Emily Ball

Three of my paintings are hanging as a triptych in St Mary’s church Pulborough.

Passion 1        Consummatum Est       Passion 2

This is how it happened.

Because I love faith. It is such good value! Faith is offering me all I don’t yet know. Imagine that; the chance to stretch further, further, and even further, into all I may become.

I remember singing hymns about unfathomable things; love ineffable, light inaccessible, God invisible. Longing for something, way beyond me as a girl, that still now holds far more than I know myself to be.

As a human being, how on earth can I be close to such intangibles?

I can but respect my longing and, in faith, have courage to leap into the unknown. Therein lies my welcome by all that is divine; a falling into love, a growing to the light, a coming into life.

Faith is a vital ingredient in painting.

These three paintings are a response to Evensong in Chichester Cathedral. Evensong is set between gratitude for the day and preparation for the night, and is a service in which the choir offers a beautiful voice. The Cathedral, startled in its still weight, moves to tenderly receive and magnify the song.

So it was for me too; in the choir stalls with 4 colours a day, 4 x 80-page sketch books, day after day, month after month, with only my longing granting me courage, discipline and devotion to practise my faith.  Until, as helpless as the Cathedral, I too was thrown to the ineffable by an experience that gloriously fills my being.

By choosing to have faith, I find myself so very human that I am full of resonance with the divine nature of all it is to be alive. There I find the grace as a human being, to express that which is ineffable, not only in paint, but in my life also.

The resonance in these paintings has been gathered from Evensong. I am happy to offer this, my own hymn, back to its source and to you too, as the paintings sing in the church.

St Mary’s is open between 10-12am and 2-4pm from Mon-Sat, except Wed morning. Sunday services at 8am, 10am & 6pm.

www.nicolahancock.co.uk

Hi Emily

From beneath the ash tree, Mary’s garden, Mèze. (Which reminds me of a series of paintings, from the early eighties, painted in the studio I built beneath the Locust tree in our London garden). It is 30ºC, the cicadas are creaking, everything is baking, Mary is watering. She picked me up at Montpellier yesterday, for a swim and coffee at Villeneuve les Maguelone. Later, we parked in Sète outside Monsieur Voltaire’s, our caviste, for a bottle of superb Chateau de Berne, rosé and passed the evening drinking and talking about painting, so prominent again in our lives, reviewing the weekend at yours and the extraordinary inventions and searching for meaning going on there. Thinking about your relentless energy and your outstanding and courageous paintings. Thinking about the smile. How the ‘repetition à sec (hand jive, dry run)’ allowed new inventions. Where will it take us? Thank you again

lots of love

John

Hi Emily

Thanks for the great scribbling piece  – the bit that grabbed me most was this:

“ they ( the scribbled paintings ) have made me more excited about drawing while my children are swimming. I can see my paintings in the pool as they swim”

I am going to try and say what this means for me -

Often when I am painting well, and the paintings please me, I start to see my paintings everywhere and the possibility of more and more paintings to be made. Occasionally there is a startling coincidence like when I met Maria my last model in England after I had made a painting that had a powerful resemblance to her. The Girl in Green. Well, just a coincidence one might say but for me it is the real purpose of painting, the way in which paint bring back the deeper nature of ones experience.

Paint, painting is revelatory in its true nature. When one is truly painting the act of making the painting uncovers the subject.

It seems to me that what you have seen when you look at your children swimming in the pool and see your paintings is a reality that was not available to you before you started to make those paintings and would not be available to you now if you had not allowed yourself to be courageous enough to abandon your accepted methods and scribble your way into this unforeseen possibility.

The grand scribble – the scribble is the subject – becomes the subject – somehow gets into all the subjects – is not subject to the subject – finds other subjects – that are the subject.

Lots of love

John

My swimming pool paintings are still going -  in fact rather than running out of momentum or enthusiasm for the subject, the improvised scribbling has generated a wealth of possibilities.

For a long time I have loved the process of mark making, warming up, allowing myself to just become absorbed by the quality of one mark next to another. Then some of this joy and intuitive process seems to disappear within the paintings themselves. So to be able to have the same engagement as I have done with warm ups but to transfer it to actually making the big paintings is so exciting. It is not to say that they do not create moments of self-doubt and bewilderment about where they are going but I am enjoying painting, loving the surprises, relishing improvising and embracing taking risks on a whole new level.

I feel that I should probably change the word  ‘scribbling’ as it seems to have dismissive associations. However, I also like the freedom and anti-preciousness it gives. Recently I have asked students to have a go at scribbling instead of doing mark making with wonderful and liberating results. At the end of the day though it does not matter what you call it. It is a question of finding a way of being articulate and free to respond unhindered by fear of failure and just feel engaged with painting and your subject.  Do not worry and about not knowing what you are doing and where it might lead just enjoy the game and surprise. I have to remind myself to have courage every time I paint.

PS – The Seawhite shop now stock Markal Oil Paint Sticks…..excellent for drawing and scribbling onto canvas!

Well first of all to reassure you – there is one! Life still has paint and our paint is still full of life!

And now we are standing on our own feet. Admittedly it is easier because we have 4, because there are two of us together, but even so……No Emily to pick us up, dust us down and get us back on track. No Emily to suggest a way through the brick wall. No Emily……full stop. So now it is down to us to unblock, soldier on, keep turning up and have faith. That is not easy – at all. It takes nerves of steel, a will of iron, humility and determination. But, because that’s what it takes, that is what we have had to find. And we are very proud to say that we have.

It is not altogether surprising that we have found it within ourselves to arrive here. We’ve been brought up proper, as you will know! That firm foundation, the extensive tool kit, the breadth of experience to flex your muscles against and the unerring support. Emily is a treasure, and if you accept her generosity in sharing her passion, and use it to grow your own, you too can go on living paint!

That is happening for us, now, and in a big way; come and see our latest paintings. Though it’s not only the size of course – they are big in ambition and courage as well, as befits our pedigree!

We now live the everyday practice of painting in our studio and support the creative endeavours of all kinds of Artists. You would be very welcome to join in!

Hope to see you soon.

Nicola and Janet

Having never done a masterclass before I was a little nervous and wasn’t sure what was expected and I think it reflected in the work I did in the class. I’m not sure my drawings were developed enough so I wonder if I was a little out of my depth – however since then I’ve been working on them and they’re developing well. A lot of what John said has had some impact because I’m working in a more  inventive way. They’re not finished yet and I know how important it is to keep on painting however bad it can be at times.

A drawing a day, drawn on my iPod touch (like an iPhone, without  the phone bit), using an app called brushes (same as David Hockney  uses). I usually do them last thing at night, often in bed.   The great  thing is you need no other equipment, no paper, no mess, so it’s easy to motivate myself even I am tired. Sometimes I just do the first thing I look at, objects around the room, my bedspread! Other times  it’s a reference to something from the day.  Occasionally it is  entirely abstract, experimenting with marks.

You can see the drawings on my facebook page by clicking on the links below:

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

I took it literally this time, encouraged by Emily, and painted in  the dark, by the light of 2 candles!  The last 2 are smaller, and were done later in the evening, possibly  with the light switched on, at least for part of the process.

Tom Hammick is an artist with many strings to his bows – painting, drawing, print-making and tapestries.  Based in Lewes, Tom has had a number of solo shows – in London and Canada and is the recipient of a number of residencies and awards – including the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2004.

He has previously visited the Seawhite Studio to give a lunchtime talk to students, so we wanted to catch up with him and see what he’s up to at the moment.

Tom has two solo shows coming up in London in March:

Imitations of Nature a selection of prints over the last 10 years at Flowers Central.  Opening 8th March

Edgeland , an exhibition of Paintings at The Eagle Gallery.  Opening 16th March,

The latest three  large scale woodcuts were made at Thumbprint Studios in January 2011with Robert White in variable editions of 8.

Tom is working towards a three person show at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery with Andrjez Jackowski and Julian Bell, scheduled for Jan 1012.