Creativity in the Lockdown: the Artists' Stories
Over this past year I noticed a sea change in how the artists were working.
While exhibitions were postponed or put online, painting trips cancelled, framing workshops shuttered and teaching commitments curtailed or put on Zoom, I was seeing something else happening: a deepening in creativity.
Was this something the artists were aware of too? I have been asking around:
Chris Gilvan-Cartwright
‘Being a painter means isolation anyway. However, there is something quite reassuring in that when everything stopped, I carried on. This is where art will save the world!’ says painter Chris Gilvan-Cartwright. ‘There is a deepening, a self-reflection, a fantastic opportunity to drill down. You are faced with decisions: what comes about in the work, what have you got? What are you going to make? There’s an integrity to it. The reality has been this may be your last day in the studio.’
Nick Bodimeade in his studio
Still Summer Garden by Kathleen Mullaniff
“For me, the positive of lockdown has been that my mind is in a different place.”
For other artists, the lockdown has opened up opportunities in the imagination. ‘The lockdown has been harsh and dreary beyond belief. However, my mind has been free to think of making work, and painting always remains uppermost in my mind,’ says painter Jo Lamb.
‘I think of seedbanks, especially the Seedbank at Wakehurst Place, and finding strange pods and shapes in the Indian Ocean or Arabia. Transporting dreary grey into memories of far-off places. It is time to be brave and have new thoughts. For me, the positive of lockdown has been that my mind is in a different place.’
Keith A Pettit (photo: Jim Holden)
Nick Bush
“ The thinking about subject matter is quite extraordinary. All is being questioned. ”
Nick Bodimeade has a similar view based on his own experiences. ‘There has been the opportunity to try things out as there have been few exhibitions. The thinking about subject matter is quite extraordinary. All is being questioned. There has been a vast amount of time. We have time to stay in the zone, time for continuous daily practice, more time for experimentation. And time for walking and thinking. The value of green spaces has been realised. It develops the confidence just to look.
'I’ve been walking from here to Blackcap, through the flood plain, seeing fallen trees in the woodland, things dying back and regrowing – an extraordinary history: the big events visible in the local landscape in relation to the big events we are all living through.’
“I think we may have found solace, celebration, and appreciation of our natural world. ”
Realising the wonders of our local lockdown worlds has been mentioned by several other artists but I’ll let painter Kathleen Mullaniff expand on creativity in the pandemic: ‘Working from home, staying at home, not seeing friends and family, it has been a time for reflection and a time to appreciate our parks, gardens, window boxes, trees, and plants. During this time, I have painted a series of small landscape paintings looking on to my garden. During the summer the paintings were full of bright greens, lemon yellows, pink, magenta, and orange flowers. Blue skies, grey sky, as the year turned to Autumn, then the colour range migrated to dark blue, rust red, deep green. I found myself preferring to record these changes in the light at dusk out of the window.
‘I think we may have found solace, celebration, and appreciation of our natural world. The garden and its secrets change every day, birds passing through, foxes walking down the path, and here in St-Leonards-on-Sea the call of the seagull, insistent and powerful rather like the ever-changing landscape.’
Beech by Kathleen Mullaniff
Escape from Paradise by Jo Lamb (detail)
Sculptor Keith A Pettit is making ten sculptures to line the 1066 Country Walk between Pevensey and Rye. He was chosen as part of a successful bid by Rother District for major EU funding to renovate the 31-mile walking trail.
He grew up nearby and this major commission has rekindled his boyhood fascination with the Norman Conquest. The project is due for completion this year.
Another artist who worked on a commission is Julian Bell. Berwick Church received funding in 2019 to restore and conserve the Bloomsbury Group paintings as well as improve and renovate the interior. Julian has painted a Sussex landscape with a rainbow across five bespoke oak panels to create a new altar reredos.
Julian Bell at work on the Berwick Church reredos
Meanwhile, painter Nick Bush has been creating a series of large paintings commissioned by a London hotel. He also took up the offer from a community centre of a nice warm classroom to use as a studio while the premises were closed to the public during the pandemic.
As for myself, the garden studio was completed in the lockdown so the first exhibition was put online which was a bit of a disappointment and a challenge but then it gave me time to really look at the art on the walls. My spirits were lifted when so many of you came along to the Artwave Show in late summer. I have not spent much time looking at art online because I gain so much by actually being on the spot, being in the presence of art. So I’m looking forward to doing just that!