Virginia Bodman

HYPERALLERGIC: A View From the Easel - read the full article here, interview with Virginia Bodman below

How long have you been working in this space?

Almost 35 years.

Describe an average day in your studio.

I walk the two miles across the city to my studio six to seven days a week. I work from 11am until 7pm, so take plenty of food with me! I work on several large paintings at once and, like many artists, find that the best looking and decision making is done when concentrating on a different painting. As a result of unexpectedly falling in love with Venice in 2017, I now work there for two to three months every autumn, either en plein air or on the terrace of the small rented apartment. These works inform the large paintings and drawings I make back in my studio in Sunderland.

How does the space affect your work?

It’s a big space, 30 by 40 feet, lit by a west-facing window augmented with strip lighting. It’s okay, but my work looks better, more brilliantly colored, even dazzling, when it is taken outside in full daylight before being trucked to galleries — a real confidence boost. Not that this happens often enough nowadays! The studio, in a large, former schoolroom, has 24-foot-high walls that allow me to raise my nine-foot-high paintings up for more comfortable working. I use my collection of street-found chairs of differing heights for the purpose. The space allows me to work on six large paintings at the same time and to rehearse how a show “hangs.”

How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?

The Sunniside area of the city is considered unsafe by many people, but not me. There are now a couple of thriving café-music venues, a restored Victorian square that hosts a monthly food market, and new affordable housing is being built on a cleared site. A theatre company, two dance schools, and a gym operate in the vicinity of the studio. Having worked in this area for many years, I know lots of the local street people who always offer to lend a hand when they see me struggling with heavy items such as rolls of canvas.

What do you love about your studio?

A personal condition of moving from London to take up a position at the art school here in 1990 was that I improve on the amount of studio space that I could afford. My space, on the first floor of a former school building, was a dream come true and the reason why I have stayed here ever since. Situated on what was the main business street of a formerly busy port and manufacturing city, the area has undergone not entirely successful regenerations since the 1990s. My space, alongside that of the five other artists in the Villiers Street Studio Group, has no heating, but I can make a mess and have good standing space to see my large paintings. The bouncy wooden floor is a gift now that I have dodgy knees.

What do you wish were different?

I wish that the landlord had carried out a basic level of maintenance on this Grade 2 listed building as requested over the last 35 years to prevent water ingress from broken gutters and downpipes, so that the imminent major renovation could have been avoided. This threatened renovation, although a good thing for the building and the area, will no doubt render us, the oldest studio group in the city, without a space to work — isn’t this what happens everywhere?

What is your favorite local museum?

There are several small art and local history museums in the North-East of England. The Baltic Centre in Gateshead, not far from the famed “Angel of the North” sculpture by Antony Gormley, has interesting and often provocative contemporary shows. My favorite venue in the area is the Hepworth in Wakefield, a beautiful, brilliantly sited and thoughtful building designed by David Chipperfield. It contains a collection of the late Barbara Hepworth’s work and studio artifacts. The main draw for me is their excellent and relevant contemporary art exhibitions.

What is your favorite art material to work with?

Oil paint is “my” medium. I have used it for over 60 years. It is the material I think in and with. I use colors from a variety of top-quality brands and often make my own from dry pigments. Oil paint has many essential qualities: I can accurately and easily mix any color I need, and most importantly, the color does not change at all from wet to dry states, which I find acrylic paint does. Oil paint is endlessly versatile, has great presence, and always feels alive. The downside is cleaning brushes and palettes! When I work in Italy, I work on paper using watercolour and gouache.

Home Ground (book), Paintings and Drawings by Virginia Bodman, published by Art Editions North, 2007, 80 pages, 32 colour illustrations is available on Etsy now - £12 with free UK shipping

With essays by Rosemary Betterton, Stella Beddoe, Tony Godfrey and Angela Kingston with an introduction by Rashida Davison, Director Globe Gallery, edited by Angela Kingston

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1775206393/home-ground-book-paintings-and-drawings

NCA CURATES NO LAST DANCE

NCA GALLERY THURSDAY 25TH APRIL - SATURDAY 18TH MAY

OPEN: THURSDAY - SATURDAY, 12 - 5PM

EVENTS:

OPENING CELEBRATION: SAT 20TH APRIL, 4 - 7PM

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE - SYMPOSIUM: SAT18TH MAY, 2 - 5PM

LATE SHOWS: SAT 18TH MAY, 6 - 11PM

A group exhibition and a one-day symposium exploring how time is intrinsic to the act of making and viewing painting. The exhibition will showcase exciting approaches to painting that will be a stimulus for discussion about how artists sustain a motivated and ambitious practice with or without public recognition.

The curation of the exhibition has been informed by the writing and practice of Isabelle Graw and Charlotte von Heyl. Isabelle Graw is an art writer who is interested in painting as a “formation”, something that continues to maintain itself under new historical conditions. As well as offering a way of discursive communication, painting operates at a non verbal level through bumps, marks, material and colour. Artist Charlotte von Heyl suggests that the moment of beholding a painting is the most important for her. That activation of the space between the viewer and the picture externally by its material presence and internally through shifting thoughts as the mind wanders is crucial. This process with a painting is not one the beholder can take away, but one that needs to be replayed and updated again and again whether positive or defensive.

In an interview, Phyllida Barlow (1944 - 2023) observed that many artists' work is never, or rarely gets seen. She raises interesting, but rarely discussed ideas about an artist’s visibility and the inherent heroism in working with little external validation. This point was echoed in a series of conversation events held at NCA leading up to the exhibition, which identified questions of artistic visibility and agency as a central concern. These conversations also played an important role in the curation of the exhibition and will be explored further in the symposium.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Helen Baker / Virginia Bodman / Debbie Bower / Annette Chevallier / Sarah Cooney / Charles Danby / Jennifer Douglas / Bob Edgson / Natalie Gale / Rachel Gibson / Ian Gonczarow / Lorraine Lawler / Rachael Macarthur / Paul Merrick / Abdullah Quresi / Ellen Ranson / Louise Scott / Andy Sheridan / Helen Smith / Sue Spark / Flora Whiteley / Becky Woodhouse

Furious: paintings by Virginia Bodman, 20 July–7 August 2021

Bodman is one of the few artists who has shown in all of Globe Gallery’s various venues and her show will be the last at its current site on the 7th Floor, Commercial Union House, 37 Pilgrim Steet, Newcastle, NE1 6QE

The gallery is situated in a Brutalist-style building (1971) in the centre of Newcastle and offers panoramic views of the city. The building once described as ‘a concrete bungle’ is an entirely appropriate setting for the work as the paintings not only ‘take-on’the scale and physicality of the architecture but also critique ideas current in the period that the building was planned and built.

Furious includes paintings from three bodies of work: StudioStudioStudio, Heaps and Propositions. Some of the paintings in this exhibition were made meditatively, some in a furious state of mind and other painted furiously. Bodman invites you to decide for yourself.

Please check Globe Gallery website for opening times as they may vary.

https://globegallery.org/portfolio-item/furious/
https://www.facebook.com/theglobegallery

Gallery text available here for additional reading: FURIOUS_gallery_text.pdf

Artist Talk and Brunch with Virginia Bodman