Michael Snodgrass reflects on his Hatching Residency

My hatching residency raised a few areas to reflect on as a visual artist; a place and a studio space to go each day and create, a time to explore techniques, a chance to talk to other people about my work (and theirs), the opportunity to discuss work as it happens, respond to people’s thoughts and receive mentoring around social media and sharing work publicly.

A place and a space to go each day and create

Creating personal artworks 9-5 everyday in the same space was something I was looking forward to. I had toyed with getting a studio space but wasn’t sure how that would sit with me. Would I ever go? Would I be able to focus or just worry about earning money?

A time to explore some techniques and style, 

I was dabbling with abstract work with paint and wondered whether I could successfully bring emotional themes out into a painting using gestural marks and colours and layers and texture. My concern was that I might buy into a gimmick or fad and it wasn’t my work at all; that I was doing it for other people’s amusement. 

I used filler to create some texture right on the boards before they were primed. An old dishcloth was used to remove strokes of paint to reveal colours beneath. With craft foam sheets I made various sized squeegees to enable dragging of paint and create some straight edges and blocks of colour, again this reveals what it’s on top of as well as creating really opaque areas. 

A chance to talk to other people about my work (and theirs)

I wasn’t sure how this was going to work. In the end it somewhat fell into place. Talking Birds personnel are very respectful and don’t wish to interrupt, so my first conversations were with Tara Rutledge as my social media mentor and those led to articulating what was happening in the work.

The opportunity to discuss work as it happens and respond to people’s thoughts

More problematic than I first thought in that I hadn’t thought what format this would take; once I get going I work quite fast and after a couple of days I felt the paintings were almost fully formed. I was really pleased with them and wasn’t sure a discussion would help move them along, although discussion confirmed how I felt about them.

Support over social media and sharing work.

Tara wasn’t just practical; she helped me see things from the audience; I realised that I was talking about the work and less about social media. She reminded me that people are essentially curious and don’t know about the process or  what is in my sketchbook or what my brushes look like, but sharing these things and the view from the window, the handwritten notes are all quite interesting, even beautiful, for others to see.

The work

So, I was going to work on multiple pieces at the same time. I had made 10 wooden panels some half a metre square, some larger rectangles, surface texture, to experiment with techniques like dragging with squeegees, using a water spray and wiping with a cloth. I needed to respond to words, be mindful of them and use them emotively.

A gift

I thought Day One was going to be frustrating: a new place, things to take on board, information to take on board, things to sign, keys to get used to. I unloaded the car by myself, repeatedly refusing help! Charlie and Philippa helped pin up plastic to protect the walls, rearranged the desks and I laid everything out, the empty Helloland space suddenly seems quite full. Where to start? I managed to get over this difficulty by writing “It’s a gift” on a piece of paper and pinning it up. What do you do with a gift? You open it. That was it and I was off, without thinking too much that the hours were counting down. Although it came to mind later that I find praise and gifts tricky in real life so there was that in the background underlying my thoughts.

I hadn’t planned exactly what I was going to create at all, if anything I had spent longer making the panels than working out compositions. Practically, I had come to a halt in the run up to the residency. I might have got a little overwhelmed with watching others on social media creating in certain styles and felt that I should do the same thing. During the Summer, I had been painting in the garden in fine weather. Once into Autumn I had stopped because on a practical level I often get too much gubbins out: a wallpaper table, easel, all the paints, new pieces of wood, chocks, trestle table, old works to revisit. Too much. Getting all this out invariably meant I wasn’t actually creating, more like setting up.

Walking through The Nest I was drawn to a phrase that said to “make Art with people, not for people”. I’m sure it’s out of context but what I took from that was not to second guess what people might want but to make art alongside others, let the work happen and allow others to enjoy what you make.  At least I had 10 boards prepped and ready to go. I wasn’t sure if they would be groups of paintings or stand alone but as I said I would work on a few at a time. That’s what a studio is for, right? A place to hold that thought, or thoughts. This is something that had been on my mind and it was an aspect Janet and I discussed on her visit to the space.

To start I got some colour washes of emulsion on the boards and then suddenly it came to me that I was going to follow a set of rules: in a playful way, like the rules of a game. I would use the same colours in the same order on each of the ten artworks using slightly different shapes and ideas on each. So I made a list and made sure I knew exactly which colours were which (obvious right?) As I continued I left quick little notes next to each one to remind me to do something whilst I wrestled with the next board. An old wooden painters step ladder rescued from a skip served as an easel with attached rests  in various places so I could sit a painting or two on each side.

In terms of the impetus for the work, I’d placed keywords up as I went along, initially: isolation, separation, resilience, hesitant. These hung there quite subtly and of course once I was started I was enjoying the playful nature of using colour and creating layers as per my rules, reacting to what was happening on a board after I had left it and returned to it. I wrote: “How do we develop resilience? Through play”. Later the phrase was added to: “together”.

Overall the process of making has everything from excitement to difficulty and struggle to standing still, then redirection; from “this is not working” to “that’s it!” a moment later. What I do know is that once I am working and playing I am wholly in the moment. The anxiety, hesitancy and doubt disappears. As this is a gift for me, there is no client asking for changes. I get to feel my way through it. I really start to motor around these 10 artworks, so much so that I thought I had used up everything I had prepared quicker than I expected.

Everyone that came in independently enjoyed the colour palette I was using, the end of first week Philippa dropped in, Tara was in twice, Janet offered a crit, Tom (fellow hatchling) peeked through the door and we talked over coffee or at lunch or at home time. Overseas visitors from Imagineers popped in and were suitably smiley and complementary. Nobody overstayed, all were sensitive and all gave some insight.

By the end of the first week I actually acknowledged that I was really looking forward to Monday, excited to go back. I couldn’t recall when I had last thought this;  I find Mondays quite difficult which is quite deeply rooted. I needed some other work to do. I had worked so fast I was almost sure I was 90% there with the 10 I had begun. What next? I cut up some wood panels into squares and got them ready.

Walking into the space on subsequent days I was really pleased with the larger works. I started hanging one artwork per day on the one peg in the room just to give it its own space. I found they greeted me each morning with warmth. For my last day I was emotionally conflicted about leaving and packing up versus the amount I had done and how enjoyable the experience had been. I gave myself the morning to wrestle with the smaller series of works that had elements of blocky brutalism but had gone through a number of changes. Wrestle is the wrong word:  I just decided to play over the top of them, once I had decided that, it all started to work. What I learnt: Just do it, trust your gut.