How long have you been in this studio?
We’ve been here 30 years. When we first came, it was an engineering workshop and nobody actually lived here. What is now the house downstairs was just a space to keep carts, it was like something out of the Edwardian period.
This is a desirable bit of London. Was it when you moved?
No, about five years prior to me coming, they were going to demolish the whole area as slum clearance. You can’t imagine it. People got together and got it changed to a conservation area. Clapham at the time was completely dead. Then there was a stage when everybody else had moved out and it was just me and it was just derelict really.
What initially appealed about the space?
Well, when I’d left the Royal College of Art as a student, I’d worked in a squat on Wandsworth Road and then in a factory. It got closed and we got kicked out. I had to find somewhere, and I looked all over London. It had snowed when I walked down the street here and I could see there were no footsteps in the snow on the steps up to the studio. I thought maybe they weren’t using it.
That’s good detective work!
It was. The thing I like about the studio is that what I paint is about the passage of time, which sounds a bit grand, but I’m quite interested in how you paint an atmosphere, what you can’t actually see. It’s not ghosts, but that sense that something has been there, and it has changed.
This story is from the November 2019 edition of Artists & Illustrators.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November 2019 edition of Artists & Illustrators.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Still life IN 3 HOURS
Former BP Portrait Award runner-up FELICIA FORTE guides you through a simple, structured approach to painting alla prima that tackles dark, average and light colours in turn
Movement in composition
Through an analysis of three masterworks, landscape painter and noted author MITCHELL ALBALA shows how you can animate landscape composition with movement
Shane Berkery
The Irish-Japanese artist talks to REBECCA BRADBURY about the innovative concepts and original colour combinations he brings to his figurative oil paintings from his Dublin garden studio
The Working Artist
Something old, something new... Our columnist LAURA BOSWELL has expert advice for balancing fresh ideas with completing half-finished work
Washes AND GLAZES
Art Academy’s ROB PEPPER introduces an in-depth guide to incorporating various techniques into your next masterpiece. Artwork by STAN MILLER, CHRIS ROBINSON and MICHELE ILLING
Hands
LAURA SMITH continues her new four-part series, which encourages you to draw elements of old master paintings, and this month’s focus is on capturing hands
Vincent van Gogh
To celebrate The Courtauld’s forthcoming landmark display of the troubled Dutch master’s self-portraits, STEVE PILL looks at the stories behind 10 of the most dramatic works on display
BRING THE drama
Join international watercolour maestro ALVARO CASTAGNET in London’s West End to paint a dramatic street scene
Serena Rowe
The Scottish painter tells STEVE PILL why time is precious, why emotional responses to colour are useful, and how she finds focus every day with the help of her studio wall
Bill Jacklin
Chatting over Zoom as he recovers from appendicitis, the Royal Academician tells STEVE PILL about classic scrapes in New York and his recent experiments with illustration
