Studio Diary - January 2022

Charlotte Wensley
Jan 24, 2022
3 min read

Updated: May 27

Loving your Sketchbook......

Do you love your sketchbook? Or is yours on the shelf gathering dust, with only something on the first few pages? I confess I used to start my sketchbooks with grand intentions of filling it completely with marvellous drawings. I would eventually cast it aside, unsure of its relevance and usefulness to whatever bigger project I was working on. Recently I have fallen in love again with my sketchbook, seeing it as the best place to experiment, test and take risks. It's now my absolute go to for exploring ideas, messing about and trying new combinations of materials and colours. And best of all? It isn't hung up on the studio wall demanding that I cast my critical eye over it all the time - I just close it at the end of the day and walk away from whatever has happened in there! Check out this video of some recent sketchbook play time!

Painting is a Journey

Each and every painting has a journey of it's own. It's steered by a combination of many influencing factors; choice of materials and processes; memories; thoughts that run through my head on any given day as I'm working. This makes every decision I make unique to that moment in time and in turn creates diverse and unpredictable results in my art. Whilst working on 'The Sub Way', I couldn't stop thinking about a trip I made to New York when I was 19. It was a sliding door moment for me, I very nearly didn't go home. I had never before been to a place where I felt such a profound and electric energy, it seemed that this city had life force in abundance which was almost impossible to walk away from. It was a powerful and magnetic offering of an alternate world, a far cry from the rural Yorkshire Dales and a fork in the road which still feels tangible today, all these years later. Who knows why these thoughts became the steering factor for this painting, but I'm so happy they did. I'm always open to whatever unfolds on any given day in the studio, some days feel successful, others feel not so, but every day I'm in working in the studio I know I'm on a journey of some kind, and I've learned to embrace it and go wherever it takes me.