My Studio

My studio today and what to do when you’re too close to the edge…

Here’s what my studio looks like today:

My Studio

It’s always a bit of a mess, and since I’m ramping up for an exhibition, it’s particularly chaotic. You’ll note my “washing line” along the back wall. This is actually a washing line chord, but I don’t tend to use it for drying paintings, or clothes for that matter. It’s where I put my works-in-progress or works-on-hold or works-that-might-be-finished-but-I’m-not-sure-yet-so-keep-them-somewhere-visible-to-marinade-on-them-for-a-while.

Also on the line currently are some larger pieces with which I’m experimenting to test a new way of mounting my works – as posters on hangers. This came about as a byproduct of how I create my work, as well as a bit of dumbassery. Let me explain.

I like to paint on canvas, and tend to like painting quite large works. Up until a couple of years back, I assumed this meant that I needed to buy pre-made canvases, already on stretchers, and just get whatever was in my brain down on those. This didn’t really work for me for a variety of reasons:

  1. I don’t really plan my work. My ADHD brain gets bored if I work on the same concept for too long, so by the time I get to the point of putting stuff on a canvas my enthusiasm has likely pointed itself at some other shiny thing. So I tend to just get stuck in. This, predictably, leads to a lot of misfires. I’m fine with this, it’s what you might call an occupational hazard. I tend to let these little failed experiments lurk for a bit, before either painting them out and reusing the canvas, or taking them in a new directions. So far so awesome. Except it means that I’ve always got loads of half-finished artworks sitting in corners gathering dust which is a) an expensive way to work and b) leads to the next problem:
  2. I churn out quite a lot of work, and when you combine works-in-progress, finished works, and primordial soup mentioned in point 1, it amounts to quite a lot of fairly large artworks on stretched canvases. Apart from those that I can find space for on my walls, the rest sit in piles in whatever space I can find, where they seem to mysteriously multiply.
  3. As much as I see the value of creating works in uniform dimensions, the reality is that I’m not very good at it, and finding stretched canvases to suit my whims at any point is problematic and often expensive. Related to this point and said expense:
  4. When I get an idea in my head I like to work really quickly and can get seriously twitchy if I don’t have the basic things I need around me RIGHT FECKING NOW!!! Refer to points 2 and 3 for why this is problematic
An artwork depicting a pill blister pack stapled to a wood panel

In my last house I had no studio and relatively little spare “piles of stuff” space, so I needed to find a solution. It occurred to me that it’s actually the stretchers that take up the bulk of the space. Since I usually work in acrylics, a medium that is both flexible, fast-drying and durable, I could in theory just pile them or roll them up if it wasn’t for all this pesky wood. Then, if I wanted to display them or whatever, I could just stretch them, on-demand as it were. So I set about figuring where to buy stretchers, canvas and primer separately (and all the other tools and bits) and figuring out how all this would work. And so I have my solution: I cut out bits of canvas, staple them to bits of wood where I prime them, make may creative juices flow all over them, then unstaple them once they’re dry and deposit them in much more manageable piles in the aforementioned corners. Woo hoo!

Canvasses rolled up and piled in a box

Any way, back to my original thread: the whys and wherefores of canvas paintings on hangers. You see, if you want to work this way, you need to prepare your painting in such a way as to make it suitable for stretching. What this means is that you need to compose your picture in such a way as to leave the bits of it that you want to be visible, visible once you stretch it, and not round the back, callously pierced with staples. The trick is to not paint up to the edge of the canvas. Simple enough you might think, simply mark out the visible portion based on the dimensions of the stretcher you intend to use, and keep the bits of the image you intend to be facing the viewer within these. Well this assumes that you are not the owner of a swiss-cheese, impulsive and slightly vindictive avian-brain! I always start out with good intentions, but often only remember that I needed to think through the stretching problem after having lovingly crafted an artworks for days or weeks, at which point there’s no turning back! This has happened quite a few times, although I will defend myself by pointing out that this is a error that I have not made in quite a while!

But what to do with the gorgeous artworks that received this bird-brained treatment? I can’t stretch them. At best they’ll look odd, at worst they’ll be ruined. So they’ve been hanging around on my washing line, or rolled up in piles for months or even years, until now, when I cooked up a solution to the problem: don’t stretch them, transform them into tasteful and practical posters! This involves cutting thin wooden strips to size and bolting them to the top and bottom of the paintings (I’ve only done the bottoms so far). I think it looks pretty neat, stylish even, and it makes them a bit more practical since they can be rolled up like any normal poster and stored away (presumably because you’ve invested in another one of my artworks and you don’t have space for both!).

The moral of the story? Adversity breed creativity. Also, creativity breeds adversity. But what breed birds? We’ll never know.

Finished by Alex Loveless (2018) - Acrylic on Canvas - 60x80cm

Finished

Finished by Alex Loveless (2018) - Acrylic on Canvas - 60x80cm
Finished by Alex Loveless (2018) – Acrylic on Canvas – 60x80cm

It won’t find it hard to believe that I find it difficult to focus when on conference calls. A random floating piece of dust catching a mote of sunlight is enough to draw me a away from the matter in hand. The ceaseless distraction that is the social web is like a black hole sucking focus to be forever lost among images of kittens and inane chatterings. In reality, I can be distracted by my own thoughts. You can lock me in a featureless, windowless room with load speakers blasting the call at me and I’d still daydream. It’s what I do, how I’m configured. It’s also fair to say that I can easily wonder during in-person meetings, but this is much less of a problem since a) people tend to notice quicker so I’m forced to make more effort, b) what’s going on in the room tends to occupy me – I like to try and read the room, understand the interpersonal dynamics, dissect what’s really happening and c) half the time, everyone else has their nose stuck in their laptop or phone anyway, in which case the etiquette is loosened due to shared defiance of the general order.

Nevertheless, on most occasions, if you’ve been invited to attend, and more so, if I have arranged a conference call, it’s customary to pay attention. To not do so is at best rude and unprofessional, and at worst results in potentially disastrous consequences due to misunderstandings and offense taken should there be someone important on the other end that you are ignoring. That moment when you catch your name being mentioned on the other end of a question, and you’ve been tuned out for 5 minutes, is never a comfortable one. I have strategies to dig myself out of such holes, but I’d rather not need to deploy them. I recognise the need to pay attention, I’m just not very good at it.

So over the years I’ve developed a technique for focusing when on conference calls, that I also use in face-to-face meetings that are especially important to pay attention in: I do something else. It sounds counter intuitive, since “something else” is precisely what gets me into trouble in the first place, but certain types of activity allow me to occupy my fidgeting mind and wondering fingers, while maintaining sufficient focus on the matter in hand. For example, sometimes I put myself on mute and run scales and exercises on my unamplified electric guitar. Fidget spinners really do help for shorter periods. Just pacing is also a short relief. But mainly I doodle. Not in a directed, specific way, I just pick up a pencil and let my hand and subconscious wonder. I have an A3 pad under my keyboard for this very purpose. Sometimes these doodles appear quasi-realistic and/or geometric, sometimes they are haphazard scribbles. Rarely do they resemble anything of this world. Somewhere from deep in my subconscious, odd creatures and bizarre, Escherian landscapes emerge. I don’t try and interpret these, they just are.

I decided to see what would emerge if I unleashed that same odd corner of my cognitive nether-regions upon canvas, which is what you see below. As it emerged over days, my environment and thoughts began to bestow some meaning and it became less “random”, but the marks that appeared continued to be driven by urge rather than conscious intent. The extent to which this is a manifestation of some facet of my subconscious or some Freudian complex I’ll leave to the those psychoanalytical witch-doctors who enjoy such speculation. I know not what it “means” outside a vague sense that there is some statement on evolution, ecosystems, the environment and Man’s influence on this, among the slops and dribbles that adorn the canvas.

I did not know at which point this painting would be finished since I had no sense of what shape the final piece would take. I stopped when I felt that further marks or textures on the canvas would be to the detriment of the painting to that point, and also because of the more practical justification that I had other stuff that I needed/wanted to be getting on with. It is partly for this reason that I named the piece “Finished” as an invitation for the observer to precis this assertion and decide whether it really is. But there is also a metaphor to be eked from that title, the sculpting of which I’ll leave to the Freudians.

Pay to Win by Alex Loveless

Pay to Win

I find myself increasingly concerned for the plight of the younger generations. The older generations, who supposedly should be benefactors, mentors, and protectors of their kids’ and grandkids’ futures are repeatedly selling out their futures in favour of short term self interest, base prejudice and ego. While they frown on the kids as video games supposedly rot their brains, those same kids rebuild the foundations of the future underneath the old guard, to the extent that (as Zuckerberg’s recent appearance in front of congress, and the world, demonstrates) they cannot, even vaguely, comprehend what is happening, so their natural instinct is to brutalise, obstruct, litigate, smear and propaganda-ise it out of existence. Recent history has shown that this will not work yet, in the meantime, the younger generations bear the financial and social brunt of their elder’s continued, and increasingly feverish and seedy hubris and ignorance.

Pay to Win by Alex Loveless
Pay to Win by Alex Loveless

I do not like this

Here’s a painting I made that I do not like. It is, of course, of me, but I only ever meant to use myself as a model. I tried to make it not look like me, but I failed repeatedly and gave up. Perhaps there’s something to be read into that. Pretty much as soon as the figure took shape on the canvas I realised I hated it. I soldiered on with anyway, in the hopes that I could coerce something more interesting, which has worked in the past, but ultimately failed at that too. In the end, I had some paint to use up which I just started chucking on in an attempt to debase the painting, a bit like Johnny Greenwood di with the crunchy guitar bits at the beginning of the chorus of Radiohead’s Creep. They hate that song and similarly I hate this picture. The difference is, this picture is unlikely to make me rich, or result in it’s name being screamed repeatedly from amongst festival crowds. I place it here in the spirit of not trying too hard to make sure everything is perfect and also in the spirit of celebrating failure. I didn’t even bother to take a decent photo of it. I am already my own worst critic, but feel free also to join be in berating this awful painting (presented as an object, not a work of art).

I Do Not Like This by Alex Loveless (2018) - Acrylic on canvas - 18" x 24"
I Do Not Like This by Alex Loveless (2018) – Acrylic on canvas – 18″ x 24″

Self Portrait – Light and Dark

This self portrait was submitted to and rejected by Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year. I’m sort of glad it didn’t make the cut, as being subjected to an intense four hours of painting surrounded by onlookers and TV cameras would, I think, be a little much for my already hyperactive brain. I accompanied the image with a short (and not very erudite) commentary which I’ve included below.

I’d recently got back into making pictures on the advice from my therapist as a great way to help keep my hectic, wondering ADHD brain in check. The 2017 season is the first Portrait Artist of the Year I’ve watched, and forced my family to watch, and my wife ‘dared’ me to make a submission. Since my last self-portrait was painted 20 years ago I had to create one especially. I actually painted two, of which this I felt was the better and the most illustrative of my style and of me as a person. Anyone who knows me knows I come in two flavours 1) dark, brooding, moody, with a love of the macabre, angry music, and all things dark and sinister and 2) passionate, enthusiastic, animated, gregarious, outgoing and optimistic. Some times you get one or the other, some times you get both at once, which is a little scary. With this portrait, which is referenced from a selfie taken on my phone, I wanted to illustrate the dark and the light that characterises me. In addition to this I love painting contract in light and colour and I really enjoyed making this.