Studio Story

Hanging paintings before walls of my home are quite ready

I wanted to give a bit of context to my art practice and write a quick one liner about where my studio is in relation to my house. This then got me asking, where did this studio start?, as it's seen quite a few changes since I arrived here in lush, green Cornwall in 2021. What followed was a mighty torrent of all the places and spaces I've used as a studio across 23 years from early adulthood to now which becomes a condensed life story from the angle of making paintings.

So here goes. Does my studio story begin in the bedroom of my shared house in Bristol where I was doing a psychology degree? or when I had a dream about a life change and adventured by bus to an art foundation course in Weston -Super -Mare?, Was it in the garage of the Winchester's Friends Quaker meeting house?, or the lounge of a shared house which was also a band practice room with practising band? Was it the Malvern hills where I learned colour mixing from an artist friend painting Plein air or Brighton beach where a stranger commissioned a house full of paintings which enabled me to stop my care work and be a full time artist for the first time? Was it my university cubicle in Cheltenham where I returned as a mature student to study painting and drawing or under the stairs next to the canteen? Was it the bedroom in one shared house, the garage in the next or the house sit? Was it the spare room of the cottage of my dreams that I rented in the Forest of Dean or the barn used for drying hops at the back of my gallery in Herefordshire? Was it the roof top terrace in Bohd gaya India where I painted a whole collection of paintings to be sent back to a gallery in a drainpipe or the abandoned village in the mountains in Italy where I painted on our honeymoon? Was it the back of our mark 1 Ford transit campervan travelling around Portugal, the goat shed we bought in the foothills of the Serra Da Estrella where we had to take tiles off the roof to let the light in? Was it the bell tent, down by the waterfall which was our temporary home whilst we made the goat shed habitable? or the spare room as the goat shed turned into a family home where I'd wear the babies on my back as I painted and worked for 7 years? Does my studio story start when the wildfires ravaged our home in 2017 and took the entirety of our belongings including the materials, all the art work and sketchbooks I'd ever done? or in the rented studio in the nearest village I'd walk to through the carcases of burnt olive groves, where I painted nothing but flowers? does it start in the lounge of my mothers rental, or the spare room of her next one? does it start in the 400 year old derelict farm project we collectively bought with 4 other families back in Cornwall, UK? Does it start in the grade 2 listed house, abandoned for 12 years, trees growing from the inside out, that Mr husband made windows for so I could paint under it's new roof, accessed only by a ladder, where lime dust would fly into the room and settle on oil paintings? Does it start in the barn, where I escaped the lime dust, which for centuries had only been inhabited by cows. Does it start in the yurt, erected on the hardstanding that was laid in the barn, after the poo was dug out or the structure that followed on the second floor as mr husband built and built? Does it start with the new window that was cut into the wooden slats that poured in the Southern sun with a view of fields and gentle, grazing cows? Was it the carpet and the plants, and the shelves and the changing seasons I watch through the window. Was it the settling, the sitting, the unpacking, the processing? The continuous moving of colour through changing scenes. Was it in the joys and the sorrows that make up life's wonderful ongoing painting. Or maybe where it started isn't the question but rather 'what is the studio?'

From all of this I see that there is a studio in me that is not bound to anywhere. It is a source of creativity that flows into wherever I am. I am an empty canvas that can be filled with surprises and I am the home and the heart of my paintings.