studios

I've always been drawn to the idea that the studio space becomes a kind of ‘studiolo’, as well as a place to make art. In the 15th century, the Italian term ‘studiolo’, literally ‘little study’, was used to describe a private, usually small, room in a large Italian Renaissance house.

These rooms began as places of private study and contemplation, to which only the owner had access. Later, during the sixteenth century, they became private ‘ museums' containing the owner’s most valued possessions, which could be small paintings, sculptures, coins, medals, jewels, books and precious objects. By the middle of the sixteenth century the idea had spread across the Alps to Northern Europe and developed into the kunstkammer … my little studio building was an old 1930s flat-roofed brick garage before we converted it twenty years ago … it has become very much a sanctuary and it is also where I read and practice the guitar… In actual fact I think it the best thing I’ve ever created as it has always nurtured my passions and activities …

Studio - chertsey

Studios in the Ardèche, France

For sixteen summers, from 2004 to 2019, and then for a period of nearIy a year, I have had the pleasure of working in a group of studios in the hamlet of Les Tapies, perched high on a hillside above the Orsan River, with views out towards the Alps some sixty kilometres away. Here, my colleagues and I worked with high school art students from all over the world in the Les Tapies Summer Arts & Architecture Program. Housed in a 17th century stone house at the western edge of the hamlet, The Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking studios occupy the ground floor, and upstairs above the Print studio, is The Tower Art Gallery, which hosts exhibitions by faculty, students, and guest artists.

The studio to which I will now retreat for periods of the year, having left teaching to pursue my own work, is on the ground floor of Chabanes, our recently restored 17th century farm house near the village of St. Pierreville in the Gluyere River Valley, just to north of Les Tapies. The studio is a small square room, lit by windows punched through stone walls nearly a foot an a half feet thick. The door leads out to a terrace overlooking chestnut and pine forests and a range of hills leading up to the Massif Central to the west. When I am in this room, I am truly sequestered.