April 19, 2024 • 37 mins
Award winning artist Laura Matthews chats with Claudia Chan Shaw. Laura’s latest series of paintings are glorious, spontaneous depictions of the landscape. And figures within that landscape. Cliffs and rivers…waterfalls. There’s a lot of water. But behind the idyllic scenes lies the thought that everything in life is a calculation. And that things can change at any moment...
Image: Laura Matthews, Narcissus, 152 x 152 cm, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist and Brenda Colahan Fine Art.
Laura Matthews’ exhibition THE CALCULATION is on at GALLERY LANE COVE + CREATIVE STUDIOS 24 April - 18 May 2024
Opening Event: Wednesday 1 May 2024. 6-8pm.
Laura Matthews is Artist in Residence at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios
CREDITS Presenter and Producer: Claudia Chan Shaw Production team: Cathie Campbell, Shu-Li Lau, Sheena Rees, Anoushka Sansom and Sasha Satz. Executive Producer: Miguel Olmo
Brought to you by Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios
You can Follow us or subscribe on your favourite streaming platform.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You know, you never quite knew why you were there. They only took 22 people a year. So,
(00:10):
and they had three divisions and one was talented, the rest was promising and the other one was
completely bonkers. So within those three brackets you had to kind of work out which
one you were and I never really quite knew bonkers definitely. But maybe I ticked a couple
of other boxes as well, I don't know.
(00:55):
Hi everyone, welcome to Art Chat, a podcast that takes you on a creative journey. I'm your host, Claudia Chanshaw.
So settle in and come along for the ride as we get chatty with artists. Before we get started,
we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where we meet to produce this episode
and pay our respects to the elders both past and present. Today we're chatting with award-winning artist Laura Matthews.
(01:35):
Laura's latest series of paintings are glorious, spontaneous depictions of the landscape and figures
within that landscape, cliffs and rivers, waterfalls. There's a lot of water. But behind the idyllic scenes
lies the thought that everything in life is a calculation and that things can change at any moment.
(01:56):
Laura Matthews, thanks so much for joining me on Art Chat. Thanks so much for having me today.
Now let's go back in time. You're born in South Wales and you did your art training at the prestigious
Slade School of Fine Art in London. So what were you like as a kid? Were you artistic? Were you always drawing?
I was always drawing. My father was a painter and the best part of my biology was homework was drawing
(02:22):
from the encyclopedia Britannica and I'd spent hours rendering these weird and wonderful things.
I had nothing to do with the homework but I just filled books full of them. So that, yes, I was a scribbler.
Always a scribbler. So it was a no-brainer that you would go to art school.
I think they kind of wanted me to do other things. My sister was very academic so I was probably expected to do something like that.
(02:49):
I think my father was desperate for me to go to art school but he really wanted me to come to that decision myself.
He didn't want to influence me too much. So the academic stuff was very emphasized at home and we all worked very hard
but I actually hated it and I just wanted to paint.
So you immigrated with your family to Australia in 2002. So what was the attraction of Australia for you?
(03:15):
Well I married an Australian so that's a sort of start I suppose. That helps.
And I thought I decided that I didn't want to say when I fell off the perch at the end of it all
that I'd only ever lived in one place and I thought I think I can go. I think I want to go and have a
bit of an adventure and you know it was an adventure because I hadn't a clue where I was going and I'd only been here once.
(03:39):
I had three little kids, two babies and a bigger kid and it was sort of very sort of cleansing to just get on a plane
and not have any belongings or anything. I found my studio before I found somewhere to live which was great
because that was my main anxiety that I'd lose the thread of my work and I wouldn't be able to paint.
(04:02):
So that was a priority for me which is probably a bit selfish but there you go.
And so that's what happened we just sort of came and for a long time I was very very happy here.
You know very sort of it felt like a holiday and extended holiday until the reality of life set in again.
It's interesting that you the first thing you did was set up your studio even rather than have like four walls
(04:27):
and a roof to protect your little family. Yeah well I mean I was we were living in it.
It was quite nice because we were living out of suitcases and it was just fine and I didn't have anything to worry about
really except where I was going to work. That was the main thing.
In one of your social media posts and not that I'm stalking you, Laura Matthews,
you had hashtag Australian Artist, hashtag British Artist.
(04:53):
So do you consider yourself an Australian Artist or a British Artist or are you a Sydney based British Artist?
Oh my word that's a lot of options there. Take the box.
I would say that I'm a bit of a confused hybrid at the moment.
I think I'm still probably British but when I go to Britain I don't feel British as much anymore.
(05:16):
I feel kind of Australian. So I'm a bit I think I've been here 20 years and I think after 20 years it's a bit more confusing.
So I would say that I am an Australian British Artist.
Now it's always said that the light in Australia is different to that of the UK and Europe.
So was there a weird period of adjustment for you? So is your painting experience in Australia different to the experience of painting in the UK?
(05:44):
It is actually but it's a funny thing in that when I was in the UK my work was much more coloured.
It was much more colourful and yes I know it's bizarre isn't it?
I think I was constantly fighting the fact that that northern light would you know it was kind of dark a lot of the time.
So when I came here the light I didn't have to do that anymore.
(06:08):
I was working with light in light and so it did change my palette but it made it slightly greyer in a sense.
Paintings are about light so I didn't need to introduce colour.
The colour was already there in the organisation of the light and tone and all the rest of it and the drawing.
So it did change.
That's interesting that you were under those grey skies in the UK that you were creating your own colour.
(06:35):
Yes, I mean the training I had the day was very short it started at nine and ended at three in the life room and at three o'clock it was pitch black usually.
Apart from in the summer when it was gorgeous and light till ten o'clock at night.
So I kind of got used to working within the confines of those hours but working very intensively.
(06:56):
So here it's been the same but the light is there all the time.
You don't get that moment in the afternoon where you go, oh the sun's going, it's getting a bit dark and miserable.
It doesn't really happen here to the same extent.
So at the Slade School of Fine Art in London the teachers are absolute gods of modern painting.
(07:18):
And you knew the great painter Ewan Uglow and many consider that he was the most outstanding English painter of his time.
He was a tutor and he became a friend.
So tell me about that relationship with Ewan.
Ewan was a very sort of private shy person but what did have God's status certainly at the Slade.
(07:39):
I mean he was sort of, you know people used to tip her around him and wear black a lot and sit at his feet and watch him smoke which is probably what he did most of at the time.
But he was sort of generous in a very reticent way. He was very, he wouldn't say much when he'd stand behind you when you were painting which was really terrifying and quite stressful and say the occasional thing but you'd sort of hang off every word because they were rare.
(08:13):
But I remember when I hung my postgraduate show I think it was, I got the courage up and I said, look I've hung it, I don't know if it's any good.
And I sort of wanted to know that he thought it was okay and he said, Laura you don't need that kind of reassurance do you?
(08:34):
And I thought, oh he likes it I think and I think he said it's okay. So you know it was a bit like that, it was a bit of a dance with him.
He used to like teasing you by withholding stuff.
But he was a lovely lovely man and a great bon vivour.
And once you sort of got on you were a friend, the wine flowed, the food flowed, it was lovely and it was a really lovely time to be at the slave where there were lots of very great artists who poupled around and we'd have great dinners up in the round room.
(09:12):
We called it the return to the top of the building.
And we'd have a great time. I remember one Christmas we all sat around, there were a lot of students and a lot of tutors and I don't know if you've heard of Paul Orega but she's a very great artist.
She's pretty famous in the UK. She's done a huge, she's got a whole room dedicated to her in the National Gallery.
And she sat opposite me and you and had set the rules that everybody had to draw the person opposite them.
(09:38):
So I drew her and she drew me and I wish I'd kept that bloody drawing because I could retire now.
But I don't know what I did with it. So that's so sad. And she was so charming and so generous about the horrible piece of work I did for her.
And it was just things like that used to happen all the time and we get, and you never quite knew why you were there.
(10:04):
They only took 22 people a year. And they had three divisions and one was talented, the rest was promising and the other one was completely bonkers.
So within those three brackets you had to kind of work out which one you were and I never really quite knew bonkers definitely.
But maybe I ticked a couple of other boxes as well, I don't know.
Yeah, you might have been there. That delicious mix of all three.
(10:26):
Possibly. There were a lot of those I think. Definitely.
There were lots of drinks parties and things and we'd all meet out on the lawns outside the UCL building which is a really grand building.
And often you'd see some pretty famous people and I remember this man came over to me and he was, I would say, a walking corpse at this point.
(10:49):
And he said, hello. And I said, oh hi. And this is Lucy and Freud. This is Laura Mathews. Well, you know, introductions.
And you know, you kind of stand there and you go, oh, okay.
So it was, I think he didn't live much longer actually after that. It was sort of the tail end of those great British painters that formed the Camden Group and he was at the end of his life almost.
(11:16):
So there were lots of people who were sort of had peaked and were very, very, very famous who you just kind of thought were totally in awe of.
Did you lose the power of speech when Freud spoke to you? I think I probably blushed a bit and sort of giggled possibly as a 20 year old would.
Might have been a bit older. I can't remember.
(11:38):
What was the greatest lesson that you and you glow ever taught you?
He really taught me how to look, how to think about drawing and how to explore the surface of a painting.
You know, the, no, I don't mean that in a physical way. I mean, in a conceptual way, how to think about drawing in a very post-Cesan conceptual way, which I endeavor to do still, even when I'm working from photographs.
(12:10):
And I think that kind of way of thinking has enabled me to actually work from other people's images and from my own images and to make pictures that have a sort of narrative quality as well.
I mean, he was very, he had spent months, years in front of the model doing one painting, which I knew at the time.
(12:31):
There's a lot of peer pressure to do something similar at the Slade and a lot of artists have and still do.
But I knew in myself that I had too much else that I wanted to do within the work.
So I always felt a little bit inhibited, but I knew that the work, doing that work was very powerful and very informative, and I would make works further down the track that were more about the sort of things I wanted to do.
(12:55):
And I'm just starting my ripe old age to get to that point where I'm actually making images that are closer to what I want to make, but still not there, but getting there.
So I'm not going to see you hanging on a painting for seven years.
I mean, I did.
I used to make very, you know, one painting per term, which was sort of 10 weeks intense.
(13:19):
So then you really start to have to resolve things, which is hard because then you're dealing in the same time, you know, from nine to three, the light changes.
You have to reconcile the image with that light change.
You have to make adjustments.
You have to decide on how the key of the painting is going to work.
(13:40):
What are you going to maintain?
What are you going to scrap?
It's a very, very intense and analytical process, which I think is really good for you.
I mean, I think it was good for me.
And it's enabled me to do the sort of work that I'm doing now.
Moving countries is not an easy thing, especially with a young family in tow, but it feels like you were able to make that move and quickly throw yourself into the local art scene.
(14:08):
You seem to have grasped the Australian art scene rather quickly.
You know, when you go somewhere new, you just don't know the rules.
So you think you can do anything.
You know, you just, it's such a reinvention of the self when you move.
So I didn't really have any anxiety about it.
Much more anxious, subsequently.
(14:29):
Much less convinced about the whole thing, you know, about entering competitions and all the rest of it.
And I don't really want to make work for competitions.
I mean, that's not what I'm where my head is at the minute.
I mean, it'd be great.
I mean, I have won a couple of things, which has been fantastic.
And, you know, it's amazing in terms of making some money and the sort of kudos that goes with it.
(14:54):
But I find it hard to make images that fit a competition.
You know, it seems like a strange way to approach things for me.
Particularly now, because I'm sort of engaged with different subjects.
And so, you know, just painting a landscape, you know, is not what I want to do.
But it doesn't mean that I won't do it or, you know, that I won't put certain images into competitions
(15:22):
because they seem to fit the brief.
Similarly with portraits, you know, I really have to be engaged with the subject.
I can't just make a portrait anymore.
I mean, I used to be able to, but I can't seem to do that now.
I mean, I can do a self-portrait probably because it's me.
And I can...
The most successful portraits I've made have been of people that I've known kind of well
(15:44):
and where there's that composite notion of what a person is,
more than just one moment, more than just one appearance, more than just one thing,
where they're sort of multifaceted.
And that doesn't mean that I make multiple images of the same person.
It just means that the image, hopefully, that you make is imbued with many elements
and many components of that one individual.
Because you've had success.
(16:06):
You've been a finalist multiple times in the Portia Gietz Prize,
the Haddington Art Prize, the Moran Portrait Prize.
So while you've made, you know, I don't really want to do this whole competition thing,
you're damn good at it.
Thank you.
I have been...
I had some success, yes, but I don't know.
I keep forgetting the deadlines. That's my problem.
It's like I've lost the plot too many times.
(16:29):
You've got an exhibition opening at Gallery, Lang Cove and Creative Studios.
And the exhibition is called The Calculation.
So what is the significance of the title of the exhibition?
I've had a couple of titles in my head for that show,
and I think ultimately it is possibly what you mentioned in your introduction,
(16:50):
is that there are moments in life, and I've had many where things have been
tipped really radically one way or the other where it's been.
And it's the same for everybody's life. It's true for everyone.
And what I wanted to do, those works, is make very sort of benign
landscapes and figures, and sort of put them under a sort of cover in the resin
(17:13):
where they're sort of almost like screens,
where there's a sort of distance between the viewer and the narrator, if you like.
But actually they can be interpreted in so many ways.
The benign quality of them is actually, and some of them quite,
I find quite malevolent, although it's sort of sugar coated if you like.
So I've kept the palette really kind of light, and some use some sort of almost
(17:37):
kind of pretty if you like. But actually there's a lot for me in those images.
There's a lot of fear. And so they're not as benign as one might first think
on seeing them. And that's part of the joy of work,
is that it can have so many levels that someone can come to it
and read the title and associate it with certain things, or can come to it
(18:01):
with a memory of something of their own, or just kind of be slightly baffled
by why I would want to paint someone on a tightrope.
There are different levels. And then they might engage with the actual
painting itself in terms of the surface and all the rest of it,
which one does with every painting that you approach. But I want the paintings
to keep giving something new to the viewer.
(18:24):
While you call it the calculation, looking at the paintings,
I find them so incredibly lush and spontaneous and free
with this wonderful gestural brushwork and instant.
It feels like it's so immediate, so in the moment.
Well, that's lovely. Thank you. That's a very nice description. Rather than calculated.
It's interesting. It is. It is. But they are a calculation.
(18:47):
They're a massive calculation that's taken 40 years.
Yeah, this didn't just happen overnight, folks.
Yeah, the works are dreamy figurative works,
landscapes, figures in landscape. The scenes look like paradise.
You've got lush foliage, you've got cliffs, you've got pools and waterfalls.
Are these real places? Some of them are real.
(19:10):
Some of them are kind of made from images that I've collected,
or I do screenshots too. And I just make it up from there, really.
I mean, the painting, after the initial reference,
the image has a life of its own. And you sort of have to edit it as you go.
(19:31):
It changes. And I have to make accommodations within the painting for composition
and where things aren't quite working.
So they're never just one idea. They're a combination of images, drawing of my own.
You've got to make the painting work, essentially.
(19:52):
So there's a lot of jiggery pokery that goes on.
Jiggery pokery.
In the latest body of works, you create water, waterfalls,
figures are jumping in the water. They're under the water.
They're treading water. They're swimming. They're floating.
And the viewer can feel the water splashing and flowing and movement.
(20:15):
There's white tips on the edge of the water. So you get that sense of movement.
So what is your relationship to water?
My relationship with water is very complicated.
You'd have to have grown up in the north of England in the 70s
to understand quite how fearful of water and how unpleasant it was for me
when I was a kid. The north of England is freezing.
(20:38):
And once a week at school from about the age of seven,
we were bust over to a Victorian sewing pool that just stank of chlorine
and probably other not so nice things.
And we were dumped in the pool for sort of an hour to kind of drown each other.
And then afterwards I might get an apple and a bar of chocolate or something.
(21:01):
And it was just horrible. The whole experience was horrible.
And we never... We don't swim in the ocean really in the UK because it's too cold.
And I'd actually in late years saw my very good friend who was sort of only a few meters away from me.
He actually drowned. That didn't cheer me up either.
So that was pretty terrifying. And I knew at that point,
(21:24):
because I couldn't rescue him, that I wasn't a strong swimmer
and that I wouldn't ever go back in the ocean again.
So since I've lived here, I haven't really gone into the ocean that much.
I love looking at it and I love it as a device within paintings
because of the mass of it and the tonality of it
and the way that it's both... It absorbs and reflects light.
(21:46):
So it has so many kind of powerful, emotive uses within a composition.
And I just love big bodies of water. I'm happier when I live next to water.
But I do not want to be in it. I really, really don't.
Which is a shame because I'm sure it's not that bad.
(22:07):
Your observations, your framing, your points of view are almost cinematic.
You're looking down from high above or you're observing from under the water looking up
or you're almost peering through the trees at the subjects.
And none of the subjects engages directly with the viewer.
They're captured in this natural wilderness and they don't know that you're watching.
(22:29):
So the paintings are very voyeuristic.
They are a bit voyeuristic, yes.
I mean, I kind of like that because I do like watching.
I do like watching people. I do like observing.
I like watching things that are unobserved or perceived by the individual to be
that they're not being observed. So it is a bit naughty, really.
But I do like that idea that you can...
(22:52):
So there's a kind of narrative element which is completely separate from what the person
involved might actually be considering or thinking.
That you can sort of make anything up that you like.
And so can the viewer of my work. So there's many, many layers.
They might be seduced by the image but then kind of think about it a bit more.
(23:13):
I think, well, that's a bit mad to do that or whatever.
I just hope that they're kind of compelling in a way that makes people think about
the quality of the work but also a potential narrative that might be meaningful to them
or make them question something.
Yeah, the stories that you can read into them are countless.
(23:35):
The figures are blurred, they're faceless, they're constantly moving.
So is everything as idyllic as it appears?
Is that a glorious day in the bush or crossing the stream?
Or are the paintings metaphors for that stepping into the unknown,
for taking that leap of faith or walking that tightrope?
Oh, definitely. I mean, that's why I painted them.
(23:58):
And that's why they are kind of benign but not.
I mean, there's one I think called Jana, which is where you have the two headed...
a head that faces both back and front.
And it's an ambiguous representation of a figure about to go in or coming out of a water of a body of water or a river.
(24:19):
And that's the kind of ambiguity that I like that you never...
you don't know quite how this is all going to end up.
Is it going to be a disaster? Is she going to go in the water, come out, not come out?
Is she going to come away from the water after having swum?
There are all those questions.
So there is that kind of open-ended question with all the works.
And people can really see what they like to see, what they want to see.
(24:42):
And be guided by the title up to a point but not really...
that there's many, many interpretations of the works.
Yes, so you mentioned Janus because there are the mythological and biblical references.
In many of the titles we have Narcissus and Ophelia, Icarus, Athena, Venus, Janus.
References to Adam and Eve.
(25:04):
What's going on there?
No, I mean I like the idea of archetypes and the idea that some of those kind of like Icarus, for example,
is such a great legend, you know, the idea of touching the sun.
I mean those sorts of things excite me and interest me.
And the idea that we all try and do that in some way in our lives,
(25:28):
we all try and go close to the flame.
But you know, a lot of us just fall away and fail miserably.
And it's a bit like the whole thing of the calculation.
You know, do we try and touch it or do we back away?
You know, it's all these same things, the sort of sliding door concept that you kind of go one way or the other.
And it's a bit, there's one picture in there of a man getting onto a tube and he sort of stops short.
(25:52):
Which happens a lot in London, you know, once those doors close, you're pretty, you're on the next train.
So, you know, there are moments in your life where if maybe if you've got on the train, things would have been different.
Or if you'd, you know, all those kinds of, sometimes it's catastrophic, the decision we make.
And other times it's really not.
You never know, you don't know what might have happened.
(26:14):
So there's an element of that.
And I think some of those legends do make you think about those kinds of things too.
So that's why I use some of them.
I also, there's a body of poetry which my sister wrote, which she's a wonderful poet and writer.
And it, that we sort of forge those titles together.
And the poetry I'd say is very worth reading.
(26:37):
So you collect images, you take a lot of photographs, you do screenshots.
Do you start with the image or the words that, that may tell a story?
Sometimes I have a title in my head of a show, which is, that's kind of annoying as well.
Because you've got to fit the bridge.
(26:58):
Because then I've got a sort of work that I think, why do I want to, why is that there in my head?
So I often write lots of titles down and, or things, you know, phrases will come to mind.
Then I, there's, I talk, I say to my kids sometimes, and they say, how's the work going?
I'm in the sort of preparation phase, which really involves sitting in the studio for hours,
(27:20):
not doing very much at all, but just kind of thinking and, you know, collecting images and editing things
and thinking about things thematically.
That takes so long.
I mean, it takes such a long time all that stuff.
And then the paintings, somehow, once I've decided what I'm doing, they're much, they're sort of easier in a way.
(27:43):
They're, they're the best bit. They're the kind of fun bit, not fun, but, well, it can be fun.
Otherwise I wouldn't have done it for so long.
They're the, the bit that makes me want to, sometimes I'm so excited at night.
This sounds really pathetic, but I'll go to bed and I think, oh, yeah, that was quite a good day in the studio today.
And I'll go to bed and I think, oh, it's not, I don't know how long before I can get up and get back in there.
(28:05):
That doesn't happen very much, but it, when it does happen, it's, it's wonderful.
Yeah. And then you get there the next day. And of course, within 10 minutes, you've gone, oh, shit.
That was bad. So, you know, the highs and lows of the whole process are interesting.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah, because it sounds like your, your preparation is so thorough that by, by the time it comes to put the paintbrush on the canvas, you know where you're going.
(28:34):
I sort of do, and I think just having painted for so long things like composition, like I never, I just start with a palette knife and just start.
And very rarely do I, this sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but why not?
I very rarely have to shift the composition because I'm so familiar with that, that, that space, that I kind of know where it has to go.
(28:56):
And I remember when I was a student, that was something that used to be incredibly anxious because, you know, you get so far and then you go, oh, I'm so familiar with that space.
You know, you get so far and then you go, but I hate the composition.
It's wrong. She's just in the wrong place.
And then of course, the fear of destroying it, you know, would kind of give you kittens, but actually that's the best bit.
Destruction in a painting is the best bit.
(29:18):
It's like sort of just eradicating something or getting something to a point where you're really comfortable with it and you like it and you think that's really lovely.
And then you're tempted to preserve it. But in terms of the whole painting, there might be a small area that you really love that you've done.
You think, oh, so brilliant.
But in terms of the rest of the painting, it's just really not working.
(29:40):
So that ability to destroy and to kind of reconcile areas and to not get precious about everything is, that's hard one.
That takes a long time.
I think that's taken along the longest time to actually go, no, that is actually crap.
And that is going, even though I like it. It's sort of satisfying.
(30:01):
But in terms of the whole thing, it's just got to go because it's spoiling the whole thing.
Frank, our bark famously scrapes off his works.
And the resulting paintings are so thick because there's layers and layers and layers of what he considers to be failures.
Yeah, well, my pictures are full of failures.
Yeah.
(30:22):
So you're not afraid to scrape back.
No, and it's not always just the composition.
I mean, like I said, composition, I think I find it pretty quickly.
But then the actual drawing that goes on within reconciling all the various color and lines and all the rest of it,
the drawing parts, which are actually the painting too.
(30:44):
There's no separation for me.
Those are the parts that are sort of, you can't hang on to something in this corner here at the expense of something down here.
It all has to kind of work together.
And that means that things that you've enjoyed making may have to just go.
(31:06):
And that can be painful.
It's been like a sad day.
It's a really sad day.
And it might be like, you know, you're unraveling a piece of knitting or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got so far and no, it's just got to go.
And you know, little tiny bits that are really lovely and you've thought, oh, that's, I enjoyed that.
And then, but it's holding the whole thing back.
The glistening, shimmering water in your paintings is given a coat of resin.
(31:33):
And you've added to that reflective quality of the water in the paintings.
Is this something new for you?
The resin thing is new.
It's a difficult process, shall we say?
You're afraid you're going to mess it up.
You've got that far and then you put the resin on and go, oh no!
Well, to be perfectly honest, I mean, I think I am some kind of nut because it was a kind of reckless move that I'd made, you know, lovely paintings that I thought I was pretty pleased with.
(32:02):
I thought these aren't that bad, you know?
And then I thought, but I'm going to put some resin on.
It's like, are you mad?
You know, resin of 150 square painting and not having done it.
It was, it was mad, actually.
Well, that goes back to your college days.
Are you one, two or three?
Yeah, bonkers, number three.
Or bonkers, number three, tick that box.
(32:23):
Definitely.
But I sort of wanted to do it because there are a number of reasons why I wanted to see what happened to the paint.
And it does do something to the paint.
It's quite interesting.
And I wanted to make, I'm sort of very interested in holding a picture on the surface so that you're not making, you're not rendering things, you're not copying, you're not sort of trying to make a photographic image.
(32:49):
You're exploring the two dimensions that you have in front of you and putting things next to each other to make a real space, a real image.
And so I wanted to have the life of the painting on the canvas, but then to sort of put it under another layer so that you kind of, you push it down.
(33:11):
So it doesn't, it doesn't have that same kind of life.
It has a different kind of life.
But it's a sort of subversion of the idea that the painting lives on the surface.
I don't know quite how this works, but it's, it's had something to do as well with, with the idea of screens and looking through things through a lens always.
(33:33):
That's what we always, always, always seem to be doing at the moment as humans.
And so I wanted to have an element of that in the works too, that they have this incredible energy, but they're also kind of almost like in a case.
Your artist in residence at Gallery, Langkove and Creative Studios, how are you finding that experience?
Well, I'm, first of all, I'm incredibly grateful to them for their lovely people.
(33:59):
Miguel is a star.
I'm very grateful that they've given me that space because I have had to move out of my studio.
So that is amazing and I'm loving it.
It's small, but it's perfectly formed.
And it's, it's making me not put as much rubbish everywhere, which is good for me.
So I'm, because people are watching, you've got to get this space nice.
(34:23):
Yeah, and it's, you know, I can't explode in the way that I do normally.
People who've worked with me will know that that's a fact.
So I love it.
And it's kind of nice being in a community, because being an artist is actually quite isolating.
You do go a bit nuts in the end because I work on my own all the time.
I can go for days without speaking, really, to anybody, apart from my children who, you know,
(34:44):
well, I don't always have to pick up the phone.
So, you know, it is quite nice just having other humans around who are interested in what you're doing and are supportive.
So it is, and I would say to everybody, you have to go.
It's a fabulous place.
It's a great resource.
It's a wonderful educational resource and, you know, it's really worth supporting.
(35:05):
Does that mean as an artist in residence, you have more focus, fewer distractions to concentrate on your work?
Or is it strange because it's not your environment?
Well, it always takes me a while to settle into a new studio.
It's sort of something about the light, where you, how you stand, where you stand in relation to your palette.
There's kind of weird stuff that happens that you get used to in a space.
(35:28):
So there's a bit of adjustment, but I'm actually used to changing studios now.
So I'm just happy to be there and to be in the space.
And I've been reasonably productive.
And, but I mean, when I am in the studio, I do work, generally work quite hard.
In a shared studio, there's a bit more fun to be had.
But when you work on your own, it's quite, you know, you just got to do it, really.
(35:52):
There aren't any painting fairies as I discovered.
Laura Matthews' exhibition, The Calculation is on a gallery lane cove and Creative Studios.
24th of April to the 18th of May.
And the opening event is Wednesday the 1st of May from 6pm.
Laura Matthews, it's been a delight.
Thank you so much for joining me on ArtChat.
(36:13):
This has been a calculation, I think, that works for all of us.
Thank you.
ArtChat is produced by Gallery Lane Cove and Creative Studios,
situated on the lands of the gay, marical people.
Gallery Lane Cove receives financial assistance from Lane Cove Council and supporters, like yourself.
(36:35):
This episode of ArtChat is presented and produced by me, Claudia Chan-Shaw.
Our production team includes Kathy Campbell, Shuli Lau, Chinaris and Anushka Sansum.
Miguel Olmo is our Executive Producer.
You can follow us or subscribe on your favourite streaming platform.
Thanks so much for joining us and we'll catch you next time on ArtChat.
You know, you never quite knew why you were there. They only took 22 people a year. So,
(00:10):
and they had three divisions and one was talented, the rest was promising and the other one was
completely bonkers. So within those three brackets you had to kind of work out which
one you were and I never really quite knew bonkers definitely. But maybe I ticked a couple
of other boxes as well, I don't know.
(00:55):
Hi everyone, welcome to Art Chat, a podcast that takes you on a creative journey. I'm your host, Claudia Chanshaw.
So settle in and come along for the ride as we get chatty with artists. Before we get started,
we'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where we meet to produce this episode
and pay our respects to the elders both past and present. Today we're chatting with award-winning artist Laura Matthews.
(01:35):
Laura's latest series of paintings are glorious, spontaneous depictions of the landscape and figures
within that landscape, cliffs and rivers, waterfalls. There's a lot of water. But behind the idyllic scenes
lies the thought that everything in life is a calculation and that things can change at any moment.
(01:56):
Laura Matthews, thanks so much for joining me on Art Chat. Thanks so much for having me today.
Now let's go back in time. You're born in South Wales and you did your art training at the prestigious
Slade School of Fine Art in London. So what were you like as a kid? Were you artistic? Were you always drawing?
I was always drawing. My father was a painter and the best part of my biology was homework was drawing
(02:22):
from the encyclopedia Britannica and I'd spent hours rendering these weird and wonderful things.
I had nothing to do with the homework but I just filled books full of them. So that, yes, I was a scribbler.
Always a scribbler. So it was a no-brainer that you would go to art school.
I think they kind of wanted me to do other things. My sister was very academic so I was probably expected to do something like that.
(02:49):
I think my father was desperate for me to go to art school but he really wanted me to come to that decision myself.
He didn't want to influence me too much. So the academic stuff was very emphasized at home and we all worked very hard
but I actually hated it and I just wanted to paint.
So you immigrated with your family to Australia in 2002. So what was the attraction of Australia for you?
(03:15):
Well I married an Australian so that's a sort of start I suppose. That helps.
And I thought I decided that I didn't want to say when I fell off the perch at the end of it all
that I'd only ever lived in one place and I thought I think I can go. I think I want to go and have a
bit of an adventure and you know it was an adventure because I hadn't a clue where I was going and I'd only been here once.
(03:39):
I had three little kids, two babies and a bigger kid and it was sort of very sort of cleansing to just get on a plane
and not have any belongings or anything. I found my studio before I found somewhere to live which was great
because that was my main anxiety that I'd lose the thread of my work and I wouldn't be able to paint.
(04:02):
So that was a priority for me which is probably a bit selfish but there you go.
And so that's what happened we just sort of came and for a long time I was very very happy here.
You know very sort of it felt like a holiday and extended holiday until the reality of life set in again.
It's interesting that you the first thing you did was set up your studio even rather than have like four walls
(04:27):
and a roof to protect your little family. Yeah well I mean I was we were living in it.
It was quite nice because we were living out of suitcases and it was just fine and I didn't have anything to worry about
really except where I was going to work. That was the main thing.
In one of your social media posts and not that I'm stalking you, Laura Matthews,
you had hashtag Australian Artist, hashtag British Artist.
(04:53):
So do you consider yourself an Australian Artist or a British Artist or are you a Sydney based British Artist?
Oh my word that's a lot of options there. Take the box.
I would say that I'm a bit of a confused hybrid at the moment.
I think I'm still probably British but when I go to Britain I don't feel British as much anymore.
(05:16):
I feel kind of Australian. So I'm a bit I think I've been here 20 years and I think after 20 years it's a bit more confusing.
So I would say that I am an Australian British Artist.
Now it's always said that the light in Australia is different to that of the UK and Europe.
So was there a weird period of adjustment for you? So is your painting experience in Australia different to the experience of painting in the UK?
(05:44):
It is actually but it's a funny thing in that when I was in the UK my work was much more coloured.
It was much more colourful and yes I know it's bizarre isn't it?
I think I was constantly fighting the fact that that northern light would you know it was kind of dark a lot of the time.
So when I came here the light I didn't have to do that anymore.
(06:08):
I was working with light in light and so it did change my palette but it made it slightly greyer in a sense.
Paintings are about light so I didn't need to introduce colour.
The colour was already there in the organisation of the light and tone and all the rest of it and the drawing.
So it did change.
That's interesting that you were under those grey skies in the UK that you were creating your own colour.
(06:35):
Yes, I mean the training I had the day was very short it started at nine and ended at three in the life room and at three o'clock it was pitch black usually.
Apart from in the summer when it was gorgeous and light till ten o'clock at night.
So I kind of got used to working within the confines of those hours but working very intensively.
(06:56):
So here it's been the same but the light is there all the time.
You don't get that moment in the afternoon where you go, oh the sun's going, it's getting a bit dark and miserable.
It doesn't really happen here to the same extent.
So at the Slade School of Fine Art in London the teachers are absolute gods of modern painting.
(07:18):
And you knew the great painter Ewan Uglow and many consider that he was the most outstanding English painter of his time.
He was a tutor and he became a friend.
So tell me about that relationship with Ewan.
Ewan was a very sort of private shy person but what did have God's status certainly at the Slade.
(07:39):
I mean he was sort of, you know people used to tip her around him and wear black a lot and sit at his feet and watch him smoke which is probably what he did most of at the time.
But he was sort of generous in a very reticent way. He was very, he wouldn't say much when he'd stand behind you when you were painting which was really terrifying and quite stressful and say the occasional thing but you'd sort of hang off every word because they were rare.
(08:13):
But I remember when I hung my postgraduate show I think it was, I got the courage up and I said, look I've hung it, I don't know if it's any good.
And I sort of wanted to know that he thought it was okay and he said, Laura you don't need that kind of reassurance do you?
(08:34):
And I thought, oh he likes it I think and I think he said it's okay. So you know it was a bit like that, it was a bit of a dance with him.
He used to like teasing you by withholding stuff.
But he was a lovely lovely man and a great bon vivour.
And once you sort of got on you were a friend, the wine flowed, the food flowed, it was lovely and it was a really lovely time to be at the slave where there were lots of very great artists who poupled around and we'd have great dinners up in the round room.
(09:12):
We called it the return to the top of the building.
And we'd have a great time. I remember one Christmas we all sat around, there were a lot of students and a lot of tutors and I don't know if you've heard of Paul Orega but she's a very great artist.
She's pretty famous in the UK. She's done a huge, she's got a whole room dedicated to her in the National Gallery.
And she sat opposite me and you and had set the rules that everybody had to draw the person opposite them.
(09:38):
So I drew her and she drew me and I wish I'd kept that bloody drawing because I could retire now.
But I don't know what I did with it. So that's so sad. And she was so charming and so generous about the horrible piece of work I did for her.
And it was just things like that used to happen all the time and we get, and you never quite knew why you were there.
(10:04):
They only took 22 people a year. And they had three divisions and one was talented, the rest was promising and the other one was completely bonkers.
So within those three brackets you had to kind of work out which one you were and I never really quite knew bonkers definitely.
But maybe I ticked a couple of other boxes as well, I don't know.
Yeah, you might have been there. That delicious mix of all three.
(10:26):
Possibly. There were a lot of those I think. Definitely.
There were lots of drinks parties and things and we'd all meet out on the lawns outside the UCL building which is a really grand building.
And often you'd see some pretty famous people and I remember this man came over to me and he was, I would say, a walking corpse at this point.
(10:49):
And he said, hello. And I said, oh hi. And this is Lucy and Freud. This is Laura Mathews. Well, you know, introductions.
And you know, you kind of stand there and you go, oh, okay.
So it was, I think he didn't live much longer actually after that. It was sort of the tail end of those great British painters that formed the Camden Group and he was at the end of his life almost.
(11:16):
So there were lots of people who were sort of had peaked and were very, very, very famous who you just kind of thought were totally in awe of.
Did you lose the power of speech when Freud spoke to you? I think I probably blushed a bit and sort of giggled possibly as a 20 year old would.
Might have been a bit older. I can't remember.
(11:38):
What was the greatest lesson that you and you glow ever taught you?
He really taught me how to look, how to think about drawing and how to explore the surface of a painting.
You know, the, no, I don't mean that in a physical way. I mean, in a conceptual way, how to think about drawing in a very post-Cesan conceptual way, which I endeavor to do still, even when I'm working from photographs.
(12:10):
And I think that kind of way of thinking has enabled me to actually work from other people's images and from my own images and to make pictures that have a sort of narrative quality as well.
I mean, he was very, he had spent months, years in front of the model doing one painting, which I knew at the time.
(12:31):
There's a lot of peer pressure to do something similar at the Slade and a lot of artists have and still do.
But I knew in myself that I had too much else that I wanted to do within the work.
So I always felt a little bit inhibited, but I knew that the work, doing that work was very powerful and very informative, and I would make works further down the track that were more about the sort of things I wanted to do.
(12:55):
And I'm just starting my ripe old age to get to that point where I'm actually making images that are closer to what I want to make, but still not there, but getting there.
So I'm not going to see you hanging on a painting for seven years.
I mean, I did.
I used to make very, you know, one painting per term, which was sort of 10 weeks intense.
(13:19):
So then you really start to have to resolve things, which is hard because then you're dealing in the same time, you know, from nine to three, the light changes.
You have to reconcile the image with that light change.
You have to make adjustments.
You have to decide on how the key of the painting is going to work.
(13:40):
What are you going to maintain?
What are you going to scrap?
It's a very, very intense and analytical process, which I think is really good for you.
I mean, I think it was good for me.
And it's enabled me to do the sort of work that I'm doing now.
Moving countries is not an easy thing, especially with a young family in tow, but it feels like you were able to make that move and quickly throw yourself into the local art scene.
(14:08):
You seem to have grasped the Australian art scene rather quickly.
You know, when you go somewhere new, you just don't know the rules.
So you think you can do anything.
You know, you just, it's such a reinvention of the self when you move.
So I didn't really have any anxiety about it.
Much more anxious, subsequently.
(14:29):
Much less convinced about the whole thing, you know, about entering competitions and all the rest of it.
And I don't really want to make work for competitions.
I mean, that's not what I'm where my head is at the minute.
I mean, it'd be great.
I mean, I have won a couple of things, which has been fantastic.
And, you know, it's amazing in terms of making some money and the sort of kudos that goes with it.
(14:54):
But I find it hard to make images that fit a competition.
You know, it seems like a strange way to approach things for me.
Particularly now, because I'm sort of engaged with different subjects.
And so, you know, just painting a landscape, you know, is not what I want to do.
But it doesn't mean that I won't do it or, you know, that I won't put certain images into competitions
(15:22):
because they seem to fit the brief.
Similarly with portraits, you know, I really have to be engaged with the subject.
I can't just make a portrait anymore.
I mean, I used to be able to, but I can't seem to do that now.
I mean, I can do a self-portrait probably because it's me.
And I can...
The most successful portraits I've made have been of people that I've known kind of well
(15:44):
and where there's that composite notion of what a person is,
more than just one moment, more than just one appearance, more than just one thing,
where they're sort of multifaceted.
And that doesn't mean that I make multiple images of the same person.
It just means that the image, hopefully, that you make is imbued with many elements
and many components of that one individual.
Because you've had success.
(16:06):
You've been a finalist multiple times in the Portia Gietz Prize,
the Haddington Art Prize, the Moran Portrait Prize.
So while you've made, you know, I don't really want to do this whole competition thing,
you're damn good at it.
Thank you.
I have been...
I had some success, yes, but I don't know.
I keep forgetting the deadlines. That's my problem.
It's like I've lost the plot too many times.
(16:29):
You've got an exhibition opening at Gallery, Lang Cove and Creative Studios.
And the exhibition is called The Calculation.
So what is the significance of the title of the exhibition?
I've had a couple of titles in my head for that show,
and I think ultimately it is possibly what you mentioned in your introduction,
(16:50):
is that there are moments in life, and I've had many where things have been
tipped really radically one way or the other where it's been.
And it's the same for everybody's life. It's true for everyone.
And what I wanted to do, those works, is make very sort of benign
landscapes and figures, and sort of put them under a sort of cover in the resin
(17:13):
where they're sort of almost like screens,
where there's a sort of distance between the viewer and the narrator, if you like.
But actually they can be interpreted in so many ways.
The benign quality of them is actually, and some of them quite,
I find quite malevolent, although it's sort of sugar coated if you like.
So I've kept the palette really kind of light, and some use some sort of almost
(17:37):
kind of pretty if you like. But actually there's a lot for me in those images.
There's a lot of fear. And so they're not as benign as one might first think
on seeing them. And that's part of the joy of work,
is that it can have so many levels that someone can come to it
and read the title and associate it with certain things, or can come to it
(18:01):
with a memory of something of their own, or just kind of be slightly baffled
by why I would want to paint someone on a tightrope.
There are different levels. And then they might engage with the actual
painting itself in terms of the surface and all the rest of it,
which one does with every painting that you approach. But I want the paintings
to keep giving something new to the viewer.
(18:24):
While you call it the calculation, looking at the paintings,
I find them so incredibly lush and spontaneous and free
with this wonderful gestural brushwork and instant.
It feels like it's so immediate, so in the moment.
Well, that's lovely. Thank you. That's a very nice description. Rather than calculated.
It's interesting. It is. It is. But they are a calculation.
(18:47):
They're a massive calculation that's taken 40 years.
Yeah, this didn't just happen overnight, folks.
Yeah, the works are dreamy figurative works,
landscapes, figures in landscape. The scenes look like paradise.
You've got lush foliage, you've got cliffs, you've got pools and waterfalls.
Are these real places? Some of them are real.
(19:10):
Some of them are kind of made from images that I've collected,
or I do screenshots too. And I just make it up from there, really.
I mean, the painting, after the initial reference,
the image has a life of its own. And you sort of have to edit it as you go.
(19:31):
It changes. And I have to make accommodations within the painting for composition
and where things aren't quite working.
So they're never just one idea. They're a combination of images, drawing of my own.
You've got to make the painting work, essentially.
(19:52):
So there's a lot of jiggery pokery that goes on.
Jiggery pokery.
In the latest body of works, you create water, waterfalls,
figures are jumping in the water. They're under the water.
They're treading water. They're swimming. They're floating.
And the viewer can feel the water splashing and flowing and movement.
(20:15):
There's white tips on the edge of the water. So you get that sense of movement.
So what is your relationship to water?
My relationship with water is very complicated.
You'd have to have grown up in the north of England in the 70s
to understand quite how fearful of water and how unpleasant it was for me
when I was a kid. The north of England is freezing.
(20:38):
And once a week at school from about the age of seven,
we were bust over to a Victorian sewing pool that just stank of chlorine
and probably other not so nice things.
And we were dumped in the pool for sort of an hour to kind of drown each other.
And then afterwards I might get an apple and a bar of chocolate or something.
(21:01):
And it was just horrible. The whole experience was horrible.
And we never... We don't swim in the ocean really in the UK because it's too cold.
And I'd actually in late years saw my very good friend who was sort of only a few meters away from me.
He actually drowned. That didn't cheer me up either.
So that was pretty terrifying. And I knew at that point,
(21:24):
because I couldn't rescue him, that I wasn't a strong swimmer
and that I wouldn't ever go back in the ocean again.
So since I've lived here, I haven't really gone into the ocean that much.
I love looking at it and I love it as a device within paintings
because of the mass of it and the tonality of it
and the way that it's both... It absorbs and reflects light.
(21:46):
So it has so many kind of powerful, emotive uses within a composition.
And I just love big bodies of water. I'm happier when I live next to water.
But I do not want to be in it. I really, really don't.
Which is a shame because I'm sure it's not that bad.
(22:07):
Your observations, your framing, your points of view are almost cinematic.
You're looking down from high above or you're observing from under the water looking up
or you're almost peering through the trees at the subjects.
And none of the subjects engages directly with the viewer.
They're captured in this natural wilderness and they don't know that you're watching.
(22:29):
So the paintings are very voyeuristic.
They are a bit voyeuristic, yes.
I mean, I kind of like that because I do like watching.
I do like watching people. I do like observing.
I like watching things that are unobserved or perceived by the individual to be
that they're not being observed. So it is a bit naughty, really.
But I do like that idea that you can...
(22:52):
So there's a kind of narrative element which is completely separate from what the person
involved might actually be considering or thinking.
That you can sort of make anything up that you like.
And so can the viewer of my work. So there's many, many layers.
They might be seduced by the image but then kind of think about it a bit more.
(23:13):
I think, well, that's a bit mad to do that or whatever.
I just hope that they're kind of compelling in a way that makes people think about
the quality of the work but also a potential narrative that might be meaningful to them
or make them question something.
Yeah, the stories that you can read into them are countless.
(23:35):
The figures are blurred, they're faceless, they're constantly moving.
So is everything as idyllic as it appears?
Is that a glorious day in the bush or crossing the stream?
Or are the paintings metaphors for that stepping into the unknown,
for taking that leap of faith or walking that tightrope?
Oh, definitely. I mean, that's why I painted them.
(23:58):
And that's why they are kind of benign but not.
I mean, there's one I think called Jana, which is where you have the two headed...
a head that faces both back and front.
And it's an ambiguous representation of a figure about to go in or coming out of a water of a body of water or a river.
(24:19):
And that's the kind of ambiguity that I like that you never...
you don't know quite how this is all going to end up.
Is it going to be a disaster? Is she going to go in the water, come out, not come out?
Is she going to come away from the water after having swum?
There are all those questions.
So there is that kind of open-ended question with all the works.
And people can really see what they like to see, what they want to see.
(24:42):
And be guided by the title up to a point but not really...
that there's many, many interpretations of the works.
Yes, so you mentioned Janus because there are the mythological and biblical references.
In many of the titles we have Narcissus and Ophelia, Icarus, Athena, Venus, Janus.
References to Adam and Eve.
(25:04):
What's going on there?
No, I mean I like the idea of archetypes and the idea that some of those kind of like Icarus, for example,
is such a great legend, you know, the idea of touching the sun.
I mean those sorts of things excite me and interest me.
And the idea that we all try and do that in some way in our lives,
(25:28):
we all try and go close to the flame.
But you know, a lot of us just fall away and fail miserably.
And it's a bit like the whole thing of the calculation.
You know, do we try and touch it or do we back away?
You know, it's all these same things, the sort of sliding door concept that you kind of go one way or the other.
And it's a bit, there's one picture in there of a man getting onto a tube and he sort of stops short.
(25:52):
Which happens a lot in London, you know, once those doors close, you're pretty, you're on the next train.
So, you know, there are moments in your life where if maybe if you've got on the train, things would have been different.
Or if you'd, you know, all those kinds of, sometimes it's catastrophic, the decision we make.
And other times it's really not.
You never know, you don't know what might have happened.
(26:14):
So there's an element of that.
And I think some of those legends do make you think about those kinds of things too.
So that's why I use some of them.
I also, there's a body of poetry which my sister wrote, which she's a wonderful poet and writer.
And it, that we sort of forge those titles together.
And the poetry I'd say is very worth reading.
(26:37):
So you collect images, you take a lot of photographs, you do screenshots.
Do you start with the image or the words that, that may tell a story?
Sometimes I have a title in my head of a show, which is, that's kind of annoying as well.
Because you've got to fit the bridge.
(26:58):
Because then I've got a sort of work that I think, why do I want to, why is that there in my head?
So I often write lots of titles down and, or things, you know, phrases will come to mind.
Then I, there's, I talk, I say to my kids sometimes, and they say, how's the work going?
I'm in the sort of preparation phase, which really involves sitting in the studio for hours,
(27:20):
not doing very much at all, but just kind of thinking and, you know, collecting images and editing things
and thinking about things thematically.
That takes so long.
I mean, it takes such a long time all that stuff.
And then the paintings, somehow, once I've decided what I'm doing, they're much, they're sort of easier in a way.
(27:43):
They're, they're the best bit. They're the kind of fun bit, not fun, but, well, it can be fun.
Otherwise I wouldn't have done it for so long.
They're the, the bit that makes me want to, sometimes I'm so excited at night.
This sounds really pathetic, but I'll go to bed and I think, oh, yeah, that was quite a good day in the studio today.
And I'll go to bed and I think, oh, it's not, I don't know how long before I can get up and get back in there.
(28:05):
That doesn't happen very much, but it, when it does happen, it's, it's wonderful.
Yeah. And then you get there the next day. And of course, within 10 minutes, you've gone, oh, shit.
That was bad. So, you know, the highs and lows of the whole process are interesting.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah, because it sounds like your, your preparation is so thorough that by, by the time it comes to put the paintbrush on the canvas, you know where you're going.
(28:34):
I sort of do, and I think just having painted for so long things like composition, like I never, I just start with a palette knife and just start.
And very rarely do I, this sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but why not?
I very rarely have to shift the composition because I'm so familiar with that, that, that space, that I kind of know where it has to go.
(28:56):
And I remember when I was a student, that was something that used to be incredibly anxious because, you know, you get so far and then you go, oh, I'm so familiar with that space.
You know, you get so far and then you go, but I hate the composition.
It's wrong. She's just in the wrong place.
And then of course, the fear of destroying it, you know, would kind of give you kittens, but actually that's the best bit.
Destruction in a painting is the best bit.
(29:18):
It's like sort of just eradicating something or getting something to a point where you're really comfortable with it and you like it and you think that's really lovely.
And then you're tempted to preserve it. But in terms of the whole painting, there might be a small area that you really love that you've done.
You think, oh, so brilliant.
But in terms of the rest of the painting, it's just really not working.
(29:40):
So that ability to destroy and to kind of reconcile areas and to not get precious about everything is, that's hard one.
That takes a long time.
I think that's taken along the longest time to actually go, no, that is actually crap.
And that is going, even though I like it. It's sort of satisfying.
(30:01):
But in terms of the whole thing, it's just got to go because it's spoiling the whole thing.
Frank, our bark famously scrapes off his works.
And the resulting paintings are so thick because there's layers and layers and layers of what he considers to be failures.
Yeah, well, my pictures are full of failures.
Yeah.
(30:22):
So you're not afraid to scrape back.
No, and it's not always just the composition.
I mean, like I said, composition, I think I find it pretty quickly.
But then the actual drawing that goes on within reconciling all the various color and lines and all the rest of it,
the drawing parts, which are actually the painting too.
(30:44):
There's no separation for me.
Those are the parts that are sort of, you can't hang on to something in this corner here at the expense of something down here.
It all has to kind of work together.
And that means that things that you've enjoyed making may have to just go.
(31:06):
And that can be painful.
It's been like a sad day.
It's a really sad day.
And it might be like, you know, you're unraveling a piece of knitting or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got so far and no, it's just got to go.
And you know, little tiny bits that are really lovely and you've thought, oh, that's, I enjoyed that.
And then, but it's holding the whole thing back.
The glistening, shimmering water in your paintings is given a coat of resin.
(31:33):
And you've added to that reflective quality of the water in the paintings.
Is this something new for you?
The resin thing is new.
It's a difficult process, shall we say?
You're afraid you're going to mess it up.
You've got that far and then you put the resin on and go, oh no!
Well, to be perfectly honest, I mean, I think I am some kind of nut because it was a kind of reckless move that I'd made, you know, lovely paintings that I thought I was pretty pleased with.
(32:02):
I thought these aren't that bad, you know?
And then I thought, but I'm going to put some resin on.
It's like, are you mad?
You know, resin of 150 square painting and not having done it.
It was, it was mad, actually.
Well, that goes back to your college days.
Are you one, two or three?
Yeah, bonkers, number three.
Or bonkers, number three, tick that box.
(32:23):
Definitely.
But I sort of wanted to do it because there are a number of reasons why I wanted to see what happened to the paint.
And it does do something to the paint.
It's quite interesting.
And I wanted to make, I'm sort of very interested in holding a picture on the surface so that you're not making, you're not rendering things, you're not copying, you're not sort of trying to make a photographic image.
(32:49):
You're exploring the two dimensions that you have in front of you and putting things next to each other to make a real space, a real image.
And so I wanted to have the life of the painting on the canvas, but then to sort of put it under another layer so that you kind of, you push it down.
(33:11):
So it doesn't, it doesn't have that same kind of life.
It has a different kind of life.
But it's a sort of subversion of the idea that the painting lives on the surface.
I don't know quite how this works, but it's, it's had something to do as well with, with the idea of screens and looking through things through a lens always.
(33:33):
That's what we always, always, always seem to be doing at the moment as humans.
And so I wanted to have an element of that in the works too, that they have this incredible energy, but they're also kind of almost like in a case.
Your artist in residence at Gallery, Langkove and Creative Studios, how are you finding that experience?
Well, I'm, first of all, I'm incredibly grateful to them for their lovely people.
(33:59):
Miguel is a star.
I'm very grateful that they've given me that space because I have had to move out of my studio.
So that is amazing and I'm loving it.
It's small, but it's perfectly formed.
And it's, it's making me not put as much rubbish everywhere, which is good for me.
So I'm, because people are watching, you've got to get this space nice.
(34:23):
Yeah, and it's, you know, I can't explode in the way that I do normally.
People who've worked with me will know that that's a fact.
So I love it.
And it's kind of nice being in a community, because being an artist is actually quite isolating.
You do go a bit nuts in the end because I work on my own all the time.
I can go for days without speaking, really, to anybody, apart from my children who, you know,
(34:44):
well, I don't always have to pick up the phone.
So, you know, it is quite nice just having other humans around who are interested in what you're doing and are supportive.
So it is, and I would say to everybody, you have to go.
It's a fabulous place.
It's a great resource.
It's a wonderful educational resource and, you know, it's really worth supporting.
(35:05):
Does that mean as an artist in residence, you have more focus, fewer distractions to concentrate on your work?
Or is it strange because it's not your environment?
Well, it always takes me a while to settle into a new studio.
It's sort of something about the light, where you, how you stand, where you stand in relation to your palette.
There's kind of weird stuff that happens that you get used to in a space.
(35:28):
So there's a bit of adjustment, but I'm actually used to changing studios now.
So I'm just happy to be there and to be in the space.
And I've been reasonably productive.
And, but I mean, when I am in the studio, I do work, generally work quite hard.
In a shared studio, there's a bit more fun to be had.
But when you work on your own, it's quite, you know, you just got to do it, really.
(35:52):
There aren't any painting fairies as I discovered.
Laura Matthews' exhibition, The Calculation is on a gallery lane cove and Creative Studios.
24th of April to the 18th of May.
And the opening event is Wednesday the 1st of May from 6pm.
Laura Matthews, it's been a delight.
Thank you so much for joining me on ArtChat.
(36:13):
This has been a calculation, I think, that works for all of us.
Thank you.
ArtChat is produced by Gallery Lane Cove and Creative Studios,
situated on the lands of the gay, marical people.
Gallery Lane Cove receives financial assistance from Lane Cove Council and supporters, like yourself.
(36:35):
This episode of ArtChat is presented and produced by me, Claudia Chan-Shaw.
Our production team includes Kathy Campbell, Shuli Lau, Chinaris and Anushka Sansum.
Miguel Olmo is our Executive Producer.
You can follow us or subscribe on your favourite streaming platform.
Thanks so much for joining us and we'll catch you next time on ArtChat.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.