Where are you?
I am living in Venice at the moment.
Did you have to leave somewhere? Are you stuck somewhere other than what you consider your “home”?
Besides not being in my permanent home, the peak district in the UK, I am currently staying with a friends who kindly invited me to stay with them before Venice went into lockdown
instead of spending quarantine in my apartment alone.
Who are you with?
I am staying with three friends, wonderfully creative people involved in the arts as curators or artists.
How has quarantine impacted your work? Impacted you? Did your artistic process have to change during this quarantine?
My artistic process had to change due to the limited amount of materials I brought with me. I left my apartment with just my sketchbook, one pencil and my ipad, not expecting the quarantine to last two months. Initially I was just doing preparatory sketches but due to the quarantine being extended, I am taking the opportunity to find ways to loosen up my hand and expression such as blind drawing. Also, I have taken up digital tools to complete paintings left in my studio in the UK.
Quarantine may be a challenging time for artists.. do you feel the pressure of HAVING TO create?
In some ways because of the limited resources, expectations are lowered and the pressure is reduced. As one has to be resourceful there is suddenly a creative freedom. Being an artist is one of my occupations, quarantine is giving me more time to create as i can fit it around my full-time work.
How do you think people will perceive your artwork differently in real life vs. on the screen?
Yes, a photograph does not tell us the size of something, its physical qualities or impact on us when physically in-front of it. My portraits pieces are always life-size as I think it balances the relationship between the viewer and the subject…they are easier to relate to, to bring to life and into one’s own context. On the screen this is lost and the subject is placed at a further distance from the viewer.
What is something positive quarantine has brought to your life?
The quarantine has given me time to slow down and prioritise things I have always been meaning to do. Also I can filter what I see and influences me, and quieten the white noise a bit.
How do you think this will change the relationships between people? Artists? Art and viewer?
Being closed inside, people have become responsible for choosing who they contact and are reminded of how important human interaction is to us. Reflecting upon this, we might prioritise interacting with those in-front of us, not behind the screens. The way we are seeing things are now through a screen, after this we will have a greater awareness and engage more consciously with the art physical properties.
Do you think meeting someone on screen is different than meeting someone in person?
Yes, it is much more intense as you are constantly working to get as many details from what is visible and can hear from the two dimensional screen. In real life it is more relaxed as you share a context that you can both reference to. In online meetings you are living in different contexts, times and rhythms and this all interferes with one meeting another.