336 - Studio with Houseplants

A studio is a refuge, a place to think, imagine and work: to explore ideas, problems, thoughts and processes that (in my case) turn into paintings. In this painting the studio dominates as a place, a situation and a constant source of visual development. Drawings and gouaches are projected onto the room, the house plants collected in the corner, the doors onto the garden all provide a rich visual resource of shape, contrast, colour and pattern, that echo the possibility of an animal inhabiting the space. Okapis are beautiful, surprising, secretive and incredibly rare. With their subtle brown/grey/black coat and black and white striped rump and legs they disappear into the dappled light of the Congo forest (and, amazingly, under the trees in their enclosure at London Zoo). They are very vulnerable. There are only an estimated 3000 left in the wild. Why wouldn’t one appear in my painting?