STUDIO TOUR

Dear Reader

Welcome to my new studio. I’ve recently moved home and have spent months dreaming and building my studio space to really invite in play. I’ve enjoyed physically making things with love, knowing the pleasure they will give me when I use them. When I open the curtains to my studio in the morning and enter I feel open and excited, like something great is waiting for me. The view above greets me. Imagination is housed and concentrated here. Experiments happen, great mistakes are made, and some lead to new wondrous discoveries. A studio is a physical space, but its also an inner space that needs cultivation. One reflects the other and vice versa, and so goes the conversation with life.

My studio is sectioned off from our living area by a low 2 metre high wall. The high south facing windows enable even light through the studio in the Southern Hemisphere. As you can see in the northern view below, I’ve installed curtains to close off this space from the afternoon sunlight in winter. The curtains also add a softness to the space. I have a table that opens out further and plenty of drawers for brushes and paint. On the far right are drawers for paper storage.

Northern view

In the view below you can see that I’ve built 2 wall easels that can hold 4 small paintings at the same time, or one very large painting. The wall easels are fixed in place to be stable, but the painting holders slide up and down. I’ve fixed canite panels to the wall behind the the easels. This way I can pin up reference material to work from. Canite (or softboard) is also firm enough to use as a backing board for drawing on. Potentially I can work on large drawings.

Wall easels and palette table

I’ve also built a little table on wheels from scraps to hold my glass pallet. I like my paints directly below me as the space between mixing a colour and putting it down on a canvas is reduced. I’ve found this really helps me with colour accuracy. Similarly a piece of grey paper under the glass pallet also helps that exactitude. The table is the right height for me to also paint while sitting down. I’ve installed paper towel holders within easy reach for cleaning my brushes. This is the view of the eastern wall.

Off to the southern wall you can see that I’ve built painting racks to store wet paintings (see image below on the left). I’m still thinking about an efficient construction for large paintings, but you can see the painting racks that I’ve built for panels and small paintings in the second image (right). These racks are a simple frame with mdf on the top and bottom. I’ve drilled holes in the mdf and inserted dowel rods. The rods can be removed and adjusted if I paint on canvas stretched on a deep frame. If you look closely at the main rack in in the image on your left, you will see that I’ve installed a small ledge to hold drawing implements. The rest of the southern wall is shelving and more shelving for storage and art books (see main image).

Storage rack

Rack for small panels

The western wall has a narrow shelf that holds almost finished paintings gives me a sense of how my painting will look on a white wall. Below the shelf is my dreaming couch. It’s where I sit back and look at my paintings on my wall easels, read books with a cup of tea and have a nap.

Viewing shelf and dreaming couch

Storage box on wheels

The couch has secrets. It’s also a large storage box for tools etc. Notice that it’s on wheels and can easily be moved to the centre of the room. The flat top can further be used as another working surface.

I’m very excited to be working in this new space and glad to have shared this tour with you. I’ve tried to make everything really count and have more than one function. Fluidity increases our psychological perception and function of space. Our imagination is the core of all play. My studio is filled with ideas. Feel free to share this post with whoever may be interested. Thanks for coming along.

Warmly, Lynn

Oh yes, if you would like to receive my newsletters through email, sign up to my mailing list via my website here. Just scroll to the bottom of the page to access the form. I would love to stay in touch with you. I don’t publish my newsletters on Facebook. I have some ‘play-shops’ coming up soon. . . so stay tuned.