Fresh Eyes

When you come back to a piece of work you haven’t finished and then left for a while, you can’t help but look at it with fresh eyes. I started working on this digital portrait of David about six weeks ago, and I’d forgotten about it. But today it all came together quickly. Doing portraits of people – particularly of those you love – is very satisfying.
I finally got the chance to tidy up my workroom too. Technically speaking, I suppose my workroom is a studio because it’s where I make art. But I tend to think of a studio in more of a Jackson Pollack-ish kind of way…lots of huge canvases, paint being flung around with abandon…and all happening in a football-sized warehouse space.
But plenty of artists do work with what they have. Morris Louis painted in his living room; Kathe Kollwitz drew at her kitchen table. At one point in his life, Blake and his wife Catherine lived and worked in just one room. Schwitters comes to mind too. No studio for him! He just turned his entire apartment into an assemblage. Would I work larger if I had a bigger space? I think I would. In my opinion, you can never have too much creative room.