This is the 187th installment of a series in which artists send in a photo and a description of their workspace. In light of COVID-19, we’ve asked participants to reflect on how the pandemic has impacted their studio space and/or if their work process has changed while quarantining. Want to take part? Please submit your studio! Just check out the submission guidelines.
Jari Genser, Vienna, Austria
Apart from a few masks hanging around, the times of quarantine did not change a lot in my studio in Vienna. I continue doing what I did before the pandemic and will do when it has passed (hopefully soon!): I paint paintings of paintings in the process of being painted. This way, my studio is at the same time my working place and the template for my next painting. This creates the paradoxical situation that, while depicting the past, I already have to think ahead into the future. So, my studio is half working place, half stage, half chaos, half well-assembled arrangement of things I want to paint. When the pandemic broke out this spring, I thought that I, as an artist, would not be affected a lot. But looking back I have to say that when I had a lot of time, I did not manage to work as much as I had hoped for, while in the summer, when it was possible to go out and meet people, I achieved a lot. So, maybe the crisis did not change my studio, but it changed me.
Tyler Kline, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The pandemic forced me to give up my studio at the Papermill and work from my home in Olde Kensington Philadelphia. Life and art have become one again, as they should; the messy bits of the studio enrich the domestic setting. Living walls call and respond to the cooking of meals and rhythms of waking, breathing, and contemplation. Mark-making records time, tempo, and location; what emerges is a psychological cartography of COVID-19 CE 2020.
Ed Nadeau, Hampden, Maine
This is an image of my new studio which we started building just before the pandemic hit. I haven’t really done any major pieces in it yet as I just recently got it completed enough to move in, essentially a year after we started. In the photo on the left is one of my newly completed paintings done in my former studio and in the center a large canvas with a red primer, ready to go.
I look forward to getting to work soon, though, and having the trees outside my windows as both inspiration and calming friends. The trees and land in the Maine woods can do that.
Eventually, I would like to use the studio as a place for “art nights,” a place for fellow artists to gather to talk about each other’s artwork. But, of course, it will be a while before we can do that. Until then, I will hunker down and paint.
Nancy Champion, Niwot, Colorado
Escaping to create art in my studio has been as necessary as breathing, to free my mind of worry during the pandemic. My mixed-media art studio is an upstairs, high-ceiling bedroom with treehouse views of the front-yard garden and massive maple tree and dynamic Colorado skies. The studio is spacious, welcoming, and inspiring for a landscape painter, with natural light from a large picture window and additional lighting from a 14-inch diameter 600 LED day light lamp, which provides lighting for cloudy afternoons. Art tools, paint, and art storage space surround the easel and work station. A computer located near the easel easily displays enhanced digital photos that take me back to the hikes and trails that inspire my dimensional acrylic paintings. During the pandemic I’ve painted larger canvases, with brighter colors and textured surface. Creating has been empowering during this mostly stay-at-home time with little socializing and canceled art exhibits.
