6 Months In

This is my studio today at lunchtime.

I was sitting back, just thinking about how this place feels like some crazy reward. It’s such a good feeling to have a little time in here even occasionally, knowing that I knackered myself in my other job to pay for this and to be here right now… and now… and now. I guess I won’t ever stop being grateful for this place because I’m always in slight disbelief that I got to come back here still. I feel like I don’t deserve it but I do I guess somehow. I pay, so I paint what I like this time around haha.

Sometimes when I’m not here I fret a lot about the idea of having to give it up again and not being able to afford it alongside London’s extortion of home rent, travel, food etc, but I then come here and experience what it’s like to be inside this space and I know I will keep struggling to keep this studio by the skin of my teeth, even if it means a full-time non-related job and flat-sharing until I’m 80 (oh bugger). This art addiction’s a real bind huh. It eats my money and takes my time and makes me miss out on other things, but I can’t give it up.

Anyway, this studio is growing into something very new before my eyes each time I come here. It’s become a really interesting time for me in my work and I don’t know exactly where it’s going but it’s picking up momentum so it’s going somewhere. I’m just really enjoying painting these days, it has to be said.

This is something I was working on after my night shifts. I really enjoyed painting this and smiled to myself a lot whilst doing it, mainly because of the lively personality of the girl who it is of. I liked making the hair bold and kind of weird, like a flat colour field painting, that jars with the modelling of her skin and clothes.
Here you go.

Hoxton Gold

Oil on Board. 27cm x 27cm. 2014

Creepers

Oil on Board. 27cm x 27cm. 2014