Studio 3, ArtSpace Portsmouth, 27 Brougham Road, Southsea PO5 4PA
People sometimes ask where I work. The answer is: in rather more places than is strictly necessary.
I have studios in both Portsmouth and Suffolk, each with its own purpose and character. As the British sculptor Henry Moore famously worked from nine studios, I’ve always felt there is no such thing as too many creative spaces.
My principal studio is at ArtSpace Portsmouth, where I have been based for many years. Housed in a converted Victorian Methodist chapel, it is where my larger oil paintings take shape. The studio has evolved alongside my practice. When I first moved in I was balancing teaching with painting and worked across sculpture, printmaking and painting. Today the space is devoted almost entirely to oil painting, with the freedom that retirement has finally afforded me.
No studio is perfect. Mine is decidedly cold in winter but wonderfully cool during the summer, and after many years it feels less like a workplace and more like a second home.
Back in Southsea, a room in the house serves as my drawing, watercolour and printmaking studio, while my library is in a constant struggle between books, pictures and the inevitable accumulation of artistic paraphernalia. One day it will become the beautifully organised framing room I keep promising myself.
During the Covid lockdowns I built what I optimistically call the Garden Studio. It is really a glorified shed that was intended as a sculpture workshop. At present it is home to timber, garden tools, boating equipment, a dismantled potter’s wheel and a great many projects waiting their turn. Its greatest achievement so far is that the roof doesn’t leak.
In Suffolk I am gradually converting the garage of a small bungalow into another painting studio. Progress is measured in visits rather than deadlines, but each trip brings it a little closer to becoming the quiet retreat I imagine it will one day be.
My etching press lives in the front room of our Southsea house. It emerges only a few times each year before the room is returned to domestic order. When we moved in over thirty years ago, our builder assured us the floor was strong enough to support its considerable weight. Thankfully, he was right.
I recently watched an interview with the American painter Neil Jenney, whose New York studio extends to some 11,000 square feet. Mine are considerably smaller, but I’ve learnt that the quality of the work has very little to do with the size of the room in which it is made.
If I could choose my ideal studio, it wouldn’t be in a city at all. It would be a converted Thames sailing barge moored at Pin Mill on the River Orwell in Suffolk. I’d carry my easel onto the deck each morning and paint the changing light over the river. Until that unlikely dream comes true, I’m more than happy to work where I am.
Studio 3, ArtSpace Portsmouth, 27 Brougham Road, Southsea PO5 4PA
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