Studio 2

First posted: December 2018

There are two magpies strutting about on the lawn as I write this long overdue post; a pair – which signifies joy. I can believe it, too, because just behind them – sitting squat and solid on this cold December morning – is my recently completed art studio.A year ago, this view was very different.

Work begins

The dining room table that I’m sitting at now was doubling as a painting table, and I was working frantically to finish a series of pictures for my New Year Show at Space Station Gallery in Bermondsey. In fact, the entire house was covered in localised projects; framing and mounting here, paper-stretching and paint mixing there. Chaos.

At the time, I remember thinking wistfully of a day when all my art work could be carried out in an actual studio once again; where mess and noise and noxious fumes could be savoured – inhaled in peace and solitude. I wrote in an earlier blog post about the sad but inevitable relinquishing of my long-held studio space at Victor House in Hackney. When I packed up twenty years of accumulated odds and ends, I wondered how long it would be before I could unpack those boxes in a space that I could call my own.

Rup on the roof

Four years was the answer. Not bad, all things considered.

I’ll write more about the project itself in the coming weeks (including some photos of the finished building), but for now these words and a few pictures will have to do. A grand opening is pencilled in for the spring.

I hope you can make it.