incredibly different institutions, but equally top notch in what they offered, and it was up to me to do the do the hard work and ‘own’ the problem of making me a better artist. What I find most important in a studio space is that there are no distractions or interruptions to the important business of making art. Therefore, the studio is as much a ‘head space’ as a physical location. This little painting started as an abstraction, and doesn’t really represent my current studio in France, but it does remind me of a few I had in Sydney.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:10 W x 8 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:15.25 W x 13.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.