Alice Sheridan, Ep.70 Transcript
This is a non--human checked transcript from Ep.70 with Alice Sheridan. Learn more about Sheridan here.
Alice Sheridan 0:00
Most artists start with my painting something that looks like something that is recognizable. That gives me that feeling of satisfaction. And then when you can do that, I think you start asking the questions and what next.
Kelly Anne Powers 0:13
Hello and welcome to the learn to paint podcast, the show that gives you artistic ideas you can put to work. I'm your host Kelly Anne powers. Today I'm talking with artists, Allah shared him. In the conversation, you'll discover how a change in your space might change your work, why having clear intent is so important, and what to do when you need to say goodbye to a layer you love, plus a whole lot more. In this episode, Extended Cut bonus, you'll learn why drawing might be the key to figuring out what a painting is about, and some great ideas for how to hold time for your art practice. You can take a listen by joining the podcast art club over on Patreon at any tier for shownotes. And to sign up for the newsletter list head to learn to paint podcast.com/podcast/episode 70 All right, here we go. Hi, Alice, welcome to the podcast. How did you get started in art.
Alice Sheridan 1:07
I'm not sure I've ever been unstarted. In art. There's a story My mom likes to tell apart that when I was at nursery school, so this is age two to three. One morning at breakfast, she couldn't find me. And I'd let myself out of the door down the street and turned up and I was sitting at the nursery school. And when she got me, she said Why did you leave? And I said, Well, it's painting day. So it's always something that I've really enjoyed, I didn't think it was a viable opportunity. So I ended up doing graphic design at college, having done an Art Foundation course, which is like a one year multi course that you do when you leave school. Going forward to that I thought I'll pick something more practical. And I chose graphic design. So coming back to art with something that happened a little bit later in life.
Kelly Anne Powers 1:51
Although How did you find abstraction,
Alice Sheridan1:53
I think it's a longer route to abstraction. And for me, I certainly wasn't thinking, Oh, I've got to find abstraction, it was more I need to do something else that stretches me intellectually. And also, it's a funny balance isn't it stretches me intellectually, and also gives me something to take my mind off into another direction and also stops me thinking something that I can just get lost in and practice. So I had small children at the time. And I started doing life drawing classes again, and did that for a long while and just loved the process of it. And it's just been a gradual journey from that to wanting to commit more to doing art courses, giving over more of my time. And then at some point just over 10 years ago now, really sort of feeling okay, so I've either got to go back and get a proper job, ha, do I really want to go back to the industry that I was working in. And I was working with a coach at the time. And she said to me, Well, what do you really want to do? And I said, Well, I'd really like to see where the art could go. And she said, Well, should we give that a go then for a few months. So that that was it. And from then it's just been a journey of discovering what it is that I want to make saying yes and no to things and making a lot of bold choices along the way,
Kelly Anne Powers 3:11
was there something about giving it a few months, as opposed to giving it the rest of your life that made it feel less scary?
Alice Sheridan 3:19
Both really, you know, having worked in graphic design previously, the idea of going back into that as a then 14 year old after a career break with children, you know, I knew I was going to be competing with quite frankly, much younger funkier things, and that was only going to go in a downwards direction. Whereas if I looked ahead, you know, you look at the kind of trajectory of artists, it only gets better. And there's not a lot in life that you can say that with, I mean, academically you can improve the lot of the creative arts, writing, music, all of those kinds of things. So there was a sort of long distance, this is something I can really aim for for a long time. But initially, I think it has to be well, let's see if I change my attitude and approach for this for the next four months and six months. Because any further than that, and I think our brain starts to jump in with all of those, but you can't possibly Who do you think you are all of those kinds of questions. So, you know, there was a difference between Long and short term. But certainly I was lucky that I was in a situation that my husband had the income that was keeping the family going. He's older than me. So we always had this deal. He'd work I look after the children, and then at some point, we'd switch and it would be my responsibility. And I was always like, yeah, that'll be fine. Holy smoke. What is that going to be? I don't know what it's going to be. I don't know what it's going to be. But it comes back to that trust thing. I think and I think that's something that you've really got to nurture and that means pushing yourself sometimes. So yeah, long and short term. Keeping both in balance. Yeah.
Kelly Anne Powers 4:54
Because there was that financial peace and that agreement with your husband. How did you balance per Protecting that space to learn and develop you as an artist, how did you keep that? Oh, no, I need to make this a job I need to make this a job at some point, how did you keep that space safe?
Alice Sheridan 5:13
Probably pretty much like an ostrich in that I probably stuck my head in the ground because the you know, the realities of making money from art can be tough. And if you start to let that be the thing that really leads you, I think you can get into muddy ground quite quickly. And so for the first few years, I know I very definitely, I concentrated on the sales, not the expenses. So the revenue in and I kept my, I was gonna say I kept my aspirations small, I had a kind of step approach. So initially, my aims for the year were small scale events, I was doing small scale painting. And every single tiny painting sale felt like a massive success because it was somebody outside of the home a stranger, somebody I didn't know who was handing over honestly, their hard earned cash for something that I had created, that buzz never never goes away. So keeping it small initially, and then year on year kind of setting slightly bigger goals and bigger goals and bigger goals. And you know, in all honesty, it's taken a while, but I think lots of good things do well.
Kelly Anne Powers
We're gonna move into materials, what paints do you use acrylic now?
Alice Sheridan
When I came back to painting, I started with oil paints, because that's what proper artists do. And that's what I sort of been trained in, if you like, that's what I'd use previously. But I found it frustrating, it felt slow and a bit sludgy. Yes, you can get beautiful color mixes, but it didn't feel like I could move as fast as I wanted. So trying acrylics initially, again, was very frustrating. But I think often, when you try new materials that can be very frustrating, you're not an expert yet, you can't get them to work as you want. But acrylics now is my preferred option, because you can layer so much you can have them in, you know, so many different kinds of formulas, thin, thick, and yeah, I still enjoy working with acrylics, I wouldn't say never to going back to oils. But at the moment, acrylics is certainly my jam with a bit of mixed media,
Kelly Anne Powers 7:19
how long did it take you to feel like you really had a handle on acrylics when you transitioned from oil, two or
Alice Sheridan 7:25
three years, maybe I'm still learning. And I hesitate when you ask that because I think this year, I've been experimenting with paint in a different way, using much more fluid versions of it really kind of trusting that process with the paint. And I'm not at the end of that yet. And this is sort of 10 years into making paintings for sale. So while it takes a while,
Kelly Anne Powers 7:49
as part of that, especially with acrylics, there's so many different directions you can go and just materials are inspiring, and they're beautiful, all these different things. How did you balance that? Oh, what could this do? But have it be a distraction? Versus Ooh, what could this do? And it grows your body of learning.
Alice Sheridan 8:08
That's a good point. I think very often we start off with what do we want to create visually, or what's inspiring me visually. So for me, it was subject matter at that point. And when I say subject matter, I knew I didn't want to do people to domestic still lives didn't have a figure. So it was landscape and the worlds kind of around me, both living in a city and also how I felt when I was outside in kind of what open spaces. So I think initially, the materials is very often a secondary part from what you want to paint because you're still struggling with can I represent things in the way that I want to? Most artists start with it? Am I painting something that looks like something that is recognizable, that gives me that feeling of satisfaction? And then when you can do that, I think you start asking the questions, and what next, what more what else can I do with this? You know, there's a certain skill level that I've got, and what else is this medium now suggesting to me that starts becoming a little bit more expansive, and a bit more open? And I think that's a fairly familiar journey for most people. I think if you just start with Okay, here are the materials what can they do often were left in this sort of void? Well, they can do a lot, but what do you want to do with it? You know, without that hook initially to get you started? It can be a little bit of a no man's land.
Kelly Anne Powers 9:32
Was that one of the indications for you that you had sort of entered new territory when you said like, yeah, yeah, I can paint an apple, but who cares?
Alice Sheridan 9:40
Yeah, and I think that had happened kind of quite a bit earlier. We had a fantastic art teacher when I was in those top two years of school, who was just extraordinary, very inspirational, but the teaching was very, very good in terms of teaching really clear observational skills seeing in value understanding value contract. asked kind of color grouping and value blocking areas to create form. So I think I had quite a good grounding in that already. I'd been working with oil paint at that point. So I think when I first came back to painting it was, what do I want to paint. And I remember one day taking photographs out. And there was this beautiful light coming through a rather beautiful art deco underground station in London with gorgeous windows. And I took a photograph, and I came back home. And I think I'll make an abstract painting of that, and quite a small painting. And I kind of squinted my eyes, and I painted it in what I thought was an abstract way. But of course, your brain makes up what the gap is quite quickly. And when you've got the light, and you've got the value, and you've got the colors all in the right place. It's kind of like, Huh, well, it looks just like an underground station, still, albeit a beautiful one with light coming in through the window. But it really made me realize that actually, there is a huge gap, you we don't need very much. And our brain logs on very, very quickly to something that is recognizable. And so if I wanted to start stretching into something that was more abstract that kind of made a bigger gap between what people were visually seeing and what I wanted them to experience, I was really going to have to stretch that gap quite a lot further for you
Kelly Anne Powers 11:20
as someone who now paints abstraction, do you think having those fundamentals was helpful?
Alice Sheridan 11:26
Yeah, absolutely. I think what it does, like I said is it gives you a hook as you're learning. And when you're learning all of the things that you need to create. For example, if you take a drawing, you know, you take a figure drawing, you're thinking all the times about placement on the page, you're thinking about proportion, you've got hand eye coordination, but also how your materials are working like the weight of a charcoal line, how you actually change direction, that gives hints of forms. And even now, if I'm out drawing in the landscape, that can be very simple. It can be very small in a tiny sketchbook with a 60 pencil. But it's the way that that Mark moves on the paper doesn't have to be super accurate. But there is something in the language and the emotion of that mark. And I think if you learn that with something that is kind of concrete, and representational, that helps when you make that jump into abstract form, because you've already got that sense of using the language of the purity of the mark, and the placement and color when we get into that. But you've done your groundwork, I think it really helps. I feel like
Kelly Anne Powers 12:35
I started to dismiss of what I said about painting an Apple because some people find joy in that discovery process, it's just for you, you realize you want it to move somewhere else.
Alice Sheridan 12:45
Yeah, and it's very satisfying, you know, creating something that looks like it lifts off the page, where you've got where the light just hits it beautifully. You know, you've actually chosen elements of a beautiful still life, you know, a lovely green apples sitting on a pewter plate or whatever. There is enormous beauty in that one of my favorite paintings is a painting that my parents have got. And it's a very delicate watercolor of a single yellow rose. It's very, very small. It's beautiful. It's exquisitely painted in this little metal jug. And it's just gorgeous. I just have no desire to create work like that. But I can fully appreciate it and I buy it quite often.
Kelly Anne Powers 13:27
Could you give us a bird's eye view of your process.
Alice Sheridan 13:30
I was thinking about this this morning, actually, I was out having a run. And I thought, What is my process and I thought my process really is just awareness. It's not just what happens in the studio, it starts well before that. And it's you tuning into that sensitivity to what you see around you. What it is that you want to say it's awareness about when you're using the materials, your process is going to develop. And it's going to change if you're listening to that feedback from what you're seeing and what you're feeling from yourself. So I tend to just absorb ideas, I don't really plan things. So I will do work in sketchbooks, sometimes I'll have a day color mixing but when I start a painting, I tend to just start the painting, because that immediately gives me problems to work with visual problems. It's almost like trying to work out a maths equation. And you've got to get everything in there at once in order to try and balance it up again, if I get it too, right early on. And sometimes I think composition wise I can do that. Not only because it's it's fantastic teaching that I had at school, but also through my design training, which is all about placement on a page and hierarchy and all of those kinds of things. If you get the design right early on in a painting, you've got nothing to struggle with them. There's no story in the painting, I think often giving myself problems during the process of making a painting that leads to a richer painting and it's where I find the enjoyment. And the challenge when all of that work is evident on the canvas, rather than happening in advance in a sketchbook and then you're just transferring it one then do you work in series? Yeah, I do tend to work in groups at a time. So often mixed sizes. So I might have a number to large scale, and a separate series working smaller, alongside but I think working in a group like that, it gives you more space to develop your ideas, you're not putting all the emphasis onto one painting. And I think that's very freeing.
Kelly Anne Powers 15:32
When you go into a body of work, do you go in with an intention, or does the intention develop, just working on a bunch of random paintings, and then the ideas develop, and then you begin the body of work
Alice Sheridan 15:44
your basic both, when you complete a group of work, I think it's really important to spend some time appreciating what you've just done. And in traditional art schools, you would have a critique group, you would have that assessment from your peers and from a teacher, that's something that is quite often missing. But I think in anyhow, you have to learn to do that for yourself for your own work. So having a bit of time with your own work, and making sure that you have given yourself a little space to recognize what you've done well, where you can take ideas further, and what you would like to explore next, that's usually where the idea comes from. But it might be something very loose, it could be something as simple as I really loved working with these. And now I'm feeling again, it goes back to that awareness. I'm feeling like I want to lean towards less vibrant colors. I'm feeling like I want to work more with neutrals, and really tone down the color. But I loved working with those fluid shapes. But maybe the fluid shapes sometimes became a little bit chaotic. So how can I include those in a way that also becomes softer? And gentler? Is that a plan? Is that a plan? It doesn't feel like a plan to me because it's not fully defined? But it's it's a general direction that I want to go in?
Kelly Anne Powers 17:00
Does that give you permission that a painting or series doesn't have to be all things? Because you're gonna do another one?
Alice Sheridan 17:08
Yeah, yeah, I think that's really important that along with the idea that not every painting has to be perfect, maybe we see a lot online, I'm gonna say something really controversial here. So I just went to the Suzanne exhibition at Tate Modern, it's just opened in London, I absolutely loved Cezanne. When I was younger, I found this exhibition a little bit underwhelming. So you know, he's a fantastic artist, there were some paintings in there that were extraordinary, exquisite, but I could kind of count them. On one hand, there were lots of paintings, there were even one or two gonna sound awful. If I found them at a car boot sale, I would happily put them on a bonfire, right. And yet, we have an expectation that every painting we do has to feel like it's perfect, and it's got everything nailed. And it's all in the right place. And I'm not saying that you don't have any quality control or learning in your own work. But I think working across a group of different paintings gives you that freedom to make mistakes and to move on and review them in a group at the end. I think it's also quite a modern phenomenon, this idea of working in a collection, it's probably come from the fashion industry or something like that, and the marketing sense of like you put them all out at once. I don't think it's always how artists work. So I would just say don't get too caught up in the idea of like what a series has to look like, let your work in form itself and other paintings within it. But it's not about making a finish full stop. And then you do something different. There's always a continuity of the way you work that's going into the next thing you're going to do as well, when you're working
Kelly Anne Powers 18:48
through a painting. And let's say for the audience listening, like when we talk about a single painting or sort of talking about that painting within the body of work, what are your goals, sort of those first marks and how do those goals change as you work toward a finish
Alice Sheridan 19:04
at the moment early, it's just sort of getting started fairly quickly. I'm hesitating because I'm feeling that might change in the next set of work I make but at the moment and to date it has been getting started quickly. So that often means doing something that is quite obvious on the canvas quite quickly, really getting your relationship with the canvas going and putting quite a lot and if I know I want a full range from saturated to quite muted colors, I've got to put some of those really bright saturated colors in early on even if it looks absolutely hideous, because if I make a super gentle muted painting, it's going to be really difficult to add anything that's vibrant and saturated in because it's just gonna look horrendous. Whereas if I've introduced all the extremes at an early layer, so something really dark something really bright, then I often come back with kind of light again, and this is the benefit of acrylic is that you can do this from one day to the next, you're not waiting for days or weeks between each layer. And then come in with some neutrals, I've got the elements that I like to play with. And I've often at that stage got some interesting combinations and layers starting to suggest maybe composition for mood, all of those kinds of things. But quite often, a lot of that gets completely lost in the process. And a painting can just totally change direction in the course of one afternoon, go from totally light to dark, or just go off on a total different color adventure. And I just follow it now,
Kelly Anne Powers 20:39
did you have to learn to give yourself permission to follow those instincts?
Alice Sheridan 20:44
Yeah, yeah, I think it's hard to do that. Because there's not many other areas in life where we are allowed to, I took a course with Nicholas Wilton, which I then a couple of years later taught on with him for a few years. But it was kind of revolutionary, because he broke quite a lot of rules. And he was so open and honest about the way he painted. And actually watching somebody, make a painting, make changes make mistakes, rather than being taught how to paint. I think it's that difference between understanding something intellectually, and really physically going, Oh, I get that now. And the number of times that I would be kind of shout, and this was online, shouting at the screen like no, don't change that. I like that bit. And then, and then it would be like, oh, oh, okay, now it's better I get it. And really just feeling that in your body and thinking at the end of the day, it's only pain, only pain, we get so hit up about it. But it's very difficult to do that for yourself. Unless you've really, I don't know how else you find that kind of license to do it just from within yourself. I think that's quite hard.
Kelly Anne Powers 21:54
What you said about knowing it in your body has continued to surprise me as a painter, like, you can know something intellectually. And that's great. And that's definitely step one. But to know it in your body is such a different thing.
Alice Sheridan 22:08
Yeah. And I think again, that's, that's why when it comes back to this thing of processes awareness is giving that time in your process to recognize when those moments happen, because they can be very short, they can be quite fleeting, they can be like, just just the pressure of a brush mark on the canvas. And you just think, oh, yeah, you know, and maybe you only have that for like three seconds in a two hour painting time, where it really hits that high of Oh, yeah, that's what I want. Or you could mix a particular color, and it just sits next to another one. And, you know, it's just like, the best taste flavor in the world. And it hits your tongue, and it just sparkles. And I think that's what we're searching for. But giving yourself time to recognize when you feel those moments, that kind of body awareness thing. It's an important part of making art, I think
Kelly Anne Powers 23:01
you said that you sort of have these elements that you get on the page to give yourself problems. And then how do you decide in a given moment, like where to go next? What are you sort of thinking through in that middle stage,
Alice Sheridan 23:13
sometimes I write myself notes. So I might have like a little sheet of paper taped to the studio wall. And there might be a particular stage that I've left a painting at that for whatever reason, maybe it's lying on the floor, and it needs to dry flat. But I know, I've got an idea that I know that I want to do. I also know these days that I might forget the next time I go into the studio. So I will write that down, you know, and more x y Zed here or calm down this corner. So sometimes I know what the next step is, I think one of the rules, if there are any that I've developed for myself is that there's those beginning stages of a painting for me where it's quite loose, you haven't got anything to risk yet, because you haven't really made anything that you feel protective about, it starts to get to a stage where you do feel that and you want to you end up trying to safeguard the bits about it that you like. And while I think it's important to recognize that you can't always safeguard those bits, I do think at this stage, otherwise, you just end up going round and round in circles. It's important to go into a painting with a clear idea of what your intention for this part is. So am I adding precision? Do I need to wake it up and bring more looseness? Am I calming some colors down? am I adding a little bit more depth? What is my particular intention for that? And if you don't know if you can't answer that, you're only going to go into the painting and probably make more model you're just going to make more mess for yourself. I think sometimes in the middle paintings can sit in that stage for quite a while. And that's again, where working with a series really helps because there's usually one that you've got a really clear idea that you know what you want to do next. That's just going to get it that step closer towards what's ultimately going to feel like like it's complete, like you've done your work on it?
Kelly Anne Powers 25:02
How do shapes come into your work? Do you start big and go small? Or is that not even a consideration?
Alice Sheridan 25:10
I think I work very well with shapes. I think I work well with line, which is a struggle when it comes to painting, because painting is shapes. But as soon as I start thinking of shapes that may be, you know, have an edge or an outline, I can start to feel quite restrained. So I tend to like to lay out and let shapes develop. And with it, what often happens within that is you end up with very small shapes. So at the work that I've done at the moment, there are small shapes, but they're quite freeform. So they might be splatters. But if they're not painted, they're not controlled shapes within it, that shapes and pattern I think I struggle with, it's not something that comes naturally to me. But the sense of space and scale, working within larger shapes on a painting, trying to make paintings that are a little bit calmer, so that you've got that large space, then you have to tone down the other elements. So you've got to tone down the value within that space. It's a much looser way of working, I think, man, if you're not careful, you know, you end up with shapes being representational, where you don't want them to be perpetual struggle.
Kelly Anne Powers 26:19
Also, what I love about this is that often when you're beginner, you look at an artist and a body of work, like your work and think that like that artist is fully formed. And what I love about hearing you talk is that you are still in process. And I think that there's hopefully comfort for listeners in that, like you still have things that you struggle with as an artist and our challenges.
Alice Sheridan 26:41
Yeah, it's interesting, because people often ask me, you know, either Why don't you do a painting course? And the honest answer is, I'm still working it out, you've heard me try and articulate what my process is, you know, I can't even do it for myself very often, let alone put it into a step 123 format that anybody else would be able to follow with any kind of clear, logical coherence, you know, and also, I don't want to be stuck within this space, the work that I just finished is different from what I was doing a year ago. And I hope very much that the work that I'm going to be doing a year from now is different. Again, there will always be threads. And I think if you look back, you can see the like little stepping stones, oh, okay, this led to this. And then there was a bit of a reaction against it. And it led to this. And there's always a development. But I think as soon as you've got your process really defined, actually, it's your job to kind of stir it up a bit. Otherwise, you're just going into production mode. And that is not where I want to be.
Kelly Anne Powers 27:41
Do you feel an internal shift when you know, you're headed toward the finish?
Alice Sheridan 27:45
Yeah, I think it slows down a lot. But at the end of the day, whatever work you create, you have to put your name to whether that is sending it off to a gallery, or standing in front of it at an art fair and feel not necessarily proud of what you've created, but sort of grounded in it centered in it. So you need to give yourself enough time to feel Have I answered all the all the questions that have arisen in this painting? Is there anything that standing out to me that I want to change that niggles? Me that bothers me? How does it sit a little bit in the timeline of my own work, and within this group, are there consistencies, and it is a little bit like, I don't know, like music or making a meal, you want flavors to go together, but not all be the same. So I think towards the end, it very definitely slows down. Absolute telltale sign is when you've spent three hours working on a painting. And visually, you can see really not a lot of difference. Like if my husband saw the painting at breakfast, and at lunchtime, he'd say, I don't know what you've been doing. Because it looks the same to me. It might look the same to him. But it feels different from me. But you know, that would be a telltale sign step away enough, as would Yeah, just niggling at things without really making changes. And sometimes there are paintings that feel complete, they feel finished, they look finished, they've got everything, they tick all the boxes, but they've lost their soul a little bit. And I think you just have to kind of sit with those not let them out. And then you'll either resurrect them later. Or very often, there's something in a painting that isn't quite complete, or if you're not sure it's quite complete, is because you've done something that's so new to you. But it still feels a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit on the edge of what feels familiar. And I think that's another space where you have to be very, very careful that you don't overwork it or pull it back into the stable with everything else that looks the same because it's often those paintings that really are going to be the clue to what you end up doing next. And sometimes you look back and you think, Oh, you had you remember that painting that I did 18 months ago that felt like a really odd one. I get now what it was trying to teach me so that's slightly uncomfortable feeling That's something that I've learned to look for and really enjoy and appreciate. I think in painting, who
Kelly Anne Powers 30:05
we are when we walk into the studio each day is not the same person. So how do you gauge the headspace you're in and what kind of work the headspace can do that particular day?
Alice Sheridan 30:15
Yeah, it's interesting because I used to work at home. And now I have a bigger studio away from home, which is lovely. in one regard. It gives me more space. But sometimes it's a problem, because it's not as immediate getting there. But that travel time can be quite helpful. I think it does give a little bit of distance. And you can think, where were things where I left. And sometimes I take photographs to remind me, I would say less, actually, at the moment, because what I want is I want that feeling of like walking in through the door, and getting that immediate hit of oh, that's better than I remembered that's more exciting than I thought it was. Or sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes you think, oh, yeah, I left that one on a real high and you go in the next day, and you think, oh, no, no, no, no, no. So I don't try to prejudge that much I deal with what's facing me when I go into the studio that day. Sometimes I go in perhaps. And if I'm not in the mood to maybe to be big and expressive, I might kind of take myself off on a little side project and do something else instead, which sometimes goes somewhere. And sometimes it doesn't. But certainly on a big painting. If you're really not in the mood to do it, you can mess up a big painting and do a lot of good work.
Kelly Anne Powers 31:30
So you work in layers. As you're working up in layers. How did you learn what to keep and what to layer over and kind of how to say goodbye to something you love,
Alice Sheridan 31:41
saying goodbye can be quite hard. I think the tip for saying goodbye is is a little bit like the Marie Kondo tidying up thing, thank it for its contribution so far, because what a fantastic position to be in if you've got lots of things you love in a painting, great, you've got a lot of things to choose from, but maybe you can't do them all at once. So maybe there will be one of those things that you love. So say it is an amazing color mix between a lovely mid 90 Blue and an olive green. But actually in this painting, you feel like you've got more fantastic gorgeous glowing oranges going on. You know what all the colors in one painting. But there's a little bit of olive green in a painting over there. So maybe we'll kind of mentally transport that, over to that painting. Thank you very much for the clue. Thank you for the idea, I will take you over there and I will develop it in matte painting. And on this one, I'm making a choice for actually what's talking to me a bit louder in this painting. But I think the way that the layers work is at the beginning, I'm looking for those jumping off points, then once you get them once you get a sense of okay, this painting is going to be mainly dark, or it's mainly light, or there's a really strong emphasis or shape happening or kind of directional flow going on over here. Well, that means that that part over there that needs to stay subdued. So I know that I can just work on that and keep it subdued, but still keep adding to it. As long as those are the boundaries to it. Again, that comes back to that clarity about the different elements of how a painting needs to work together, you need something that's strong, you need something that's almost going to be leading the painting. And then the other ideas are supportive, really, and work with your layers like that, you know, do you want this to be visually obvious? Or do you want this to be subtle and the trust comes that you can build the subtlety when you start working with things that are a little bit more sort of homogenous really. So you know the subtlety comes in the layers where you've got blue on blue on blue when you get close. That's beautiful. There's so much better than just one hit of blue.
Kelly Anne Powers 33:46
Do you place any limitations? Like do you do any like color limitations or shape limitations? Any kind of that going into things? Or does it differ series to series
Alice Sheridan 33:57
when I first started I worked with a kind of much more traditional palette and you can mix almost any color as long as you've got a warm and a cool yellow and warmth and a cool red and a warm and cool blue. But with acrylic because of the drying and certainly as you scale up as well. It's not like you lay out a palette like you would do with it with an oil palette sometimes that just kind of grab a color, mix it and go with it gives me those unexpected contrasts that I'm looking for in a painting. Do you think this is something that I'm still finding my feet in? I did one series where I pre mixed what I called my skeleton colors, and then I adjusted from them as I went. I'm not sure I entirely loved the process as much though, but I do wonder now if probably it would be quite good to go back to a much more limited palette, but I know I've tried it. I've tried to do it in a sketchbook too. I've got a sketchbook that says very proudly on the front page. This is my black and white only sketchbook you know how long it lasted. It lasted about three pages. And then I wrote it took note that said, I can't stick with this, I need some color. So I don't think I'm very good at limitations. Actually, let me just rephrase that. I think it's not that I'm not good with limitations. I don't like limiting myself at the beginning. I like flinging my arms wide open at the beginning. And then I bring the limitations in to the middle. And at the end, I think that's an essential part of it. But if I do it at the beginning, I end up feeling a bit straitjacketed, that's probably a better way of describing it.
Kelly Anne Powers 35:28
Also, I hear you saying, which is a little bit adjacent that those first layers, you're not thinking about your goals for the painting, like you're just putting color and shape and line and then maybe mid toward end. Like, that's when you're thinking like, this is a series about x.
Alice Sheridan 35:44
Yeah, yeah. And I think also, sometimes what happens, because a lot of the way I paint is about kind of how you feel in response to what's around you, like I always say that they are landscapes, but the phrase that sits in my mind is the places in which we find ourselves. So it's not necessarily a vision of a place, but it is the place in which we recognize something of ourselves or the world around us. And that can exist along a spectrum. So sometimes paintings arrive, and they visually landskap, they've got the horizon, there's a sky, there's a base, and sometimes that used to frustrate me in the same way that that painting of the tube station that looked too much like an underground tube station with a window, but now I just kind of let them be, and I let the paintings find the right owners, because I enjoy the fact that they can have quite strong links back to places. And then they can also become something that is much purer in terms of this is just feeling like that. This is just an expressive Swertia of you know, green that feels like oak leaves moving in the wind, like, they're both same spectrums of what it feels to be outside, or this is what it feels like when you're waiting at a train station and the winds moving in front of your face. And I try not to define it too much, which is probably a bit of a weakness, but that's where we are. Although you've mentioned
Kelly Anne Powers 37:11
a couple of times that you work at a couple of different scales, where does scale come into your process,
Alice Sheridan 37:18
what I really love about paintings and making art is that human connection that you are making something that is tactile, that you hold in your hand, when you own a painting, you can stroke it, you can do whatever you want to it. And it's something that we have in our living spaces, too. So I think when you make small paintings, and as we're recording this, I've just finished a group of small paintings. And the kind of intimate engagement on them is so different, it feels so different from those big expensive paintings. Almost as time consuming, it is crazy. But I quite liked doing that there's something really very meditative to them. That's what that series is called paperback meditations. And I do love that immediacy. Because the things like the drawn marks can become much more part of the composition, and they're much more visually, clearly part of it, they can get lost in big paintings. I like the challenge of both. I like the way that what you do in small paintings and forms. What happens in bigs works, too. And I like the way that big paintings stretch me. And I have to keep reminding myself what it feels like to work on a big painting, when I'm working on something really small. There's also something I like that I haven't really fully explored about the relationship between big and small paintings literally together, like I've got this idea that paintings would stay together as companion pieces across space. So you've got a large painting in a room, and then you've got a small painting that is somehow responsive to it, that also exists within the room, so that it almost becomes something that's outside of the parameters of the picture, you know, literally physically across space within the room. But I like the idea of paintings within homes as part of everyday life, rather than the idea of art as large scale installations kind of doesn't excite me. So it's that personal responsive. That's where I am on the scale front.
Kelly Anne Powers 39:17
So I guess for you when you're building a series, are there small and large working in tandem? Or do you just work on small or just work on large? Or does it change for every series,
Alice Sheridan 39:29
it's almost like there are certain times in the year I feel physically more like doing one than the other. So I follow that a little bit simply because of having this working space at home and having the big studio like tiny paintings and the big studio would feel out of scale, they would feel like they lost themselves in that space. So I tend to work on the small ones when I'm working at home here and the big ones over in the main studio. So there's always a little bit of a distance so they're not in that sense. This is why there's this, there's this gap still, they're not conceived necessarily as a series that work together. But it's really interesting how working on one, you can play with something like composition or how much you push a space within a painting. And it's much easier to do on something small scale. And then that gives you the confidence and the bravery, maybe to push it a little bit more on the big ones. So they're not studies ever for the big ones. But I think that realization of what you're learning and why one is working, maybe you've pushed the color a bit deeper than you dare to go quiet on the big ones, something like that. That's how they helped me anyway,
Kelly Anne Powers 40:38
there's something about like opening the door to the path. Yeah,
Alice Sheridan 40:43
that's the exciting part, though, isn't it? Opening the door to the path like opening the door to the path? That's what we're looking for? Is that what is that next part? What is the next step in your adventure and changing you as an artist and what you want to create, it just goes back to this idea of not having your work super predictable, and getting a little bit comfortable in that space of not knowing I think that's one of the hardest things that we have to do as artists. And it is it's not easy as why being an artist is, you know, it takes courage. I mean, we're not changing the world, right, let's have a little bit of perspective on it. Here. It is really only paint, but what it means to you how it can lead your personal development, how it can lead to making bolder decisions in other areas of your life, and what it can inspire other people to do and to enjoy. Those are good things about life,
Kelly Anne Powers 41:37
listening to you talk about how you approach your work. I know some of us, you know, as beginners, we get so wrapped up in the one painting and thinking about how that feels to think this one painting makes or breaks. Everything I'm doing is so restrictive, in terms of listening to you talk about your process is so expansive,
Alice Sheridan 41:59
I think that goes all the way back to school, you know, we're used to, you know, work is being judged, and it's being marked against a set of criteria. And perhaps as adults, what we're trying to do maybe is set ourselves free a little bit from some of that. And if we're calling ourselves artists, or if we're not even at the stage where we are calling ourselves artists, but we are making art, we are on the step of doing that, like you've already made a decision to test yourself and challenge yourself and do something that is technically difficult, just for the heck of it. Quite frankly, if you want an easy life, there are other things to be doing, you know, follow a cross stitch pattern. And I don't say that disparagingly because, you know, I quite like seeing doing tapestries, sometimes in the winter, but there's no doubt it's a lot easier. When my daughter was little she wanted to learn to play piano. And we had this fantastic tutor come to the house. And I said I'll learn with you on the condition that I don't have to follow any rules or do any exams. And then one day, I realized that I was sitting and I was doing an hour and a half two hours of piano practice a day, because it was easier to follow the music and get my fingers to do the right things than it was to come up in the studio and figure out what I had to do next. And you know what I did the next day, I canceled my piano lessons. Because ultimately, what did I really want to be putting my time into and developing not playing piano at that stage, I have limited time. And while I loved it, it didn't give me that open ended sense of learning that making art could do because it was more directed because it was more specific. And given the choice. You got to make choices sometimes.
Kelly Anne Powers 43:41
You mentioned that you have two studio spaces, you started at a home studio and then expanded into a non home studio. How did that change your practice?
Alice Sheridan 43:53
Well, first I just want to say it took quite a while to get to that stage not only to feel that I was ready for it, that I deserved it. Aren't we funny, you know, we're in London, I could justify the cost of it. Just to find somewhere that was suitable took about three years, it was tough. And when I did find it, it was bigger than I was looking for it was more expensive than I was looking for made me feel completely sick. I mean, literally completely sick for at least the first four months that I paid rent made me feel completely guilty. If I had a week, I didn't go well. But it was another one of those things that was a step towards taking what we do seriously. And I think there are steps that come before that like investing in framing, committing to showing your work at art fairs or galleries, contacting people and saying this is the work I've made when you look at it. All of those things that are almost like little steps or promises that you make to yourself and committing to the studio was doing that for me. I just sort of got it kitted out before we went into lockdown Um, so it was amazing to have a space to go to, and everybody was at home, the whole family was at home, it became a little bit of an escape zone. You know, I had plans to do workshops and it is just a complete mess. Now I, you know, I work on the walls, I work on the floor, sometimes, you know, the 10 large canvases all laid out on the floor. And I'm kind of tiptoeing between them trying not to fall over them, I couldn't have done that at home, I had space for one large painting at home. So it's totally changed the way I can work did that
Kelly Anne Powers 45:29
take time to learn how to work in the new space?
Alice Sheridan 45:33
Yeah, it was really scary, it was really scary. And all of those, like middle to small sized paintings just felt so insignificant, so insignificant in that space. So it's about 550 square foot. And then there's a bit divided off at the end for storage and packing and that kind of thing. So again, it's on that scale, which is not like a room at home. So that relationship that I was talking about earlier between how we experienced paintings in our home that was missing, all of a sudden, that was just, that was just gone. So I found that quite a challenge, I still do find that quite a challenge. And I think there was always this sense of can I inhabit this space. And initially, I had a two year contract, and I think it totally in my mind was I'm gonna have to leave, I'm gonna have to leave, I can't justify this, I'm gonna have to leave. And then when I renewed the contract again, I was like, Okay, right, I'm here.
Kelly Anne Powers 46:28
How much do you deal with impostor syndrome? And impostor syndrome might not be the right word. But how did you learn? And are learning learned to navigate the parts of you that sort of said, like, you're not going to be able to do this? Or who do you think you are? Or this is selfish, like all those things that are in our heads? Often when we start?
Alice Sheridan 46:53
It's funny, because in our own podcast, is making art selfish was the second episode we ever did, because I think it's something that we do really struggle with. I think it's something that's ongoing. And ultimately, again, that's one of the other elements that I love are four is that it pushes us to face all these kinds of questions. And to deal with them, how have I dealt with them? I've had support, I haven't just relied on my family. I just relied on my family. And what they said about our I mean, holy smokes, I mean, no, so I did have I had a coach that at the time, she wasn't a painter, she was an ex accountant. But I really liked her attitude and approach to life, she was older than me, she was quite ballsy, she used to push you in quite a gentle way. And I think that it's a hand in hand journey all the way along. So I have, if I come across somebody else who does that kind of mindset, emotional development work. And it feels interesting to me, I do it. And without a doubt, at every stage where I've done that, it's led me to something more, but it is ongoing work and is ongoing progress. And it fits into this whole thing that we were talking about earlier about recognizing things in your body as well, you know, I'm hitting 50. Next year, my body is not the same as it was 10 years ago, it's not reacting to things the same. It gets tired in a different way. Anybody who's listening to this, as older is kind of shouting at me going Just you wait, just you wait. But this is the thing is you're in the stage you're in now. And it's always shifting, all you can do is manage the stage you're in now and ask yourself, what do I need now? Where do I need to support? How do I need to change? And, you know, 810 years ago, I think I approached things from quite a masculine point of view, quite a challenging point, quite a pushy point of view, you know, this needs doing right, buckle down and do it. Now there's a little bit of okay, I've laid the foundations, I can afford to take a slightly gentler step back, I can afford to let things take a little bit longer, I can take a days break when I feel like I need it, because that's what's going to serve me in the long term. And I think learning how we manage all of that stuff. You know, that's life goals. That's the business of being alive and functioning in the best version that you can with what you have in the moment and get support wherever you can, because you need it. None of us can do it on our own.
Kelly Anne Powers 49:21
Right? Because I feel like when someone first walks into painting, they think like, Well, I'm just gonna mix some color. I'm gonna lay on a canvas. Yep. And that's it. And it turns out that it's a lot more than that. And I think that can be confusing to people like wait, oh, and I thought it was just like, why am I suddenly like asking myself all these deep life questions. I thought it was just paint
Alice Sheridan 49:42
on the canvas. Yeah, it's a little bit like having children in that way. You kind of like, you know, it's probably going to be a little bit more complicated than you expect. But if you really knew everything that it was going to entail, you know, but it seems like a good idea. Let's get started. And then you know, we'll learn As we go, we'll learn as we go. But you can also take it as far or as not far as you want to, right? We're talking about how I'm approaching my pain. Not everybody has not even everybody has the same desire, it's more important than that everybody has unique desires and unique and totally different and personal ideas and where they want to aim for, and what they want out of it. And no one of those is any more right than another, other than how it sits with you. That's it.
Kelly Anne Powers 50:29
What I hear you saying is that it's worth spending time or emotions, like it's worth spending energy, figuring out answers to some of those questions for you,
Alice Sheridan 50:39
I think realizing them as well. And just making sure that you, you know, you're on your own track, don't look at somebody else's progress, or the kind of trajectory or even they're going off down a particular Avenue with their PTFE like, oh, maybe I should be doing that their way, because they are, and therefore the way I'm working is any lesser, they can be quite interesting signposts, sometimes those little moments of, you know, is it is it envy that's actually quite valuable? As in? I want some of that, right? How do I get from here to there? That's quite useful. But it's a very different thing from everybody's doing that what I'm doing doesn't count unless I'm doing that. And you need to be clear on that distinction.
Kelly Anne Powers 51:23
If someone came to you and said, I want to get really good at painting, what advice do you give them,
Alice Sheridan 51:28
it's probably the most boring advice that anybody else always says, which is, just do more. But beyond that, more practically, what I would say is create some limitations for yourself. So having said earlier, I don't work very well, with limitations, I do have limitations, we all have choices that we've made. So mine were no figures, no still life, you know, there was a leaning towards landscape. Okay, so landscape, how am I going to gather the information that I want. And the first kind of series I did, they were very small, they were about probably six by eight inches, they were in oil on board. And I did this kind of scratching through technique, I didn't even know that there was a technique called sgraffito, I thought, you know, but working on that group together with a timescale in mind, and a deadline really helped. So I think set some parameters, try to keep the format of what you're working on consistent, you can shift it next time. But having a consistent format, it just helps keep your head in the same place, you're not adjusting to that constant shift of scale. So you know, four to six pieces, same size, not everyone is going to be perfect. I've had times where I've worked on a group. And my challenge has been, you know, make sure that they all finish, they all come over the finishing line at the same time. And I'm a bit looser about that now, and the reason that I had that quite strict rule for myself is it's quite easy at the beginning, when you have one painting and a group that's struggling a little bit to kind of let that linger, let that stay behind. And you don't make yourself face up to what you have to do to change that painting. Whereas when I had that quite strict rule for myself, you have to complete all of these, I can't opt out and say that one's not working, I've got to go and make that one work, whatever that takes. And it was in the making that one work, those difficult bits, those stretchy bits. That's where I really learned now maybe I can be a little bit more relaxed about that. And if I don't finish a painting that's part of a group. That's fine. It'll keep going in some other format.
Kelly Anne Powers 53:38
You can learn more about Alice Sheridan, including links to her podcasts that she co hosts with Louise Fletcher, art juice at her website, Alice sheridan.com, and on Instagram and Facebook, and we'll link to everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for being with us today. Alice.
Alice Sheridan 53:53
Thank you. It's been a really challenging conversation. I love it. You've asked questions that have pushed me and I've really enjoyed it. So thank you for reaching out.
Kelly Anne Powers 54:02
We're finished with the main episode, but there's more great conversation with Alice Sheridan at patreon.com/learn to pink podcast, sign up at any tier and you'll get immediate access to share it and Extended Cut bonus, where you'll learn why drawing might be the key to figuring out what a painting is about and discover some great ideas for how to hold time for your art practice. Plus, you'll have access to over 20 additional extended cut bonuses with guests. All for the price of coffee plus tip for show notes head to learn to paint podcast.com/podcast/episode 70