Making Room for a Studio

I am going to be going down to Marseille for the rest of this year in a few days -- after taking down my current solo show and packing things away.  I will be able to write in this blog more often while I am there as I will be away from my painting studio and will effectively be forced to work on my mind without the benefit of working on my mind while working on my canvases.

First, here are a couple of images from my show, which ends in a couple of days (for full images, please visit my website www.royforget.com):

The current show at the Duplex Bar has mainly all my recently completed large paintings as I wanted to force myself to finish all these pieces that I have been working on for months and even a few years now, finish them and move on to new things as I settle into my new work space.  A new chapter of sorts.  I will no longer be walking to the studio, about two miles away in the 6th arrondissement by the Saint Sulpice Church, each day.  Instead, I will be working right here in the 13th arrondissement.  The studio that I had been working in is being sold by its owner, the artist Dov, who has so graciously and so generously let me use her space as my own the past 6 years.   I have spent the past few weeks, therefore, basically moving and settling-in and finding a way to work effectively from home.  

I think the most important problem to solve when working from home is a way to have versatile storage.  In my case, since I use turpentine as a solvent for cleaning my brushes and as a part of my different mediums, it is important to find a way to keep the odors to a minimum and out of reach of my dog.  The solution--a wonderful birthday gift I received from my partner--a no frills "serveuse d'atelier,"  literally a "studio waitress" -- 

I find this tool cart to work for me as there are exactly four drawers for my paints and the bottom compartment is tall enough in height for my bottles of turpentine and mediums as well as all my other oil painting necessities.  This isn't the large table that I had available to me at the studio by Saint Sulpice, with all my tubes of paint sprawled out right in front of me, but it will work and it is tidy and compact--a must for a small Parisian apartment. I can move it from one space to another without too much inconvenience.

The one thing that will change as a result of this move from the Saint Sulpice studio is the change in the amount of natural light I will have while painting.  At Saint Sulpice, the studio's only window faced a small main courtyard and I personally never opened its wooden blinds as I needed the privacy of not being seen while working.  There was a skylight, but it gave only dim light because the surrounding 7 stories kept light away quite effectively, especially when the sky is grey and overcast, as is often the case here in Paris over the Autumn, Winter, and Spring.  The studio could be quite dim without artificial lighting.   So here at home, I found a wall, one tucked away in a space behind the kitchen door with a North facing window and as I live on the 4th floor, there is plenty of light that comes into the room.  I can bring my cart in and out with minimal effort and once the door is closed, it becomes a studio, albeit a small one.

Writing about this new change in my studio situation reminds me of the loft I had back in "East Williamsburg," on the Morgan stop of the L train -- 

I had over 1000 square feet to myself, I had three enormous walls against which I worked, and a room full of filtered North light.  Strange though that past the initial few months of excitement when I first moved there, I was unhappy--I felt out of place, like a foreigner and most importantly, like an imposter or at least a sad part-time "Lifetime" movie character, but without the fairy-tale ending.  I have come to believe that where we live, the immediate world that surrounds us, makes definite and real in-roads into our minds and effectively alters the way we see, interact and imagine.  Brooklyn just was not the space for my mind to grow.  

This new space in my kitchen here in Paris will be very different from the studios that I have worked in, both in "East Willimsburg" (it wasn't hip back then to be in Bushwick, I guess) and in the 6th arrondissement here in Paris,  but I would like to believe that it will work out.  In a small way, it resembles a bit the situation I had in Bushwick--I will be living and working in the same space, so I can jump back into painting whenever I feel like it without having to walk or take the metro, which is a certain kind of luxury of convenience.

Panoramic view of the studio I am moving from.