I managed to meet up
with Matt for lunch inspite of being very busy in the studio with preparatory
drawings for my Titiian inspired Callisto painting. We revisited our old haunt
the Whaling museum where Hulls famous polar bear has re –emerged after being
renovated. My interest in the Whaling museum and museum quarter corresponds
with my interest in Hull and its history. This is my bag as they say and also
Matts. I recently visited a derelict area of Hull down by St. Andrews quay
which used to house a large part of Hulls fishing industry. Now abandoned it is
both sad and fascinating to see how nature is slowly reclaiming the whole area
as its buildings crumble and its docks dry up. I instantly recognised it as a
suitable backdrop for the aforementioned Callisto painting. The original Titian
Callisto painting concerns the expulsion of the pregnant nymph Callisto from
the woodland court of the goddess Diana and subsequent transformation into a
bear and eventually a constellation.
You may well wonder how this relates to the studio space and
my fellow artists. When I work I often find that I am taking on board issues of
those colleagues in the studio. We are individually all going through some
difficult issues at the moment which I don’t feel are perhaps appropriate to
divulge here but what I will say is that they very much concern the three
female members of the studio. Looking at the drawing I am doing I hope that it
will be noticed that the image I have chosen is very much about women. I don’t
always concern myself with feminist issues but at the moment they are at the
forefront of my thinking. We three female artists in the studio have bonded over
the last year and although our work is very different, at the moment I sense a
deep seated sadness creeping into all our work.
Somehow both Callisto’s expulsion and the deserted area by
the Humber have come together in my head. I am also concerning myself with the imported
plants, orchids for instance which ships like Captain Bligh’s Bounty (built in
Hull) were commissioned to find. All this has meant quite a bit of research
including a visit to London to the Garden Museum where Captain Bligh is buried.
The secret nature of these plants found in difficult and hard to reach places
reminds me so much of how often our work relates to our own hidden
preoccupations. At the moment there are a lot of these in the studio I feel but
by sharing them we inspire one another.
This is what sharing a studio is about not just physically
but emotionally. If you want to follow my trail of thinking you will find more
of it on my personal blog which is linked to this one.
