New Studio
It’s been nearly three months since I moved into my new studio and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. Almost as soon as I moved in, I was contacted by the manager of a gallery in Edinburgh to discuss taking part in a joint show in June. They wanted around 15 to 20 large paintings, more than I have ever produced in one series before. I was thrilled of course but also quite terrified. What if I couldn’t do it? It seemed like an enormous task and if I messed it up, I’d be ruining my painting career prospects before they had even begun.
The fear was very real but I realised that I would need a strategy of some sort to cope with the pressure. The one advantage with making art is that it has therapeutic results so I realised that as long as I set to work and started painting, I would remain relatively calm. The panicking happened in the “between painting” moments. And there has been a lot of panicking!
When things go well on a painting day, it’s the best feeling and gives me such a buzz but sometimes nothing seems to work and every brushstroke I make just makes the painting uglier and uglier. Those days are hard to deal with result in me coming home from the studio, agitated and distracted, impatient to get back to the studio to try and fix the mess I had made. There were quite a few days like that!
Where am I going with this? I suppose what I’m trying to say is, there are ups and downs. Good days and bad days. Just like anything else really. I think that in order to do anything meaningful to you, there are going to be challenges, it’s never going to be easy. But this is what I have been wanting to do for such a long time, making my art and having the opportunity to show it to people. I could hide away in my studio for years, just doing my thing and that would give me quite a lot of pleasure but there is a weird drive in me to get my art out in the world, to share it with others, to know that other people like it too. When someone loves a painting that you have made and love, it’s like you belong in the same club, they get it.
