I Wish I Was...

Hackney Reservoir Heat Painting, 2020 #laoty

On the hottest day in the last 100 years I rocked up very early (7am) to Hackney Reservoir to find the very organised StoryVault productions having set up a very impressive staging for #laoty day of filming.

If you’ve watched the episode of my heat you’ll know that I made it to the final 3 and then a very worthy winner was chosen in Kalpna. I blooming love her obsession with colour and how she uses it throughout her works of art.

Little bit gutted? Yeah of course I would have loved to have gotten into the semi-finals but I had an amazing day and got to meet Tai (the nicest artist in the world).

I’ll be sharing a bigger post on the practicalities of packing and prepping for a heat day. I spent a lot of time researching and found other pod artists shared experience on this invaluable.

In the mean time here’s how I approached the canvas and how I feel about the work I created.

I absolutely love this section of my painting, the colour balance makes me so happy and the minimal pencil marks depicting the plants is something I’m going to develop out further in my work during 2021.

I had intended to focus more on the buildings and the construction around the reservoir however I found myself in love with the reservoir and especially the water with those wonderful buoys giving such a wonderful colour to work with. Kate Bryan referred to my use of colour as Cezanne like… needless to say I was well chuffed.

I made a few observational sketches at the start of the day and took a few snaps but decided to work from the scene in front of me rather than from technology. I spend a large proportion of my time making art in my studio on my own so to have such a fab pod set up seemed remiss not to utilise it.

For the record, it is hard producing art within four hours, let alone surrounded by crew, presenters, judges, and observers on the day. I’m not camera shy and have some experience in talking to the camera so that bit didn’t phase me. There’s a lot of stopping and starting and coming out of the pod to create the infamous scenes we are all so familiar with '#laoty

I naturally like to paint for 3-5 hours and leave a painting overnight to see how I feel about it the next day. My submission painting took me 12 hours over 5 days.

The time flew by and before I knew it we were standing in the line up waiting for the presenters to announce the final 3!

Looking at the canvas this week, bearing in mind the last time I spent time with it was August 2020 has been an interesting moment in time. I stand by what I approached to achieve on the day, I can see where I wish I could have done a bit more, the buildings could have done with another few hours on them. However, I love love love the water, the buoys, and near plants. Initially, I wasn’t so keen on the tree but the more time I’ve spent with it this week I have also fallen in love with the suggestion of depth I achieved within the greenery.

I named the work ‘I Wish I Was Swimming in The Water’ an apt and true feeling I had on the day, the hottest day on record for 100 days. Jason and I even tried to book in a reservoir swim post-filming on the day… alas StoryVault had booked up all the spaces for the production team (damn it).

Acrylic paints and pencil on canvas, 100cm x 30cm x 4cm, 2020.