Studio Notes no. 130

Still life painting intro & a few small stories

photo: recent sketchbook pages

Hello Everyone

I hope you have had a good week and are keeping well. Weather update: continuing mild with a chance of more sunshine. I think we are having the May sun we might have hoped for, here in the south of England. 

This week, a brief introduction into my world of still life painting. Also a few shop notes. And of course a few small stories.

Still Life Painting - an intro, of sorts

photo: a recent still life painting (this one will be in my shop later today - see shop news)

There is still life exhibition I want to go and see, currently on at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. I am going to try and get there soon. But before I go, I thought I would like to write a few notes on my own small history of still life painting. These notes are of course personal ideas and I am sure you may have your own experiences and ways-in. I would be interested to hear about these in the comments, if you wish to share.

Like many children, my introduction to still life painting was at school through art lessons. At primary school I don’t think the phrase: ‘still life’ was ever a thing to me. My art experience was more 3D: papier mache puppets and large swathes of tissue paper flower displays.

photo: a still life work from 2014 - yes a decade ago. I like the space and very simple palette - the freedom of it all and would like to find something of that again

I remember getting especially encouraging praise for a painting in watercolour of an alien tapping at the bathroom window - I must have been about nine when I painted that; my teacher, dear Mrs Buxton, said I had some imaginative promise in my school report. Then secondary school happened and we girls (I went to a girls’ comprehensive school in West London) all got to stare at a well-walked boot for a few hours. Urgh, do we have to. Then we got to screen print a roller boot for about half a term and my mind turned off art. I was nervous of my male art teacher who was just a little bit of a creep. It was only later on, when we had our O’level mock exams (yes I am that old) that I remember painting a jar of wild flowers and enjoying it. 

Beyond that I have had no ‘formal teaching’. But looking and studying the work of other artists is something I have done for many years before and since becoming a full-time artist. I have always enjoyed visiting exhibitions, galleries, borrowing books from the library - and still life painting was also something we looked at as an English Literature undergrad. We looked at it for the allegorical aspects, to do with the romantic period, before and after. We may have gone to a gallery to look at paintings, but my memories of that time are blurred for various reasons…

photo: a painting in mixed media 2017 - the loose, painterly attempt at putting objects together but somehow they are living their own lives:)

As a poet, I come to still life painting knowing it can be quite loaded with meaning. I prefer not to focus on the meaning of objects, allegorical or otherwise - though I know it is all there. It would be arch of me to decide otherwise. Instead my focus is more on the objects as opportunities to explore colour, shape, texture and relationships. I often have to stop myself from getting agonised about details and remind myself that an object in a painting is a painted object, not itself. The paint must rule. I don’t think I can explore abstract ideas particularly well on the small scale that I work within, but I try to anyway. I do feel I want to work a little larger to really challenge myself - and will do some of that in the future.

There are still life subjects that particularly interest me and these are much to do with my day to day life. I often include thread reels, buttons, and so on - things that hint at my own interest in textiles/craft but also have a domestic resonance with others. I am a keen collector of ceramics, so often look to my own small hoard of jugs, bowls, cups etc. for shapes and space-takers. I like the idea of inanimate objects that have volume and a certain life of their own. I also like to include quirky motifs such as birds - almost as if they are not drawn on the object but have found a home upon its surface. How I situate a still life - whether on a table, a window sill etc makes a big difference to the overall story - but that discussion is for another time. 

photo: a still life work from 2018 - Mondrian got the better of me there - I still love his work.

I realise, through writing this, there is a great deal more to say - but these are just a few notes and I will return to the topic.

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Shop News

I will be updating my shop today, Sunday 19th May at 7pm UK time. There will be still life paintings and tiny portraits.

photo: a new still life painting - for my shop update

Then my next update will be Wednesday 22nd May at 8pm UK time - another small group of dolls. Thank you for all the interest in these and I hope my characters continue to make you smile!

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Sketchbook Weekend (June 1st and 2nd)

Just a quick note - if you emailed me to participate you should have heard back from me with an email or two. I have now set up a Flickr group for our online base, for sharing photos and discussion. Please make sure you have sent your Flickr details to me via email so that I can invite you to the private group and you can participate - thank you.

If you missed out on expressing an interest in participating (or were perhaps not sure) - a couple of people have had to drop out - so please email me asap ccullis at gmail dot com - stating where you are, a little about yourself - and you will need a Flickr account (you can sign up for free) Thank you!

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A few small stories

(note to new readers: here I write stories based on my day-to-day experiences - think of them as auto-fiction, if you like. Sometimes I give the pieces titles, some times not.)

Just a photograph

At my sister’s house, she shows me a box of old photographs recently recovered from the loft. The kind of photographs we took before digital cameras and phones: silly photos of school friends, washed-out Kew Gardens and strangely blurred peacocks.

There are too many dead relatives. Some of these may be upsetting, my sister says. But I can only smile at the lovely photo of her with our Granny. So many of our family are no longer with us now. I often feel it is really just my sister and I who are left - but then we have our children. Life goes on. I talk to my niece about her own thriving art business, and how exceptionally well she is doing. My advice about pricing art feels clumsily put, but I hope it is some help to her. 

A box of photographs and so many tangled emotions. I take home a photo of myself, knowing my adult children will not be able to guess how old I was (both their guesses are much older than I was). I was just seventeen and thought my life had gone terribly wrong. How little did I know then, how much more do I have to learn, and share.

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Amy Winehouse

There are moments of the day when I need to leave my own ruminations and just look out at the world. Often this means looking down from the attic windows at the people and parked cars, but I never seem to choose a dull moment. Today I look down to see a middle aged couple, walking toward parked cars and he is carrying a framed picture. He stops and turns, holds the picture and poses with it whilst the woman takes his photo. Even from up here I can tell the picture is of Amy Winehouse, a drawing not a photograph, and even from here I can tell he loves this portrait. I will not judge the merit of the framed artwork, all I can tell you is this man is sincere and this moment of having his photo taken means a lot. Why they have decided to take a photo of him holding the framed artwork in a busy place with parked cars as a backdrop I do not know. But I am grateful to them for this moment.

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Secret Garden

My friend tells me she is visiting a secret garden very local to me and would I like to pop in and see her there? She is hosting an art group event and it is fine for me to appear at the end of the session, and I know where she means, though I have never seen the door to the garden unlocked. Yes please I would like to see inside the garden. I have seen glimpses of the place as I have walked along a parallel path; I have spied at the well-tended maze, vegetable plots and flowers.

As I step inside beyond the gate I feel the positive energy: it hits me as a colourful wave of joy. Children have been playing and working here, I can tell, though they are not here now. There are sculptures and winding paths leading the eye into quiet, reflective green caves. My friend welcomes me to take a look around and I soon spot another friend with her child sitting by the pond. We talk and delight in the peaceful space. This is just a brief visit and I know I could spend days and days here, if I could.  Here is quiet love in every wild and well tended bit of green. I wish we could all have such places to visit.

photo: sketchbook pages from 2022 - I am really looking forward to spending extra time with my sketchbooks during the sketchbook weekend

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