December 2019
Architectural Memory Bedroom Charcoal on bread and butter paper A0 scale
Julia is a drawing graduate based in Devon and is currently Artist in Residence at Totnes Art and Design Foundation Course. She specialises in hand rendered architectural style drawing.
I recently interviewed her in her studio space.How does your working day in the studio usually evolve?
A regular routine and timetable is important. I usually begin around 9am in the studio and work until around 5pm, to complete a good working day. I leave my pencil and ruler where I left them and then pick them up in the morning, it's then much easier to get straight into working. Some working days are better than others, some days are slow days. I’m quite emotionally driven, so I let the sensitivity be known, but I don’t let it override anything or let it get in the way.
What rules do you follow in creating your artworks?
There must be a lot of intension and yet a lot of serendipity. I leave room for happy accidents to occur. At the moment it’s about the themes that I’m following. I’m looking at ontological practices and phenomenology. These ideas are about what we see and what we experience. We are not supposed to understand everything. I leave room to get lost. I like using the paper to dig down, like an archeological dig. Although the work is structured with physical boundaries, there is a lot of grey space, that's an important part of the work. Memory meeting with current themes. My current work is a church space for worship mixed in with a work space.
The paper is attached to the walls. Does the space affect the artwork?
It definitely has an affect. I’m reacting all the time to spaces. My interest is in architectural spaces and what they hold, looking at the corners and idiosyncrasies of the room and remembering what has occurred in the spaces before and reacting to that. For example, beneath the floor in this studio, unseen, there is a huge copper boiler and the room goes down another 10ft.
What rules do you break?
Recently I’ve started to draw people. I don't normally draw them in the spaces. People change a context, definitely. I am slowly doodling them in. I imagine them standing up and walking round the drawings. I like the idea of them walking up the walls. I’m quite methodical and I’ve learnt that graphite powder can add more than a pencil mark can. You have to dig back into it, which I like as well.Normally, if I'm working on a smaller drawings, as in over a meter by just under (A0 size) I would work on two at a time, to push and pull between them and do different things with each artwork, to see what works best. In the past I’ve worked on each drawing for a month at a time. I don't usually spend any less that a month on a drawings. In the past I’ve worked on the same piece of paper for about three months.
My work is now on a three dimensional plane, a different drawing in each of the three sections. I can go to the right hand corner and then to the left corner and then go up the wall. If I walked two meters to the right it would be a different space. I move around the spaces. I keep myself moving around the drawings and I’m quite happy for people to get lost in my work.
In one of your drawings on the wall I see that you have drawn furniture. It's not something you usually draw?
Furniture is a fun challenge. Again, it changes the context. It’s nice to draw the shell of a building. In this case it needed furniture because it was space full of people. The chairs felt important because they are about what we do in a space. The space required it in this drawing. A good rule is that if it doesn't look sturdy then it isn't real and then it breaks the reality.
Curious Hall Extension with Door Alcove Graphite on bread and butter and cartridge paper
How much research into and interest do you take in technical architectural drawings?
During my foundation course, I fell head over heels in love with advanced drawing. The act of looking for hours and hours at a space. The straight line communicates so much and you can create a plane of a world and fill it with things. I love the idea of recreating that and it being mine and it being real and accurate. The drawings need to have a solid skin to them. If it looks like it can be blown over then you're really creating more of a theatre set than a real world in your drawings. I like to think people can walk into what I’m drawing because it should be an extension of the space its in.
For my degree I explored orthographic, isometric, site size, site scale and wide angle drawing. It provided an arsenal of tools to use to portray space and it was the best education. It had to deceive and accurately mimic spaces.
How would framing your work change it?
In this context, in its current iteration, it wouldn't work. But its not meant to. It's meant to be in this space and to take it out would do it a disservice. I like my work being an installation. I could frame my work, however, it’s a challenge to frame it well at a large scale. It’s so important how you put something in a frame on the wall and I’m not sure I would want my work behind glass, I would mount it without glass. I’m really not a big fan of the idea of framing my work as it cuts it off. I have to have integrity as an artist to hold up my craft and say this is what I do and I’m proud of it.
You work a lot in monochrome. Do you also work in color?
It would be a real challenge and it would be breaking out of my creative rule book right now. Colour isn't forgiving in the way tones of grey are. Colour is something I have no intensional grounding to use. I am really aware of what colour can do to an image and I don't feel as though it would elevate my plane of thought, only because it would feel like a distraction for myself. It would take away from the concept which I’m working with, only because I would be so concerned if I am getting it right. The distribution, the hues, would need to be right. I don't want to cheapen what I’m doing for the sake of brightening it up and it would be a stressful endeavor. My work is quite melancholy and introspectI’ve. It needs to reflect me and my world. I guess my world is quite black and white, yet within that there is so much room for conversation about the grey areas. There is so much grey area.
Which artists, books and designers have influenced you?
First and foremost is the artist Rachael Whiteread. She gives so much attention to the importance of domestic space and what has happened in the space, how much importance we give to it and how much we disregard that. She looks at what people throw away and that is so emotionally charged. A home is probably one of the most important spaces we ever make and we move from them so often and that needs to be mourned and felt. The attention she pays to that is so important.
In terms of books, there are two that really have driven my work. Firstly, The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard, which most designers and anyone working with interiors know of this book, as it speaks of the importance of dwelling and making. In marriage to that would be the book The Weird and The Eerie, by Mark Fisher. It works so well in conjecture talking about the in-between spaces and what's left in absence and how we deal with the weirdness of that. It’s such a human book. It talks about the liminal and the spaces we don’t want to deal with and its really important to give that attention.
The late architect Zaha Hadid’s work is stemmed from drawing. Her drawings are really enigmatic. Design wise they are nothing like my work, but the process is so important. She took the time to draw and make something before people were to dwell in it.
Artist Virginia Grayson, from New Zealand makes absolutely fantastic sketches of her studios and the people in her life. To give that much time and energy to a drawings is really important, because in a world which wants finished products, drawing is often thought of as a means to an end.
A drawing is an product, an object and a thought.
Julia concludes with a quote by Catrin Webster: "A drawing is a thought and an object, it coexists in both spaces as concept and as physical material."
Hallway Fragments Laser cut cartridge paper of remembered passageways A1 scale (Images courtesy of Julia Watson)
In 2020: A piece of Julia's work has been selected for the Royal Society of British Artist's Annual Exhibition. It will be on display along with a plethora of great work from the 20-29 February.
Pop over to Mall Galleries if you get the chance.
Julia will also be exhibiting at the Foundation Summer Show and at Harbour House, Kingsbridge, Devon, in March.
Comments