I just love having my own studio now. It's nothing grand, but it's all mine. I share the rest of the house with all my family, but my studio is all mine. I must say that the kids and hubby have quickly picked up on this, and respect my space and the time I get to spend there. Here's some of the treasures it holds: There's a big easel which my dad (bless you) collected for me from his old school, along with a quickly diminishing stack of A2 cartridge paper obtained in a similar way. My hubby pout up the shelves which were again ex-school property. The hard concrete floor is a patchwork of our carpet off cuts from over the years, and there are old chairs and benches from my art student days. There's also a fantastic low chair which my auntie gave me recently. It will make a great setting for future life studies, if anyone is mad enough to brave the elements. Old scraps of plywood are now stacked against the wall, primed with gesso and begging to be painted on, and there's a ceramic head which is a self portrait which my mum encouraged me to make.
The walls of the garage are made from some kind of industrial brick, and though they would probably survive a nuclear blast, they're a bugger to drill or nail into, so any time I want to make structural amendments, or even hang the mirror I got from a charity shop three weeks ago, I have to be very nice to my hubby so that he'll spend the required hour finding drill bits and extension leads.......Not to worry!
There's even a sink in there, and lots of electrical points for my homemade light-box (an empty crisp box, with a low wattage clip-lamp inside, and a transparent plastic storage-box lid on top) my tape player, various lamps, and eventually kettle. I only have to pop back into the house when nature calls, or when my get so numb that I can no longer dance round to Sheryl Crowe whilst painting.
Eventually I'll clear the rest of the stuff from the bottom end of the garage to use as a photo-life drawing area. I want to hang a huge rug on the wall, and set up a sofa with more rugs. But for the time being, it's a heavenly haven. And it's all mine.
3 comments:
Are you familiar with Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own"? Woolf invents a sister for Shakespeare, named Judith, and explains that even if Judith and Will both have the same talents and gifts, Judith could not have written plays of the same quality because women are not given the same opportunities or permissions to create art. Woolf states that a woman needs to have money and a room of her own in order to write literature. But I'm sure she would have been the first to admit the same is true of painting.
Sounds worth a read. Opportunities, maybe with our responsibilities in the home, but 'permissions'? I'll need to read it & get back to you.
She's a striking looking woman, isn't she.
I thought of "A Room of One's Own" right away too. Since we are fortunate enough to have supportive spouses (it was not that way for me before Scott), I think the permissions we struggle with are more those we need to give to ourselves. I think women are inherently more likely to feel guilty about time given to art that is taken away from other things -- the children, cleaning the toilets, making dinner, etc. I have an office to write in and a fantastic lapdesk that works well for writing in other parts of the house. The main distraction I frequently have is cyberspace -- but I've learned that if I am writing on the computer, I need to turn off the email and browser applications and then I don't have to worry about intrusions into "my room". Great space! BTW -- still hoping to see more on that New Orleans painting.
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