In the studio – creating one’s own residency …

From Pierre Soulages (see my previous blog post) to Henri Fantin-Latour there has been a lot of looking at light.  I first came across the work of Fantin-Latour through one of my ANU supervisors – thanks Ruth. It was the contrasting textures in his still life works that first drew me in but having stumbled into one of his little works Chaise à la Fenêtre, 1861 in the Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse, http://www.fondation-bemberg.fr/uk/visite/detail.asp?ID=40 it was the intimacy and light within this work that has held me close.  I love the light through the doorway and beamed off the wall along with the thick rich texture of the layered paint.  With this one work and the body of work by Soulages, I have been inspired just to paint what is in front of me, here in France, in the studio, and the street – to share some light within the everyday, and the wonder of light right here right now … and so here I share with you some images of a few of my works of this studio in which I am working with other potters and painters …, I’m still very much working on capturing light, but these works do show you a little of the studio that I feel so privileged and so content to be painting in. It is an amazing thing to be part of a formal artist residency program (which I am really looking forward to for later this year at CAMAC in Marnay-sur-Seine, near Paris).  But also amazing is to just trust that through working independently on this journey in the south of France, that I would be able to find a great place to paint and become part of, to learn in and to share – to create an independent residency of my own in a local community … thank you Louis Paul, Christiane, Francoise, Christine and all at AMIS des Arts Albi who have welcomed me so warmly.