Jessica Jane Charleston
Alice Macdonald and Jessica Jane Charleston have been drawing together since 2016 when they first met at The Royal Drawing School in London. In our current exhibition Looking Glass, we see them deepen this connection, by spending time exploring the self-portrait and the intimacy of really looking at another person.
To continue in the spirit of their collaboration, we asked Alice to interview Jessica for this special edition of ‘In Conversation’ - enjoy!
Alice - We met at the Royal Drawing School, and we did a lot of observational drawing together. How does drawing fit into your practice now?
A lot. I’d say drawing makes up most of my practice. Observational drawing is often the starting point. In the studio, I will begin with a drawing from life, most of the time a self-portrait. I then go about transforming this observational drawing using my imagination. A horse wanders in. Another person sits down. An interaction happens. The merging of these two worlds is most revealing and fascinating to me. Drawing is so accessible, I draw in bed, I draw on the train, I draw with my 4 year old son. I love it, and I make sure I do it every day because I love it so much.
Alice - I know one thing you were interested in when we started working towards the show was working more from observation. How do you think the drawing sessions we’ve had have fed into the studio work?
Yes. Although I often use observational drawing as a starting point, I don’t exhibit these very often. I am more interested in what comes from these. It has been great to have so many drawings from life to work with. I’ve especially enjoyed the double portraits. Both drawing at the same time. This meeting. It’s a very intimate exchange. Your guard is down, you are the artist looking, but then you’ll glance up at the same time, and catch eye contact and realise you are being watched as well. Both artist and model. I have been painting and drawing from these observational drawings, but they are never direct interpretations, they get transformed by my imagination. The double portraits have emphasised my interest in the shadow self. (Carl Jung came up with the idea of ‘the shadow’ side to the self, which is often the part we see as hard to bear, like sadness, anger, shame). I am playing with this idea in the studio, the two figures, one which we present to the world and the other a more secret self, and the relationship between these two.
Alice - I know usually you often work from your imagination and this intrigues me a lot. How do you decide what to draw/paint? how do you start a piece of work?
I have different ways of starting but I think the main thing is allowing what wants to emerge, emerge. A bit like automatic writing. I just keep drawing, enjoying the colour, the pattern, the line, and something interesting reveals itself. I loved the interview with Lorna Robertson (and Andrew Cranston) at The Royal Drawing School recently where she talked about this. About elevating the doodles, about having the confidence to doodle on a 12ft canvas.
Alice - You work a lot with the self portrait, could you talk about self portraits and why they are important for you?
I remember being asked to draw a self-portrait in art class, when I was about 15, and being a very self-conscious teenager I found it excruciating, staring at myself in the mirror. Trying to get it right,trying not to be too flattering, seeing all my worries being played out on my face in front of me. Out of this uncomfortable feeling came curiosity, I returned to it, and in my own bedroom found solace and strength in this exercise. It was a way to check in with myself, to convey fears, to celebrate them, to control and minimise them. The drawing was me but it was also a character I could direct. I think that’s when I really got interested in psychological figurative painting. I found Egon Schiele and Tracey Emin. Later, Paula Rego. These artists transformed the figure, the self- portrait, charged them up with emotion. I continue to be drawn to the self-portrait.
Alice - Often your figures are with animals – horses, snakes, swans, dogs… what symbolism do they carry for you? How do they arrive in the drawings/paintings?
The animals seem to arrive on their own, they let themselves in. The dogs feel new. I’m not sure about them - They could well be influenced by Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, which I loved. But I remember the birds, they came into the work during the pandemic. They emerged from pattern, in my imaginative works, I try to let my hand create the shapes, without thinking, and one of the recurring shapes / patterns was this curving line which turned into feathers, then birds. It was suggested that the reason I was drawing birds at that time, locked in our homes, was due to that longing, the bird so free, I didn’t make that connection at the time, but I love that connection now. Later, the birds lost their wings and their long necks evolved into snakes. A much more foreboding creature. I enjoy playing with that symbol of apparent evil and at times making it friendly and playful.
One of the reasons I thought it would be interesting to do a show together is that we are both quite multimedia – you make things out of clay and you also do a lot of printmaking.
How do these different processes fit in to your broader practice?
Yes I love that connection. It has been really good to have you to talk to about working in multiple disciplines since leaving the drawing school. It’s odd when I think about it, because at university, I did Fine Art and was encouraged to experiment but I just didn’t want to, I just wanted to deepen my understanding of drawing. And that’s more or less what I did for three years. (Which is a shame, I feel now) Then when I left, I became free-er, I started making hand-printed books with a bookbinder friend, I got into printmaking through accidentally acquiring presses and even ended up setting up the darkroom I inherited from my Grandma in our shed. I still like to experiment, I think it enhances my understanding of my practice overall. Clay is very new to me but I would like to do more with it. The clay figures were lovely to make in the early days of my son Lowen. I could carve out shapes and figures whilst he napped. It was easy to dip in and out. And now we have added embroidery to our list Alice!
Alice - Do you feel that different mediums, for example printmaking, give you different languages? … would you say you make different work depending on what medium you are working in?
Does the subject matter choose the material or does the material affect the subject matter?
I wouldn’t be satisfied committing to one way of working. I love having the different ways to express myself. That’s a nice way to describe it - different languages. I, to my shame, can only speak English, (having attempted French, Spanish and German badly), I have a friend who is English who says she feels more herself when she speaks French. I can understand that in terms of medium. There’s a clean, tight exactness in the linocut prints. There is a method, it satisfies my perfectionist tendencies. But it cannot compare to the stomping of a big fat brush of paint on canvas or paper. The sweetness of clay and the forgiving nature of sewing. I need them all as a soothing tonic.
Alice - How does your son Lowen and being a mother influence your work? Or Does it at all?
My work has been hugely influenced by being a mother. When I got pregnant I decided to move out of the studio I’d been in for 7 years. It was just too far away from where we were living, I set up a studio in our shed, and snatched an hour or so of studio / shed time when he napped or when he was with his dad, Jonny, my partner. I learned something amazing about my practice, I learned that I could feel just as connected, if not more so, from these small slices of time to draw, as long as they were regular, as long as it happened every day or nearly every day. I’d got into a routine before Lowen of saving my ‘time to make art’ for my studio days, which was 2 or 3 days a week, and the rest of the time I worked or socialised. But when Lowen came along I snuck it in, wherever I could, and realised this was far more beneficial for me. I got back in touch with drawing from life, I drew me and Lowen together a lot, playing with the well worn mother and child image. When I was breastfeeding him I drew him a lot more, I think because he was such an extension of my body, but since then I see him as another figure, I’m learning how to bring him back into my drawings at the moment. He has been enjoying posing whilst I draw him, usually with his tongue sticking out.
Alice - Coincidentally, we both used our Grandmothers threads to work on our collaborative embroideries. What was your grandmother like and do you think she would approve of this project?
Ahh I’m so happy for this coincidence. She would have whole-heartedly approved. She was wonderful, my Grandma, Ann Horn. I see her as the first artist I was introduced to. She had a black and white dark room at the top of her house, and I remember the excitement of being in there together when I was little. The red light, the magic of the photo appearing in the chemicals. My first experience of a woman in her studio. I lived with her in Cambridge during my Art Foundation year. Just the two of us. I felt like we really got to know each other during that year and connected with our love of making and solitude. We’d often be in the house together working on our own things. Grandma sat embroidering, me chucking paint around in my bedroom. We lived and worked well together. She was hugely supportive of my drawings, and was the first person to commission a drawing. I felt very honoured as she had great taste and I don’t think she was just trying to flatter me! I miss her.
Alice - Which artist(s) (dead or alive) would you most like to invite for dinner?
Ooh. I wonder what Alice Neel and Louise Bourgeois would be like in a room together. Would they get on? I’d like to be there for that conversation. Such different work, and ways of approaching work, but both outspoken, powerful women and mothers - Two of my absolute favourites. Frida Kahlo, obviously, I mean everyone would invite Frida, she’d bring the dinner party to life. Artists alive - I would love to have lunch with Vanessa Baird, Chantal Joffe and Katherine Bradford. I feel like I would learn a lot from these artists, working today.
Top 5 Studio Playlist
I have a cd player in the studio, and I love to play it loudly, in the evenings especially when I’m unlikely to disturb anyone. So, I listen to albums. The album I’m currently obsessed with, (and I do get obsessed), is Adrianne Lenker’s new album Bright Future. (We saw her at The Barbican a few weeks ago and she was wonderful) I think the last time Alice was in the studio I played the new album at least 3 times. It changes, but my favourite track on that album at the moment, is Donut Seam.
1. Donut Seam
The second album I play regularly in the studio is Scout Niblett’s Kidnapped by Neptune. I have a long-term love affair with this one. I love her voice, so sweet, so wild. The lyrics are brilliant, and the album is raw. When I saw her play, I loved it most when it was just her behind her drum kit shouting / singing.
2. Scout Niblett – F*ck Treasure Island
The other 3 tracks are ones I have on repeat. The Diane Cluck and Shilpa Ray ones are both only about a minute long! Very grounding and beautiful. But the Fake ID track is the best for energy. It makes me dance. It’s a good one to play after lunch in the studio.
3. Diane Cluck - Lucifer
4. Shilpa Ray - New York Minute Prayer
5. Riton, Kah-Lo - Fake ID
Looking Glass is open now and runs until 7 June
The Mill Studio
New House Farm Barns,
Ford Lane,
Arundel
BN18 0EF
Current opening times:
Thursday-Saturday
10am-3pm
Sunday 10am-1pm
Other times possible by appointment