The Table

“The spider as an artist”
A conversation between Karen Birkin and Jessamy Calkin

Do you think of painting as an escape?

The minute I step into my studio I enter into my own world. It helps to have this physical space as a fast track into my mental creative space, I forget everything that’s going on in my life and immerse myself in painting. The other thing that helps me is my palette, I rarely clean it because the layers of encrusted paint make suggestions to me.

Do you look forward to seeing what you’ve done the day before?

I don’t really think of it like that...it’s more about going into my studio to take up the challenges posed by that particular image...hoping that - was it Manet who said this - “the god of all good painting” is on my side but also knowing it can go askew. I have a lot of paintings on the go at the same time because they need drying time and thinking time.

Your paintings have a filmic quality to them, where does that come from?

My subject matter varies but I think the paintings roll together as if they are all part of the same film. The change in focus from the widescreen open landscapes to the close-ups of spiders, and the scenes of people and animals hopefully give the whole exhibition a cinematic quality.
I try to create an atmosphere in the work, sometimes of suspense - a feeling that we are voyeurs on a private scene or that we are being watched - sometimes just the overpowering beauty of a moment held in time. I have worked in film and my husband is a writer/director so I think its language is a natural part of my creative thinking.

Who would you say are your muses?

It depends what I’m working on, but in particular Bonnard, Morandi, Mamma Anderson, Gwen John, Velasquez. Another artist I’m looking at closely is Brice Marden - he really has been quite inspirational in terms of looking at space, subtlety, colour, tonal transitions and composition.
It's really important to me to be constantly open to new artists, inspiration, and ideas. I’m always looking for new images and instagram can be useful. There’s nothing quite like standing in front of a painting though - I wish I could get to more exhibitions.

Have you had any advice or criticism that you felt was especially helpful?

I’m a great believer in positive criticism and artists are good at offering that. A tutor and friend of mine, Emrys Williams, helped me to focus on embedding the images and also articulation/activation of space. It wasn’t so much about criticism, more about pointing out possibilities. If a painting isn’t working for me it’s usually about composition.

How self critical are you?

Extremely and this can be a problem. I've often ruined a painting by not trusting my instinct.

In terms of subject matter, what are the particular qualities that immediately incite a reaction in you and make you think 'I want to paint that’?
I intuitively respond to qualities that are to do with what I'm thinking or feeling at that time, essentially an intellectual and emotional connection to the subject matter. The way something is lit is also very important, the composition is something that can evolve.

Do you ever get painter's block, assuming there is such a thing, like writer's block - and how do you deal with it? Do you just plough on through?
I suppose I do get painter's block. If I get stuck on a painting and can’t get it out of my head I can go into this awful circle of creation and destruction on the same canvas. I did this recently with a self portrait, I wasn’t in the right mental space to paint one at the time and it really did my head in. Finally, I had to admit to myself that it wasn’t working and I painted over the top of it to force myself to stop. Mostly if I’m really struggling with a painting, I just put it to one side, start a new one and come back to it later.
You have to know what you want - what you’re trying to capture. I have this feeling about the image I want to make and as I paint it I respond to the actual paint and what it’s doing as I put it down. Its very physicality makes new suggestions - there’s a sensuality to oil painting especially that lends itself to becoming like an emotional shorthand.
I’m always looking for lateral connections. That’s what works for me - when the painter leaves open space for the viewer to make connections - leaving the ambiguity in the painting for the viewer to participate.

How do you know when a painting is finished?

It’s a question of confidence in your convictions... so it can be quite hard to know. It takes time. Sometimes I have to leave a painting for a few months and then have another look at it. Auerbach does this by giving the painting to his dealer who puts it in a cardboard box. After a certain time has passed he goes back to have a look at it to decide if it’s finished or not. It’s an excellent idea, I have ruined too many paintings by not realising that they were finished, and losing the original qualities that made them work.

Unlike a script or a music track, there is no saved copy; when you’ve lost a painting, that’s it - so it can be quite nerve-wracking.
You can become blind to a painting and it’s difficult to judge - you have to go away and forget it and then when you come back to it it’s a gut instinct as to whether it’s done or not.

I think it was Manet who would take his pictures back from people who’d bought them, and keep fiddling with them. And I really understand that, and I've done it too but it’s often a mistake. You have to be true to the purity of the emotion and intellect you had at the time and capture it on the canvas, if you go back to it in a different mood you can ruin that.

What do you listen to when you paint?

A great range of music. Nick Cave is one example - I find the poetry in his songs very inspiring, sometimes I use lines from them as titles for my paintings. I’m lucky to have a good friend, Daniel Pemberton, who is a talented film composer and I often like to listen to his work which is always

exciting and original. I also love anything Caribbean Reggae, calypso, salsa etc because it takes me back to my childhood roots. Somewhat alarmingly I think, I can listen to the same song over and over again especially if it resonates with the mood I’m in for that painting.

Your work is extraordinarily poetic - who are your favourite poets?

Like painting and music, poetry is a condensation of thought and emotion. Recently I was very inspired by “The last days of the suicide kid” by Charles Bukowski. I had been listening to it just before I visited Plas Bodfa, a house on Anglesey that used to be an old people's home and is now an interesting and happening exhibition space. Inside there were photos spread out on a table, they were of old people sitting around listening to a carol service, paper plates on their laps with half eaten sausage rolls, a man in a sailors cap calling out the bingo, two ladies sitting outside in their wheelchairs with Easter bonnets on. The photos and the Bukowski prose collided like an explosion in my head and I knew I had to get home and paint. I got back in my car, drove for an hour to get back and I literally went straight up to my studio and started painting. Two paintings in this exhibition are from this series: “Lottie” and “An ending, a beginning".

In these paintings the idea of being in a liminal space, or on a threshold is important. Lottie is in an indistinct space but we can make out an archway. For me this archway represents a portal - I was inspired by Goya and his paintings of the madhouse where arches feature strongly in the composition. In “An ending, a beginning” she looks out towards the light, the outside, an escape. These women are transitioning from this life to whatever lies beyond.

Your subjects are very diverse but they have a lot in common.

There are different themes and imagery - but they are linked by the fact that thoughts and feelings I had when I was painting them all come from the same groundswell within me and of course I draw from my life, what’s around me, the things I see every day. I swim in the sea on a regular basis and where I live is open with vast skies. I let the spiders have free rein in the house so I always have subject matter hanging around and then there are my friends, children and other animals. I like exploring human/animal relationships so I’ve done quite a lot of paintings around that. And I love painting pigs - my first pig painting took a really long time because I couldn’t make sense of its feet. They are really incredible - they are balancing all of this huge weight on their little pointed trotters and I couldn’t quite believe it.

There are a lot of animals in your work - what are the particular qualities in them that you respond to?
I think because they do not speak in words to us, so much of how they feel is contained in a look, in a stance and its visual poetry to me. I enjoy drawing links between humans and other species, these connections we have to our environment and natural world. "Mother spider" draws on the mythology of the spider as mother, creator of the world, weaver of all things.

What do you love about painting spiders?

I began noticing them and they started to play on my mind. I saw a poster for the Royal Ballet of two dancers suspended in the air in the most incredible, almost inhuman shapes and there were these two spiders I saw suspended on a filament which were the same, weightless, in a dance with each other like the ballerinas and I immediately wanted to make that painting.

I was thinking a lot about space at that time because I was reading a book called "The Poetics of Space" by Gaston Bachelard which is a pretty seminal text for artists. I am particularly interested in the interplay with the space variant, the casting of a shadow, or for example when a spider moves towards a fly. I like the idea expressed in the Walt Witman poem “A noiseless patient spider” where he compares his soul to a spider that works persistently in the act of creation, alone, but always searching for ways to explore the immensity of its environment.

There are a selection of spiders on the wall by our loo and with its cracking paint it is an excellent place to photograph them. I would keep seeing these visual opportunities with my spider muses, photograph them and then make paintings pretty quickly afterwards while I still had the experience of seeing them fresh in my head.

A lot of things came together: the idea of spiders as outsiders, the way they are voyeurs, refugees, living on the edge and corners of our living space.
There’s a Haiku poem by Shiki that really affected me:

After killing a spider how lonely I feel in the cold of night.

Spiders are creatures so rich in mythology. There are Native American myths of the spider grandmother, the Greek myth of Arachne, the Caribbean stories of Ananse and it goes on and on. The spider is a fantastic metaphor not only for mothers but also for artists, two things I closely identify with. I feel as if I could paint them endlessly, a bit like Morandi’s paintings where he would just paint still life after still life relating to the architecture of Bologna just in slightly different variations of colour,light and composition. It was enough to keep him going as an artist for his whole life.
And I feel a bit like that with the spider paintings - I could just carry on painting them forever, with slightly different light, shadow, space.
I made the paintings and then I had a lot of fun working out the titles. I’m particularly fond of that poem by Mary Howett, “Will you walk into my parlour” - a cautionary poem all about seduction and manipulation. Although written almost two hundred years ago, it’s as relevant as ever.