Q & A with Stacey McCall
Our Exhibitions Manager & Curator Dylan interviewed current exhibiting artist Stacey McCall, read on for more info and insight into her latest work and artistic practice.
Q. Your painting has a very distinctive style, yet has progressed and resolved over the time we have known you. How have you found what works for you and continued to push yourself to refine and explore new things in your work?
A. I am leaning into abstraction with my work, I think a looser and perhaps more naive approach is how I prefer to paint. Where I used to closely observe my subject matter, I am now referencing initial sketches. I love looking at art books or can go down an absolute rabbit hole if I come across an artist I love. I am influenced by British modernism, painters such as Ben Nicolson, Mary Fedden, Kate Nicolson, William Gillies, just to name a few have had a big influence on my work. I also try and continue to improve my skills, doing at least one workshop per year.
Q. Your palette is often quite earthy, the pops of red and neon yellow in 'A Way Of Painting' are a beautiful evolution in your work. What is your favourite colour to paint with?
A. Before focusing primarily on still life, I was a landscape painter, very influenced by the palette of the Australian bush. I think as a moved into still life, the ceramics of my childhood, earthenware pottery and Australian native flowers just naturally repeated those earthy tones and palette. I think my favourite colour to paint with is yellow in all its variations from neon to ochre, and lately blue, very Matisse inspired I have to admit.
Q. So many people connect with your paintings, what do you think is it about still life that is so engaging?
A. Still Life so reflects our shared experience. There is a comfort to its everyday ordinariness, objects and vignettes we recognise, the ephemera of family, home and the necessities of life, the simple beautiful things.
Q. Apart from the beauty to be found in objects of daily life, what inspires you to be creative?
A. I think particularly from when my girls were young, it was so important for me to hang onto my creativity somehow, maybe just putting a nice tablecloth on the table or flowers in a vase, I’ve always needed to creatively “curate” my environment as a way of expressing myself I suppose. I also totally binge watch other artists on Youtube, if I’m struggling to get going in my studio, I find watching other people talk about their process and passion so inspiring. Sandi Hester is one of my favourites.
Q. I absolutely love Apples On A Plate in your current exhibition. Which is your favourite work?
A. I think probably Protea in a Glass Vase which is why I chose it for the invitation although the first work I did for this show is one I really feel informed the series and that’s White Jug with Lemons.
Q. I know you often sketch up compositions in your notebook with watercolour ahead of starting a painting, can you talk a bit more about your process when working towards an exhibition?
A. When that wall in my studio is blank and I am starting a new body of work there is always the worry that nothing will happen. I’ll sit down and look through my art books, I’ll write thoughts in my journal, and get out my sketchbooks. I look though older work and take notes about old favourites and try to identify what it is about them that I like. Often it will be because they have a little hint of the direction I want to go, something a bit looser and abstract. Then I’ll start drawing and painting in my tiny sketchbooks, almost thumbnails really and as a the sketches grow in number I will photograph them and print them off as photos (at officeworks) and pin them up as though they are the show. I can start to see a connection, which ones work and which don’t but it really helps me to work on a show as an entire series pretty much from the beginning. Once I have all my boards prepared, I start translating the drawings in oil.
Q. Podcasts, music or silence in the studio?
A. I used to listen to music but now I prefer complete silence in my studio. I do however absolutely devour art podcasts while walking and driving. Talking with painters, Art Juice, Art Wank, The Creative Kind, The Good Oil, The Great Women Artists, Bow Down…there’s so many!
