Carol Peace

Me and Thee

2011-09-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

text for my latest show starting 1st October
Click for Online Catalogue

An exhibition of Drawings in Colour and Sculpture by Carol Peace

This new body of work has not only been created through clay but also through oil paint, always with an undercurrent of drawing. The oil paint is like the clay, it is slippery, moveable, the image is there and then it’s gone. It’s easy to pile on, scrape off, smudge, and draw in to. I seem to be sculpting like a painter and making drawings in colour.

For my degree thesis I looked at Rodin’s work and the theory of representing movement. I realise now, some 20 years later, that I had asked the wrong question, it’s not about representing or ‘capturing’ movement, it’s about trying to respond to it in an intuitive way. A new piece called Attempting Sirsasana is like a drawing of movement, rough lines and plains form quickly, areas are left blurred, only the essence is there.

The new pieces Him, Her and Them are raw because life is raw. Broken, cracked in places, deep scars run over the work but the deep ruts and scars reveal the form; reveal the life, the frailties and the power. I try to make the marks strong like using charcoal; there are areas of focus and areas that fade.

In the drawings in colour, the subject matter changes from the life room to the still life but in changing the objects I see more clearly my interests. When I draw cherries they are in love, in a painting of tomatoes their shadows nearly touch. Peaches rest their soft flesh on one another for support, which gives over time. Bright happy lemons jostle with blue shadows. A lone tomato is still attached to its family tree, they are not present and yet always there. In something ordinary there is often sadness and a beauty.

Relationships and our interaction with other people dominate us and in turn form the basis for much of my recent work. The extra ordinariness and magnitude of the simplicity of the touch of a partner, the closeness of love, it’s basic.

The work is about everyday life, in its minutia, the sheer fantasticness of it all. It’s about the flash of a look, a small gesture, the pressure of a hand in yours, of skin resting on skin. It’s about the rawness and confusion of being alive, the beauty and the complications of it, the freedom, exhilaration and the insecurities. It’s about death and about life, the fear and the joy.

This is not to say that all this is apparent in a piece of bronze or a painting of two peaches but it is what I am aiming for and it makes me go to the studio.

Carol Peace
September 2011

Keeping paintings

2011-09-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

Getting paintings ready for my show with Fairfax at the end of the month and each image that comes up for framing I don’t want to let go of. Its either the photo does not capture the colour or the pallet I want to save to use for another time. I need the real thing not an on screen replica. Its like they are part of something not yet done and selling them would break it up before it’s come to anything. I have had them for ages now and never let anyone buy them, I need to give myself some time to use these sketches in colour for bigger paintings and then may let them go. But for now this pallet, this reaction to life, in front of life is not the painting, it only informs the future one and for now will not go in the show.

Mother and Child

2011-06-21T01:36:00.000-07:00

Finally finished this piece before I went away to France, the head used to look up
http://carolpeace.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html

I think within a lot of my work I keep returning to an overall feeling. The championing of the ordinary. The extra ordinariness and magnitude of simplicity. The touch of a partner, the closeness of love. Basic.
I remember many years ago being really irritated when one of the royals or some celebratory had a baby and it was made into such a big deal. My friends had just had a premature child and had terrible difficulties but she was alive.....that was a huge deal.

Him

2011-04-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

Her

2011-04-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Them

2011-04-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Them

2011-02-28T02:02:00.000-08:00

Three new block people for Nick Woolff, these will be going to his American art fairs this year.

This last piece 'Man with mouth open' I called 'Shouting not Singing' after the poem 'Not Waving but Drowning' by Stevie Smith. In the end it remains the descriptive title as sometimes I think its best to let the viewer make up their own minds, it will be their sculture after all.

If you follow the link below you can listen to her talking, she has the most amazing voice and what she says resonates strongly with me and my work

"They are written from the experiences of my own life, its pressures and fancies, and they are
written to give ease and relief to me: while they are being written I’m afraid nobody
else comes into it at all. I want to get something out that is working away at me. I
think pressure is the operative word here: the pressure of daily life; the pressure of
having to earn one’s own living, possibly at work that is not very congenial; the
pressure of one’s relations with other people; the pressure of all the things one hears
about or reads about in philosophy, history and religion for instance, and agrees with
or does not agree with; the pressure of despair. And the pressure too of pleasures that
take one’s breath away – colours, animals tearing about, birds fighting each other to
get the best bit of bacon rind. And the funniness of things too…"

Stevie Smith

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7089

Never alone again

2011-01-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

Working title - Never alone again

I have worked on this piece since this post, the mothers head now looks down, more in thought than at something, someone. I loved it like this but somehow it seemed too much.

The working title, is named after someone close to me, her overriding feelings about bringing her baby home from the hospital, she was at last relieved that she would never again feel alone.

Three New Block People

2011-01-26T10:50:00.000-08:00

still on the DS

Hoody

2011-01-21T00:39:00.000-08:00

Heart Beat

I have never known the touch of my own child
but I have heard a heartbeat.
I will not hold the fragile yet feisty promise of youth.

My heartbeat shall not be reformed
and shall not be heard through tiny new ears.
My mummer of voice will
never be heard.

Acrobats - Plain Girl

2010-12-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

These are based on drawings from Circomedia, we held a few circus drawing events there with the Bristol Drawing School. In the first I was trying to make a sculpture literally from one of the drawings. It is a relief and will be cast in bronze before too long. The others, also to be cast in bronze, are free standing.

Trapeze
It is a drawing of a swing, not a real swing, lines are representational rather than functional, gestural rather than accurate.

Plain Girl

You can be plain and still be a plane.

Even the plainest people can be acrobats inside, these pieces are about them/us.

Plain: ordinary, simple, or unostentatious

Plane: to fly without moving wings or using engines, to glide or soar

Breaking from the Circle?

Having made our lives so complicated, wanting freedom is like the new religion. Freedom is what we have but maybe don't understand. The land of the free and yet we tire ourselves with other things not seeing it, depressed by material desire, getting more, wanting more, forming a circle, getting more, wanting more etc etc

Flowers

2010-10-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

Tuesday afternoon I organize the untutored life painting and drawing class, I did the BDS bookkeeping instead of painting. I teach Tuesday evening, I sort out the models and general BDS stuff through the week while Graham gets the last people paid up and on to the course for the weekend. I run the untutored class Wednesday evening, have a full on drawing school day with G Thursday then teach the evening class again as the tutor has had to cancel this week. Clear up after the class Thursday evening and get the school ready for the portrait with oils course, leave at 10ish ...... it's all ready, beautiful, waiting in suspense for 14 eager students. Get home to message to say the tutor has horrific ear infection and cannot come tomorrow. Have small bottle of beer and some cheese biscuits and sit and look at prices of the units at paintworks, wonder if we could make back some of the money we have put in if we sell now. Go to bed.

Wake up. Call all the students and let them down.

Go for walk with friends at 9am in ashton court somewhat cheered up and although supposed to be doing my accounts today go home again and put up shelf in cupboard. Mope about a bit after initial flurry, feel the cold I have been battling all week may have taken hold. Look up our holiday, my painting trip, for next year and get lost in dreaming of France. Supposed to be going to private view but can hardly be bothered to cook let alone talk to anyone, Graham and I scrabble something together to eat and have evening off.

Saturday, wake up stressed again, BDS seems to have taken over my identity and need to regain some of my own ground. Discuss putting up boundaries, taking on less to do with the school but at present there are just no solutions. Go to work in a bit of a mood, as I have to work at the weekend when I am feeling tired and ill. The sun is shining and we should be walking with Molly.

Drive to work thinking about France and painting and what I would like to be doing today instead. Drive past a flower shop. Swing left and stop the van. Walk back in the morning sun to the shop. It’s a posh flower shop, one I think B would like. Plenty of English flowers, not millions of flowers but distinctive, sophisticated and interesting flowers. Colours of purple, lime green, reds, pinks, whites backed with foliage of grey greens and light purple tints.

A lovely girl tries to help, I explain I am choosing some to draw and may be ages. We discuss colour and I pick out ones that are sculptural, easy to draw, nothing too complicated or with too many petals. She offers to wrap them in a move and brown paper, I don’t need them wrapped but I take the paper anyway as its such a lovely colour. I don’t even go into my space, just work amongst the forest of easels, I clear a small space of wall and feel incredibly excited, for today it’s my choice. The jobs can stay next door, sometimes it’s a need rather than a want.

Start drawing. Realize a few things quite quickly
- Flowers are incredibly sexy
- If you make a drawing of a person sexy then it’s just cheep, sluttish. Flowers are outrageous.
- I need to invest in myself
- I can not take anything else on to do with BDS
- I have to be strong to improve myself in my own way, find my own direction. Even if it narrows my chances
- I have to give myself the time to explore to reap the benefits in the future, not to work to full fill orders but to work to make work
- Instead of offering the space for residencies to other artists next summer I should take the time myself, give some back to myself
- I keep getting confused between colour and form
- I know nothing about flowers
- Flowers are really tricky to draw

So I struggle away the day in a thoroughly enjoyable way, take molly out at lunchtime, have a bacon sandwich as if I am hung over but I drank nothing last night, incredibly tired and disorientated. I go to Deb’s for the West Bristol Arts Trail to drop of some leaflets that we should have done last night. Its nice to see people but I talk, not making much sense, as if discussing plans not yet finalized. I tell an artist there that he needs to give himself more time to work, a month at least to push the paintings. I buy one as if to reiterate my comments, I think I was speaking to myself.

To the top of Bristol and a walk with G in the strong, just before dusk sun. We see the last rays peak below black clouds onto flat downs, molly plays with her orange ball.

Cambridge Arms. 2 pints of Pride. I about flowers and in doing so realise the ones I have been drawing today are like my Vessel sculptures and it’s as if I have gone full circle. It makes sense why I am attracted to flowers. It would be fine if it didn’t but I like it that it does.

Graphite on paper, one
Roughly 42cms high x 59cms wide

Graphite on paper, two
Roughly 59cms high x 42 cms wide

'Coming from two places'
Oil on Primed Paper
65cms high x 50cms wide

re working life drawings

2010-10-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

I still sometimes think I could improve drawings, they could be slightly more this and that, I try to work with drawings after leaving the life room but often it seems 'put on'. It seems that honest instant interpretation of form and light and the energy of the translation goes as soon as the model moves, to recreate that later is always going to seem faked.  I am still perplexed how people painted with such life, they couldn't have had lions in the studio but there they are in paintings as fresh and as alive as if they were painted form observation. I have always been an interpreter of life, copied life if you like, I can sculpt from my imagination and memory but drawing and painting seems different, I need to have life there to paint life.  But I will keep trying! I will find my lion!

Why the Figure

2010-05-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Why do I draw the figure?

It's not about the particular
It's about the energy of being alive.

http://www.carolpeace.com/gallery.asp?tc=13&mc=38&sc=57

Colour seeps in

2010-05-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

Day 3 Lido

Has the lido brought a sense of colour back, or is it sitting back, taking time. When I left the first day I felt like I had done a yoga class, my limbs were loose and I walked tall …..but I had just sat and drawn.
Water has always been an attraction. Mummy said I used to just run towards the deep water and jump in, it would frighten her as it was before I could swim. I had no fear.

Today the lido residency seems to make sense. Swimming under the water without goggles the flickers of green become blurred, I recognize the color and it is all around me. Yes its beautiful, its sunny I guess you would find a way to make it make sense. But I also look forward to when the water is dark, out of the sunlight. I look forward to my year of work, but working in a different way with a different attitude. Open to life, letting life in instead of the depressive task master of the past few years.

No drawing today as have to get an exhibition ready. 20 lengths in the green blue shimmers of a pool drenched in sun and a bit of writing…..

I have had three days of bliss, the sun has shined and it has affected my work and attitude.
Friday I drew and sorted drawings all day, throwing 212 away, great decisions. Did PFD1.1 and started PFD2.1

Cycled to meet Graham at the grain barge, 2 of No.7 in the sunshine overlooking the river. Talked excitedly about my new thinking about colour and pastels. I want to be a painter but pastels are more like drawing with colour and I am predominantly a drawer first, it seems to make sense.
We carried our bikes up the steps to the Lion, one more and home for pasta in the garden with the birds. Swallows high over the buildings making the most of the evening.

The weekend - untutored life drawing class. Part of me and the others there were thinking, bad luck to be working inside on a stunningly sunny weekend but it was the best. Saturday I worked hard which is hugely satisfying and makes me happy. I think some progress could have been made. Went for a walk in Saltford on the way to bath for a priv view at Beaux Arts.

Sunday morning, boiled eggs in the sunshine and a magical cycle through a quite Sunday morning city. Down park street, through Queens Square, past St.Mary Redcliff, under the big dark bridge of temple meads then out into the light along the river and to another day of intense drawing.

Deb is the model. Her form is familiar; my new found colours are out again. I start with blues and greens and realize people need more warmth so ocher comes out again as a background, blues and greens on top for shadow and representation of blood just under the surface. Saturday was a day of realizing why I did people,( PLR8 to 19) Sunday was enjoying it. ( PLR20 – 24 )

Then bike back along the river with debs, chatting, past the arnolfini, over the little bridge and bye to debs. Then over the iron bridge to ashton court, puff puff up the hill to meet my darling Graham and Molly. A walk with Molly, put on the lead to avoid the skylarks nests. They complain high above and make the weekend complete. A magical city!
Home to lasagne, cool white wine in the garden and then a program about Dali, I had forgotten that he could paint.

Anyway time to get on, time to get my work ready for an exhibition. They will not have everything they want but hopefully they will have enough.

In seeing, seeing more

2010-05-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

Day 2 Lido 18 may
Today has been a lesson in ‘ the more you look the more you see’ Just trying to make a ‘simple shape of the pool, or a satisfactory ‘picture’ of some sorts. Started off very enjoyable, difficult though compared to the figure. I have no referance, architecture, spacial relationships can seem abstract, difficult to pin down.
Just working out the shape of the windows and getting pretty frustrated and then, wanting to finish, I suddenly notice more, reflection after reflection. I vaguely pin one thing down and another appears, to tempt but also to confuse but infact the complication of it reveals the structure.

Home to the garden and a rather negative reflection…..

What am I doing here?
I am a sculptor not a painter.
It is paintings that I admire, lust after, stand in awe over but what am I doing here.
This is a painters job.

Lido day 1

2010-05-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

Day 1 Lido
Excited to be here, feel alive. Rather confused why I am here but I have the confidence my enthusiasm for the year residency will become clear.
An hour drawing.

40

2010-04-29T02:48:00.000-07:00

A frozen trough.
Clinging to cold flat depth
brown leaves resist but yield
to dry cold wind.
A corner turned,
flipped up, the seal broken it follows
to congregate in a square corner.
Become same.

Inside.
White light falls on silver flesh
whisper thin like paper ash.
Seeps through follicles long gone
to reveal a neat round skull
full of thought.

Transparent flesh has lost memory
as it hangs crinkled and soft.
Sat sunk into feather down
she is small.
In bra and pants pausing,
flesh weeps from her back.

I creep through black light
staring widely helps nothing,
night vision lost to the screen.
I find my place now, my half,
and return to the warm plump
flesh of love.

Carol Peace
One night, on turning 40 in the Spring of 2010

Sculpting like a painter

2010-04-21T04:28:00.000-07:00

Written in April 2010 while making the piece 'Her'
http://www.carolpeace.com/detail.asp?tc=13&mc=1&sc=48&w=504

Sculpting like a painter

Anish Kapoor says that he is a ' painter working as a sculptor '.

I like oil paintings very much and think I would like to be a painter.

The reason I think I would like to be a painter at the moment is about illusion.

I envy the painters ability to escape the reality, there are reams of information missing but the image is just as arresting. Potentially arresting because of this missing information, this fudging of life. Nathon Fords work has this ( http://www.beauxartsbath.co.uk/Ford09/Pages/Index09.html ) Clarity appears only in small traces, like in life when clear thoughts appear they are more potent, more real.

I looked back into my sketchbook to find the quote about Anish Kapoor from a recent trip to the Guggenheim, it says there in his words, 'art is illusion, it's the illusion that goes deeper to the real'. I was originally excited about this piece because I always wanted to make my dress like this, sections of core ten like a bridge but maybe it was in fact this piece that made me understand more clearly.

For now, my illusion is the illusion I see in painting, in thick oil paint. Is this possible within the three dimensions of clay? It is there, it has to be all there, it is not an illusion, and there are no clever kapoor tricks in a seated figure. With my work you walk round the back.........a painting of a head has no back and does not need one.
But the last few days I have found a bit of peace with this issue and perhaps a way of remaining a sculptor.

The clay is so like oil paint, always has been. So like charcoal, the image is there and then it's gone. It is easy to pile on, scrape off, smudge, fudge. So I have to rely on surface like a painter does. Be a sculptor, but my paint is clay.

Poem by John Terry

2009-10-15T02:59:00.000-07:00

based on a sculpture called

Spring

Schooling Spring

No, not naked - see, here's my cap of leaves
that's dress enough for these bare woods - I bare
my skin to woodland after turn of year
under that dismal light which night believes
will soon replace our old ideas of day.
I use my beauty to push against the dark
until light triumphs. My parents go berserk,
can't understand how much I love the way
that Spring puts tiny eyes in every twig.
I help it remember how not to forget
by making green leaves from scraps of dresses
- no other clothes are needed. My toes dug
into leafmould I train Spring like a pet -
secretly, and no one ever guesses.

John Terry

more of Johns work can be found at

http://www.citychameleon.co.uk/publications.html

Interview with Chippy

2009-09-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

'Every Wed Chippy takes himself off for an evening of self indulgence at the Bristol Drawing School joint owned by artist Carol Peace...He catches up with Carol outside of drawing classes on the eve of her open studio weekend'

You opened the drawing school in Jan 2008 as a not for profit education venue, how is it going?

Brilliant! Just finished a course with some students one of whom said it was the best course she had ever been on! Its great seeing people so fired up and inspired about stuff, the courses and the energy are inspiring me with my work. It’s not only a buzz to be learning but it’s like a support as well. Although financially it needs a bit of help we are moving forwards and are now planning a few study trips in Europe...how exciting!!

Why did you choose to base your studio and the drawing school in Bristol?

It was either here or London, I came here straight from college to the Bristol Sculpture Shed (now spike island) I had a few commissions from my degree show and just had to get on with it, I did not know much about Bristol but thought the sculpture shed would be a good option so moved with some mates from college…and never looked back!

I love it here, the size, the diversity, and the fact that there is always too much going on in a city that I can bike across in 20 minuets. I can get the train from near my house at 7.30 and be in London by 10ish and I can walk out of the city into rolling hills the next day….cool!

I had dreams of a big farm with a drawing school attached but Graham ( the other half of the drawing school ) is more urban and feels the school has more going for it in a city, somehow more alive. I completely agree and with the options that are now open to the drawing school my country retreat seems rather tame!

How do you juggle your workload between your own work and that of the drawing school?

It was tricky to start with, as I tended to get involved with things and then get distracted with my work and forget I was supposed to be doing something. So now I am more the artistic director ( i.e I just talk a lot get very excited about things ) the real work of the school is done by Graham the director. There is never enough time to do what we want to do but hopefully we will get some funding so we can do more.

I love doing the drawing school stuff and get a huge amount from it both personally and as inspiration for work but I have to remember I am a sculptor first.

Why Bronze and Resin?

I make the sculptures in clay which is easy to model, fluid like charcoal and lovely to make marks in but I have never fired much work so it has to be cast, it’s a massively long process but I still get off on the idea of making something so fluid and easy to make marks in, into something solid and unchangeable like bronze.

Why females?

I guess because I am one and I know more about what it is to be one.

What advice would you give to anyone who would like to make a career out of sculpture?

Work at it, put the hours in, work, draw, work more, draw more, be humble, be honest, make work from yourself, what you want to make not what you think you should make. Be strong. Take on board criticism but never let it put you off as it will.
On the way down to the studio today I was thinking about an article that was in the ft which said the worm was turning, the next turner prize shortlist has ‘an emphasis on those who make as well as think’ it’s a bit like fashion, if you stay the same it usually comes back around to being trendy again!
But what I am trying to emphasize is you have to be true to yourself otherwise what’s the point.

You have won several prestigious commissions, where do you start with big commissions?

Its great if the people who are commissioning you will go with you, with ideas so you work like a team, usually they see work they like in the studio or at an exhibition and they want something similar, larger or have a particular idea and we work together on it, or I do an interpretation of their idea.
With the public commissions it is similar. I have never applied for many things as I am a bit shy about it but I just put myself out there and hope people come to me.

Do you struggle letting go of commissions that you have spent hours working on?

Everything is cast so I have a copy for myself or I have the mold so I know I could make an artists copy, so no I don’t have a problem with that. Paintings and drawings I make are unrepeatable so find them more difficult to sell.

Do you collect art and if so what?

I wouldn’t say I collect art; more give in to desire and lust for it. Mostly painting. At the moment I am desperate to buy one of Richard Cartwright’s paintings, his work is brilliant.

Your drawings are excellent and seem effortless, have you always drawn like this?

My drawing changes all the time and its always a struggle!

Have you shown outside of the UK?

Yes, I went through a faze of going all over the place I started in France and then went to Athens, Zurich even did a symposium in Columbia. Now I mostly show in London but I would love to show in New York….obviously!

Is The Chipster (Chippy) your favorite student?

I couldn’t possibly comment! We have lots of lovely students at the drawing school but he does try hard and he does care, he puts the effort in!

What do you listen to when in your studio?

Tom Waites, JJ Cale, Billy Holiday. A lot of music that is too cheesy to mention but those are long time favorites.

What artists inspire you?

How much time have you got!

I find things that I could not possibly attempt to do, things that are very different to my work the most inspiring.

I admire musicians and composers hugely. I can not comprehend in any way how you would write a song or where to start and how someone could put something together so well with all the different parts in it, the way a cd is such a small thing, so cheap really compared to art and yet it can be important and mean something ( something different ) to so many people.

Sometimes you go to an exhibition and find yourself in front of a painting and you have one of those moments when you realise you have to raise your game. It happens to me mostly in front of paintings, the last time it did was at an Andrew Crocker exhibition at Beaux Arts in Bath.

At the moment to name some people I would say
Richard Cartwright
Andrew Gifford
Volkert Olij
Vermeer
Rembrandt
Giacometi – his painting

loise borgious - her big spider - for the idea of walking through a sculpture and seeing someone walking towards you

Do you work rigidly from completed drawings or do your sculptures evolve and you work on them?

The sculptures always change when I make them; the drawing gives me the knowledge to know when something looks wrong but I cant think of a time when I have used a finished drawing to make a piece of work from.

Where did the big feet come from in your sculptures?

I am afraid that’s a bit of an unknown to me!…..they just look right like that to me, I have no excuse really.

Three things you loathe?

Greed, social climbing, networking ( are they the same? )

Three things you love?

Graham, my family and our dog

Q. I have heard you are looking for a studio swap with an artist the States, how would that work?

I would swap my studio and our garden flat in Redland for a work live in the States, preferably New York. It would be both Graham and myself. The Bristol Drawing School being next door could potentially provide the artist/artists with an exhibition and open access to the courses. It is roughly 1000sq ft.

Pots,Vessels and Dresses

2008-09-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have for some time wanted to make a pot. I like vessels and am always attracted to still life drawing and paintings that contain volumes. I think the paintings by Volkert Olij are some of the most exquisite things I have ever seen, I can only describe the feeling in front of them rather crudely as lust! They are the type of paintings that for me are just very difficult to walk away from.

I keep going back to his catalog to look, I am not sure exactly how they are inspiring just the feel of them, the light and space and the forms.

Withstanding was the first piece where I started looking at the shape of the skirt as a form in itself and more and more my sculptures have been getting clothes. I recently went to a lecture on drawing and started drawing this dress.

It was so ingrained in me and so particular I worried I had seen the image before and have copied it from a famous image somewhere, but have not found the source so far. In the lecture one of the artists was using the shape of a skirt in her paintings and it seemed to trigger something in me, I think it was that it was ok to be feminine. I drew and drew the dress, it seemed odd to me but at the same time right.

Paintworks 08

2008-09-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

I wanted to document some of the ideas, thoughts and inspirations that were going around in my head as I led up to the show at Paintworks 08.

My starting point has been drawing and the Bristol Drawing School. Drawing a lot and often is like refreshment, its invigorating, inspiring and reviving. It is something that I should have always done more of, can never do enough of. It is like a fantastic foundation on which everything rests and draws from but without you necessarily realising it.

See note 1 on drawing

I used to always do large drawings in the life room but have found through doing a lot of drawing they have become smaller, they do seem to be studies. It is not so much about making a beautiful drawing, more about trying to really see what’s there, really learn, through repetition about the human form. The volumes, the angles, the flesh and how bone pokes through towards the surface. To me these more intuitive drawings do in fact make a ‘better’ drawing, more interesting and definitely more useful.

I still do the charcoal drawings in the life room and will be showing some of these also.

I have also been reworking drawings that I have done at the Drawing School. It’s like an unwritten rule for me not to touch the work once the model has moved but now I do not seem so precious about it. I am still not sure what to think about this process though, without wanting to get too dramatic about it, it’s like a fear of loosing the truth. Here is one of the more successful ones though, I showed it at a recent show ‘Drawing Matters’ in the drawing school and someone said it had more of me in it. I am undecided as some are not successful but will have another play at it all the same, any drawing seems to connect to that part of the brain that refreshes, opens.

See note 2. on drawing opening you up

This amount of drawing has given me the courage to move on, push things further. I have never been able to paint from drawings I guess I have never had the courage to just use my own work as reference. Although I always use my imagination and knowledge gained in the life room to make sculpture, painting from drawings has always seemed unattainable. Now I seem to be able to guess where the information is missing, which is what I do solely in making sculpture. Painting, while still a huge challenge for me seems more approachable now.

This drawing was done at the Drawing school and then later I used it as reference to make this painting, which will be on show in November. It is 8ft x 4ft and I enjoyed the marks moving from small movements of the hand going to large movements of my arm and body. I try and do the majority in a long day or two; any longer I think the spontaneity would go, I hope to do a couple more before November.

Colour 2008

2008-09-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

I used to use these colours in big pastels but a recent trip to France and the ochre mines got me back into thinking about colour. The intensity of colour in the land around Roussilon and the shop selling pigments, pots and pots of beautiful colour all lined up, delicious. I returned home and forgot about my trip and then was tidying up and found my old pastels; the intensity of the colour was there again. I love muted tones and mostly work in monochrome but it is exciting using these vibrant colours again, now they are not pastels but oil and at some point I hope they will appear in my sculpture also.

What has been your proudest working moment so far?
It is usually about sculptures I have made rather than the achievements of those sculptures to get to certain places. My ambition is within the greatness of the achievement within the peice rather than the position it has gained in the ‘art world’ or the position it has raised the artist to.
A good feeling is to make a painting or sculpture and then after, when all the worry, indecision's and insecurities have gone, when you become slightly detached from it through time you wonder how you did it and worry terribly that you could never do it again. But usually I am very critical of past work and therefore satisfaction is limited.

What is the most important thing you like to express with your art?
The most important thing with my art is honesty, sometimes I can be too cheesey or potentially naff, I worry I don’t hide my personal feelings enough and can be a bit blatant but I always use the excuse that I am being true to how I feel, its just me. It is what it is.
If you are not honest there is absolutely no point.

Student Interview

2008-06-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

What has been your proudest working moment so far?

It is usually about sculptures I have made rather than the achievements of those sculptures to get to certain places. My ambition is within the greatness of the achievement within the piece rather than the position it has raised the artist to.

A good feeling is to make a painting or sculpture and then after, when all the worry, indecision's and insecurities have gone, when you become slightly detached from it through time you wonder how you did it and worry terribly that you could never do it again. But usually I am very critical of past work and therefore satisfaction is limited.

What is the most important thing you like to express with your art?

The most important thing with my art is honesty, sometimes I can be too cheesey or potentially naff, I worry I don’t hide my personal feelings enough and can be a bit blatant but I always use the excuse that I am being true to how I feel, its just me. It is what it is.

If you are not honest there is absolutely no point.

Valentine

2008-02-15T01:54:00.000-08:00

What is important for me in my work is that it has to have come from me. Honestly and directly. There is no room to try and be clever or original, to try and fit in with a world that does not belong to me. I constantly worry about my work, that it is too literal or potentially cheesy but when I am making it; it is how I feel. The subject matters to me are very real, very present.

Hopefully the work does have its own complexities and can be interpreted or received on different levels and I love it that people see what they want to see in the work, recognise themselves; but above all, what matters to me is that it has to come from the gut as well as the head.

This piece is called Valentine. Trying to symbolize the intense love between two people and having found that absolutely perfect partner, the constant paranoia of separation.

Having spent hours and hours drawing and looking so far this year, the form appeared over one session. I came back to it the next day and worked on it now and again over a period of a week. Once I think I am making marks that are not about the desperate attempt to describe the form or idea, then the work has a danger of becoming contrived; the subconscious workings and honesty would be lost. The time between saying what you want to say to finishing is crucial and the fussing of insecurity is hopefully kept to a minimum. Hopefully short.

more pics here http://www.carolpeace.com/detail.asp?tc=13&mc=1&sc=6&w=65

Moncrieff~Bray Gallery 2007

2007-05-06T02:55:00.000-07:00

Figures in the Landscape
Sculpture by Leonie Gibbs, Carol Peace and Paul Vanstone, 6 May to 17 June 2007
Leonie Gibbs, Paul Vanstone and Carol Peace are all sculptors who work within a strong figurative tradition on both a domestic and monumental scale. In different ways their work draws strength and inspiration from the land in turn merging sympathetically into a rural or domestic landscape.

Leonie Gibbs has lived most of her life in Scotland. The Scottish landscape and its myths and legends as well as her love of wild animals have been the most formative influences on her work. She is also fascinated by Greek and Egyptian myths. Working in bronze her pieces are dynamic and posed for action inhabiting an imaginative world of story telling and heroism played out against the wild Scottish landscape.

By contrast, Carol Peace’s figures inhabit an inner world of self-reflection. She derives her knowledge of the human body from detailed life drawings but when she models them in clay the figures come from her imagination reaching beyond mere depiction. With their delicately balanced forms and rock like plinths the large-scale works relate to forms and volumes found in the landscape, their often elongated limbs and strange proportions lending them a surreal air. They invite the viewer to mediate on the human condition, the step from adolescence to adult hood or the vulnerability of a mother and child.

Paul Vanstone is fascinated by the material properties of his medium. Recently he has abandoned modelling to work directly as a carver. Hunting down the right materials whether from Spain, Italy or Portugal is part of his creative process. The physical properties of the stone are part of the language of the finished piece. His most recent work is executed in Thassos marble associated with the purity of ancient Greek sculpture. In these drapery studies he is playing with formal qualities, pattern across a volume, the contrast between the hardness and coldness of the medium and the warm soft cloth. The finished works have a drawn quality, a sense of line crossing volume, a delicate flow and balance. Yet they still retain the rawness and power of the original block of marble quarried from earth.
The sculpture will be shown with Oona Campbell’s Sussex landscapes inside the gallery as well as in the open air.

Arts writer Elspeth Moncrieff set up the Moncrieff-Bray Gallery in 2005. The gallery holds regular exhibitions of contemporary art and sculpture in a spectacular oak framed barn and surrounding garden and landscape. It is located on the A283 between Petworth and Pulborough approximately an hour and a quarter from central London.

Further information: www.moncrieff-bray.com

A poem by John Terry

2006-12-11T00:05:00.000-08:00

Beginning

A poem by John Terry

Forget Genesis:

I arrived long before Adam-

Earth was without form  and void

when I rose from its boiling crust

dragging half-molten

world-stuff that flowed

from my hips like a garment.

Stretched towards a belly of sky

I teased lightning’s crooked fingers

to fire new creation.

Fire

became Flamenco –  

clinging magma flared

from my body,

rippled like incandescent silk

ruffled and flounced

into a full skirt.

Right arm raised,

left levelled with horizon.

I imagined red Cuban heels:

stamped the first step –

Solid earth formed

where my foot fell.

To a rattle of castanets

I danced shape into the world;

added colour; separated light

from darkness, water from land;

danced the swell of hills,

the bare height of mountains –

my swaying shape a pattern

for birch and willow. All life

rejoiced, clicked its heels –

danced to my rhythm.

John Terry

Based on a peice called Bliss

The sculpture was made in 2004 and shown at a retrospective at Paintworks in 2006, John spent some time at this show and wrote this poem about the piece.

More of Johns work can be found at

http://www.citychameleon.co.uk/publications.html

2005-05-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

Temporary studio space at Paintworks, moved studio back from London to huge space before my space became available. Used to roller skate round here sometimes. Mostly though it was a hugely productive time, on my own, no office there, no phone or emails or other studio members voices and distractions. I did Mother and Child, Do What?, Super Girl and Swimming Lesson in an office at the front beside a big window. This was 2005, I think it was the first time I really had the time and space to think about my work properly. Maybe that's a bad thing! I am adding to this in 2011 and have just bought a mug that says " Think less, Do more! "