As my residency progressed, I began to get more and more interested in drawing in ink. I haven’t used ink all that much in the past; in fact most of my work has always been about colour, so it was great to have a chance to really explore this medium. I liked the slightly nerve-wracking fact that it had to be right first time: unlike charcoal or pencil, you can’t correct ink. What worked best for me, was to draw the same figures over and over again, discarding the earlier attempts, until I reached a point where I felt it had come out right.  I have always really liked that feeling of just letting ideas flow out, uninterrupted, and then deciding and editing at a later stage.

By the time I was halfway through my residency at St George’s, I had done more than 150 of these studies, and I was beginning to get a bit fed up of doing such small drawings. I decided to try enlarging some of my favourite ones to life size. I found that if I used wallpaper lining paper, cut them out and stapled them to the gallery wall, they looked as if I had drawn them directly onto the wall.  Someone had left an enormous bottle of black ink from a previous workshop, so the combination of that, and not having to worry if it all went wrong, because it was only wallpaper, meant that I could really take risks.

It was rather tricky seeing what I was doing as I worked, because even if I drew them on the floor, they were always in perspective. However, I found that if I laid them out in the main bit of the church, and went upstairs to the balcony overlooking them, I could get a much better idea of how they were coming out. In fact, working in the church turned out to be ideal for this, as there was just so much space to lay all the wet ones out.

Towards the end, I set up tables so that I could draw on a large scale directly from the quartets.

Earlier this summer, I spent three months as the artist in residence of St George’s Arts in Esher. I’ve always wanted to do something which combines art with music, and I’d recentlybeen working on paintings of musical instruments and players, so I decided to invite instrumentalists in to play at St George’s. I know quite a lot of amateur quartet players, as I play the violin myself, but even so, I was surprised by how many people are busy playing chamber music in each other’s houses around here. It’s like a secret underground quartet-playing network! As part of my residency, I wanted to highlight how much music-making is going on in our area. 

So each Friday, during my open studio, I had a different group of musicians in, so I could draw from them. This worked incedibly well; the players didn’t have to pose in excruciating positions, and could just get on with their normal practice session. My work has always been quite loose, so the fact that the players were moving didn’t bother me; in fact, I found it made me draw more freely.Visiting public could stay and listen, and some also took part in drawing.

When I began the residency, I had no idea how my work was going to progress. I liked the idea that it was open-ended, and could go in any direction, but at the same time, it was a little nerve-wracking,  producing work in a public situation, and knowing that I had to come up with something new and interesting for my final show there. One surprise was that, as my work has always been primarily about colour, and I titled the residency ‘The Colour of Music’, but by the end of the residency, I found myself working entirely in black and white!

Here’s a picture of me while I was drawing one of the quartets. They played five Mozart quartets, one after the other, with virtually no stopping. There were quite a lot of people watching that day; you can see  some of their knees.