In Studio
with Connie Charnell
(I originally had a number of questions for Connie, dealing with some of her background and then with some current endeavours. She graciously and generously supplied me with the following. -ed.)
Connie: Looking back over my life as an artist I would say the projects I got involved in depended on the materials that were available and the amount of space I had to work in. If I had waited until I had a nice big studio to work in and lots of supplies, I never would have done anything! For instance I was married to a fisherman in my early twenties and spent a lot of time on the boat. During that time I did a lot of photography and knitting with handspun wool. That is also the time my two sons were born, so I had to work around them as well.
About the "creature" collages: I remember back at least twenty years ago looking at pictures of beetles, butterflies and other insects in the library and thinking about how I’d like to do something artistic with the idea. On a flight over to England in ’04, I bought a Vogue magazine, and something about the beautiful fabrics and designs must have triggered a memory. Once we were settled into the very small place we were staying in, I bought some water-colour paper post cards and a small tray of colours. That’s how the "creatures" started to manifest. I ended up doing at least forty of them over a period of three or four months.
I’ve always loved
how you can take some inexpensive materials and transform and combine them
in ways to come up with something beautiful and/or thought provoking. So,
to make a long story short, the materials an artist chooses can also play
a part in the meaning of the work that is created. The meaning behind the
"creatures" is ambiguous in that they can mean something totally
different for a person who loves fashion, shoes, handbags etc., and a biologist
with a great love or reverence for the insect world. Another person may see
them as poking fun at the fashion industry. There’s something in my nature
that hates to throw out a magazine once I’ve looked through it. So much energy,
creativity and resources have gone into producing them. This goes back to
my artist statement about being a hunter-gatherer. I’m always hunting for
and gathering ideas and materials, and I hate to throw things out that may
come in handy some day.
Talking about this reminds me of back in the eighties, while living on Cortez Island, I took some courses in water-colour painting. Although I loved the nature of the paint and the paper and learning about the properties of the various pigments etc., I did find it quite frustrating when I tried to express the beauty I was surrounded by. I’ve always loved photography (both my father and grandfather were professional photographers), so I couldn’t help thinking it would be so much easier to take a good photograph! When as a poor single mother I moved to Courtenay in the late ‘80s I had all these "failed" paintings, but couldn’t stand to throw them out, because of the good paper. Somehow I got the idea of cutting little squares of water pictures from National Geographic magazines and gluing them in a pattern on one of these "paintings". The result was rather striking so for the first time I had the piece nicely framed and entered it into a juried show. This was the first time I’d been to an "opening" and as I walked in the door they were calling out my name and I was being given an Award of Excellence! Needless to say this helped to propel me on to more experiments in the artistic realm.
Cream: The flowers and seascapes I've included in this feature - do they come from a more romantic place from your other work here?
Connie: Interesting question in that I never thought about it that way. Working in a watery medium means to a large extent an artist has to learn to "go with the flow" and let go of all those preconceived notions of how the finished piece will turn out. I see myself as being very experimental, so I find that process very stimulating and fun. In the eyes of the viewer, the images would be more romantic in nature than an image that is hard-edged and precise.
Cream: Tell us about the technical aspects of your work. How do you choose materials and mediums and how are these significant to your personal and artistic process?
Connie: I think that because I come from a "craft" background, my work is what some would call "process driven". That is to say I wouldn’t call myself a conceptual artist - I’m more concerned with using what materials are available to me, and regardless of how much time it takes, coming up with something that is pleasing to the senses. Going back to the hunter-gatherer analogy, I tend to gather art supplies when I can afford them and choose projects I can tackle easily according to the amount of space I have to work in. For instance, in 2002 I sold my house in Courtenay and moved into a fairly large studio space. At the same time I had the opportunity to buy a large roll of canvas from an upholsterer. This allowed me to start experimenting with a much larger format than ever before. To begin with I poured watered-down acrylic paint on unprimed canvas in a very spontaneous and abstract way. Then, at different stages of dryness I used acrylic house paint in a sort of Jackson Pollock style of working. Sometimes I could see areas in the finished piece I liked, and often turned a very large piece into many smaller ones, then worked over them later. Over time I was able to be more precise and controlled so the nature of the work changed and evolved from there.
I’ve never been very good at sticking with the same style or subject matter or even with the same medium for too long. This is fun and exciting for me but I think it has also worked against me a bit as far as the marketing end of things go. The method of working I just talked about has stuck with me for a few years now though and there are still many ideas in my head I want to play with using this method of working. (maybe I’m settling down in my old age!)
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"Water Flowers"
Cropped Wavelength
an artist's process!
(click to view enlargements)
