Gasp! Ok, so I have written about London based artist Claire Brewster many, many times. I’ve even had her on my podcast to talk about her work… her paper-cutting installation work that she’s become very known for. Well, on that podcast episode Claire mentioned she was starting to play around with a new direction. She was not kidding! These are a few of her new mixed media paintings, and a beautiful letter about how she found her way to this work:
“At the end of last year when I first started experimenting with new work, I really thought I would be making wall mounted wooden sculptures. I worked really hard on them, spent hours working on drawings, converting them into the digital files necessary for them to be laser cut, had a whole load made, painted them and then….
Nothing, the desire to make them disappeared, the ones I had made just felt wrong. There was too much time spent on the computer and not enough making. The need had been so urgent for months that I couldn’t think about anything else and then behind the noise of making these works and struggling to get them to be what I wanted them to be another voice came through.
Make collages with people, it said. And in truth I already was.
I have sketch books full of people (mainly women) cut out from magazines arranged together, like they are waiting for something to happen.This voice became stronger and stronger and it turns out this is the new direction I was meant to be taking. Not the wooden sculptures. That was something I had to get out of my system in order to move forward in a new direction.
It is amazing how ideas and inspiration comes about, it’s never straightforward. I’m learning everyday that I need to listen to my gut, intuition whatever you want to call it. It always knows best. When ever I follow that goodness happens, when I go against it things invariably don’t turn out so well.”
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
