"Inside the Painters Studio" 7th Installment

When you are contemplating your work, where and how do you sit or stand? How often do you clean your studio, and does that affect your work? DUE: MARCH 14T

When I am contemplating my work I sit in this brown chair (for the most part).   I am a big fan of this chair for a few reasons.  I should pause here for a moment to say, I can't believe that I am talking about this old and completely unremarkable chair, but here we go.  I bought this chair from a buddy for 25 dollars about 14 years ago.  It is very comfortable and leans way back.  Actually almost everyone who sits in the chair starts to lean back and does that thing you do when you think you are about to fall backwards where you literally  defy gravity for a moment and sort of kick your legs and go straight up in the air.  I have to reassure anyone wishing to sit that the chair will actually stay on the ground, I mean I have been sitting in this thing for over a decade and I'm no little butterfly.  I only mention this particular quality, because I find it very useful in contemplating my work.  I lean way back in the chair and look at my paintings for a long time.

There is this story of deKooning that he would sit in his chair looking at his painting for an impossibly long period of time and then would suddenly stand up, go to the painting and make a mark or a couple of marks, not much, and come back to his chair to sit and contemplate, (he may have stood).  It went on like this until the painting was complete, I am sure that if this is true, there was plenty of frantic painting in the beginning but at the end there was progress by degrees - by marks.

Beginning work on "Meat Pod #1"

How often do you clean your studio, and does that affect your work?

I don't clean up my studio as much as I should.  I tend to clean up my studio at two main times.  The first is anytime I am about to start a new group of paintings, I will clean my studio as a way to get a feel for the space again, or to just get moving and separated from regular life.  This usually has the effect of really getting me started.  It isn't about cleaning the space, I actually don't need a clean space to paint.  I am not sure that I could have painted in Bacon's studio but pretty close. (Incidentally there is a fantastic book about Bacon's studio titled "7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon's Studio" by Perry Ogden if you are interested to see something shocking.)

"Meat Pod #1" in progress.

The other times that I clean my studio is when I get to the point that all of my brushes are dirty, I can't find anything and every time I move, I knock over a tuna can with a slurry of paint in it and there are bits of t-shirt rags all over the floor.  These are the times that I reluctantly start putting things away and feel like it is a total wast of time.  My wife says I should just throw things away as I go but honestly, I don't remember creating all of that debris.  Stopping my thoughts to clean constantly would be awful. 

"Meat Pod #1"

 
I can't really say that cleaning my studio has an effect on my work at all.  I don't need the space to be a certain way or a certain size or to even have a certain kind of supplies.  I would definitely say, more than anything else, the process of cleaning the studio acts as an activity generating exercise. 

Next week: Do you have assistants? Did you ever work for another artist, and if so, did that have any effect on the way you work? DUE: MARCH 22nd