WRECK THIS FEAR
For her birthday some months back my daughter was given a book called ‘Wreck this Journal’ by one of her school friends. She didn’t seem all that interested and I never even got a chance to look at it until, together with another friend, she stumbled across it today. It’s a book with mainly...
SARGENT STEVENSON
John Singer Sargent was no revolutionary artist but his capacity for effortless representation is pretty much beyond discussion. Being a bit of a Sargent fan has been one of my best kept secrets since seeing the Tate Gallery exhibition in the 1990′s – It’s hard to imagine London before the Tate Modern now!. The thing...
WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
I’m beginning a new project inspired by The Ebb Tide, a short novel that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote together with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in his late years. Yesterday I received a bunch of books I had ordered for my research including a biography of Stevenson by Claire Harman. As you do with biographical books...
STRANGE ART FOR A STRANGE PLACE
It’s been quite a few weeks since I opened my installation in Majorca and I can now look back at it with some perspective: it’s got to be the strangest project I’ve ever done. I certainly didn’t set out to do anything weird but you don’t get to do a project for an olive oil...
WORKING WITH THAT ‘EL GRECO’ GUY
I’ve used golden paint before and have been wanting to use it again for some time, but the real novelty for me has been working around previous paintings. I’ve dealt with music, literature and films in my projects, but painting about other people’s paintings just never seemed right to me, like the work’s...
THE SIMPLE SEA
I was rummaging through endless files on my computer this morning, looking for some images I need and can’t find and came across an image I don’t need but haven’t looked at for years. That of a sculpture called Mar (Sea) that I made as a student, must have been 1997. I look...
WISH YOU WERE HERE
I would spend hours looking through the faded biscuit tin full of family photographs that was kept in the bottom draw of an old writing desk in all the houses I lived in as a child. I clearly remember the feel of those rainy days I spent staring through black and white pictures...
THE TRIANGULAR FIELD
A man raises his arm as he walks in the direction of a horse that is peacefully grazing close to a wall. Balthus has decided that I only see this wall from above. The man is obviously shouting at the animal – a lacerating thought in the tranquility of this idyllic pre-industrial...
HENDRIX’S LAST BASEMENT
Maybe Hendrix died in a basement, I don’t know. This basement is covered in vomit – Isn’t that what the paint splashes on the floor are? – as a reminder of the cause of his death and a warning of what could happen to any of us if we chose his lifestyle. The...
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
A Studio With a View is a year old today! I’ve never been very good with birthday parties, save Harold Pinter’s extraordinary play and Nick Cave’s gothic rock band. I’ve had an excellent time writing about art and books and music and other things I like to waste my time with, and would...
NEXT STOP MIAMI!
In 1972 Olivier Messiaen travelled around the American West in search for inspiration for Des canyons aux étoiles, the composition he was working on to a commission to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States Declaration of Independence. Last year I began working on a painting and sculpture project inspired by Messiaen’s music...
ARTIST QUOTE: LUC TUYMANS
I think every artist knows what Tuymans is talking about in this quote; that feeling of unease when you have an idea for a piece and are desperate to see it take shape and nervous as to wether it will look anything like the image in your head. Also the pleasure, the pleasure of seeing...
All schools should be art schools.
