ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

★ ★ ★ ★

CHARLOTTE BRISLAND

‘THE STUDIO’

My studio is in my home and is in a constant state of change. It’s the place where my children play, toys get muddled with paint pots, ideas get discussed, friends come for dinner at my desk/dinner table next to the work and then I paint sometimes too. It isn’t an isolated room for quiet thinking, it has a buzz of life at all times and I love it.

Time changed for me once the children were born. It feels important to be quite fluid and compromising as I might have to put down tools in the middle of an important moment for the school run, sudden illness or doctor’s appointment. It’s changed me a lot, which I like. There’s not much room to dawdle or drink a bottomless cup of coffee for hours. I’ve got to be more disciplined but also more relaxed about things, which has given my work more energy and less neurosis.

Before I had my children, when I was studying at the RCA the message was clear, DO NOT have children if you want a career as an artist, ESPECIALLY if you are female. So when I made the decision to have a baby I put away my brushes and canvases and believed that would be the end. I was fully prepared to make the trade that I thought was inevitable because I really wanted my children. As the months past and my belly grew around my baby I got fractious and decided to make just one more painting. For some reason it was the most focused and energetic painting I’d done. Having children was definitely not stopping me as an artist, it was propelling me. Protecting and thinking about someone else for most of the time took away a lot of cluttered thinking and made me stronger as a person and an artist.