South London Women Artists

Interview by Angela Corrias

I left Dulwich-born Julie Bennett’s studio with the feeling that every dream can come true: I don’t know if it’s just because her’s actually did, or because of her overwhelming and contagious enthusiasm. With her hair up, jeans and t-shirt studded with colourful paint, Julie is the queen of her small and cosy studio.The walls are decorated with some of her favourite paintings, two self-portaits, one of herself as the Mona Lisa.

Women’s eyes, hair, problems, judgements, any kind of feeling, … but always concerning and representing women. The question was mandatory: “Do you always paint women? They look sad, they look like they have problems.” Seemingly, it was what she had been waiting for: “Do you think so? Look at them carefully: they are androgynous characters. Mainly they are women that look like men, I’m interested in the cross-over between identitites. I like painting myself - I have a few self portraits - or my friends, but I normally get my inspiration by trawling through the neverending resources that magazines can offer and I paint everything inspires me, everything that interests me, mainly indefinite features, meaningful and indefinite.”

Allowing the colours to drip loosely, Julie’s objective is capturing the identity of her characters, or more precisely the troubles they have with their identities. “I’m just not interested in landscapes”, she says very spontaneously, “I’m interested in questioning what the role of painting is now, I want the women I paint to be more than passive and merely decorative objects. I want my characters to be very confident and be able to establish an eye contact if you look at them”. In fact, Julie’s women want to show their personality, be it the identity crisis of the “Girl That Thinks She Is A Boy” or the life in “Two Girls”. “That’s why I’m interested in magazines, they are people focused. I really love people, I love interacting with people. The other day I met somebody that used to teach me, in a nursery, when I was three years old and she asked me:‘Do you still love the world?’”

Influenced by artists such as Michael Andrews, Lucian Freud, Marlene Dumas, Jenny Saville, Julie is fascinated by people’s faces and inspired by religious iconography, popular culture, graffiti, tattoos. Despite her success - she has been labelled one of Saatchi’s new stars by The Independent in November 2006 - Julie started painting relatively recently, beginning only two years ago. After completing an eight-week summer school in painting in UCL Slade School of Fine Art in 2006 and a HNC BTEC in Fine Art at Kensington and Chelsea College in 2007, she is now studying at Chelsea College of Art and Design. “I have worked in graphic design for ten years, for famous magazines such as Q, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, and I realized that I was using my hand only to move the mouse. When I felt I had achieved everything I wanted to achieve from a career in graphic design, I thought I needed to do something new, and what did I do? I enrolled in a course to play guitar: I was absolutely awful! It was a struggle to play, I couldn’t even see myself writing music. I’ve played guitar for two years, it was just dreadful! Then I enrolled in a painting course and that was an epiphany, it really changed my life. I started for fun and I’m so excited by the turn my life is taking”.

http://www.juliebennett.co.uk/ Julie works in William Angel Studios, Peckham, with two sculptors, a photographer and an interior designer; their next group show is in April 2008. Meanwhile, her paintings will also be exhibited from March at the Sassoon Gallery, in Peckham, London SE15 and The Saatchi Online Gallery are representing two of her paintings at FORM London art fair.

Interview by Susan Wood



Born in Montreal and raised on the west coast of Canada, Liz moved to London at the age of twenty-four to work in theatre on some really big-budget shows. She’d studied set design and prop-making in Canada and thought she might stay a year or so. She has been here ever since, firmly established in south London with her husband and two sons. She started making props at English National Opera - anything from a huge fibreglass statue of Ho Chi Minh for Miss Saigon to props and sets for the touring show of Cats - and from there went freelance. In 2008 Liz did an MA at Camberwell, where she decided to focus on enhancing her understanding of tone in her drawings, a departure from her previously highly coloured work.How did doing an MA affect your practice?For the MA I started to use charcoal for the first time; my project was the Thames. I was fascinated by waterways and thought of comparing and contrasting them with those in Canada. Then I looked at the reaches of the Thames you can get to in an inflatable kayak, where you won’t be dragged off-course by the current – started upriver near Hampton and continued on downriver towards Putney, the stretch where my sons row. Out there the Thames is not walled, so you can get right down to water-level. I took lots of colour photographs on and next to the river, from which I chose subject matter for my charcoal drawings. Areas of surface water with intricate random patterns fascinate me – they are the starting-point. I’ve a definite affinity with water: I was raised by the sea and my mother still lives about a quarter of a mile from the Pacific Ocean. We were always going down to the sea. I find it immensely calming – that’s the effect of water, even if like the Thames it may in places be full of silt and refuse! The Thames, being entrenched in history, exudes a sense of place and a sense of time. And because a river travels from A to B, from one destination to another, things travelling with it can end up anywhere.Do you ever include figures?No. I find them intrusive and don’t want to share the landscape with them. And I don’t want the viewer to have to share the landscape with another person.How do you work?I use soft willow charcoal and a tiny bit of compressed charcoal for the darker areas, and use my fingers to smudge the charcoal and create the tones. Then I use an eraser to make white marks by lifting off the charcoal. The finished drawings, which take about 4 or 5 days to complete, need three coats of fixative to keep the charcoal from rubbing off.Who are your influences?Vija Celmins, in particular her graphite drawings of water, and the Japanese-Canadian artist Takao Tanabe’s breathtaking large-scale landscapes.What do you think of SLWA?It’s great to be involved and meet and have a dialogue with other women who are raising questions about their art and how it fits in with raising a family and holding down a job.What have you got in the pipeline?In February I have a piece of work in the Jealous Gallery – they liked my more unfinished drawings. And I’ll be exhibiting in Lucy Bainbridge’s studio as part of the Dulwich Open House in May.Look out for Liz’s highly original charcoal drawings, where the emphasis is on composition, tone, shape, and ‘maybe a hint of mystery’.

  Tucked away in a leafy corner of a large park is Moira Jarvis’ new studio. It’s one of six ‘potting sheds’ rented out to artists.

Is this your first ever studio?
Yes! I’m very privileged to have my own studio. Before that I had a room in the house, but it had a bed in it and was sometimes used as a guest room. Having a studio has allowed me to focus more sharply on my work. The experience of setting up a studio is very exciting – I painted the walls brilliant white to improve the light and friends gave me some old furniture and a jute rug. On the walls I’ve hung completed paintings and also drawings of trees and colour notes which I use for reference. From the studio I look straight out onto the trees and the sculptors who work outside. Working during the evening here is hugely enjoyable. We have to be out by 9 at night and don’t have 24-hour access, but I usually try to leave before it gets dark. The community of artists here is delightful and supportive.

How do you work?
I take my easel out into the grounds around the studio and sketch and paint and then finish off the works in the studio, where I’m not dependent on the weather. I usually stretch my own canvases but I have started to buy them made up for quickness. I also use graphite on cotton rag paper, but I work primarily in oils, and am very interested in colour mixing. I am currently using Poppy Oil as a mixing medium to give the paint a more lustrous look.

Do you only work in South London?
No. I also have a small barn in Normandy, in Suisse Normande, where there are lots of gnarled old pear trees – the history of the farmland goes back to Roman times.

What are you trying to capture in your paintings?
I’ve always been interested in landscape. I trained in Birmingham and then did an MA in Wimbledon - my series of MA paintings was based on a walk in Yorkshire and the limestone pavement. In November 2008 I had an exhibition of work completed in France, giving the feeling of the landscape and the history of the area. My aim is to record a ‘particular moment in time’ and convey the resonance of the landscape and its history. Rather than provide a detailed account of the landscape I’m trying to reach some sort of understanding of it and respond to it.



Why are you so interested in trees?
I’m seduced by them! I run life-drawing workshops and feel that there’s quite a lot of correlation between drawing figures and drawing trees – both are organic, and both are always moving and changing. There are similar problems to deal with and the basic structures are cylinders. Trees are always affected by the elements – such as the wind – and tend to be at the most wonderful angles – I’m interested in the way they grow.

Do you ever work on other subjects?
I did a series on quinces, and love experimenting with colours. In that series I mostly used vivid blues, burnt sienna and raw sienna, with touches of yellow ochre. I also worked with acid-dyed fleece which I layered to make felt. A totally different sort of commission was for a friend who wanted a CD cover based on the Orkney landscape.

Do you paint full-time?
No. I’m currently working part-time in art education as an artist/teacher. But moving into this studio has had a big impact on me in terms of having easy everyday access to the landscape and a private space to develop my ideas. I aim to spend more and more time here.PS You may like to read the review on the SLWA website of the Artdog Gallery exhibition which includes a reference to Moira’s work.  

Liz Dalton’s Sydenham studio is light and airy. Images of flowers and leaves abound. Liz has always liked drawing, from her schooldays through her years as an illustrator to her present status as a free-lance artist teaching and working to commissions.

How did you start?
I did a three-year course in Illustration at Harrow then moved into publishing. My drawing skills, initially developed at college are practised in life classes and in my sketchbook. After practising as an illustrator for about ten years, working to very tight deadlines, I began to feel that the commercial briefs were dictating how I worked. So I decided to branch out on my own. It felt as though I were starting again from scratch, so I started where I always begin, with drawings. In 1990 we moved to Chicago and it was there that I began to start painting again. It felt like the right time to do it and I had personal ideas I could work through.

What influenced you there?
A group called the ‘Chicago Imagists’ painted in a vibrant, figurative way. The wide open spaces, huge skies and monumental buildings influenced my compositions. Over in the US I painted in oils, on paper and canvas.

How did things change when you returned to the UK?
When we returned to England I got a studio in Crystal Palace and worked part-time as a teacher and carried on painting. My work changed again, quite radically. I was sketching on the computer and began to paint using flat colours. I was teaching post-16, exhibiting nationally and internationally, and now I teach drawing on the BA in Theatre Design at Croydon. This year I’m also teaching The Dynamics of Colour, drawing and painting at Westminster Adult Education Service.

What art do you do outside your teaching?
Most of the time I’m doing commissions and working for exhibitions. The skills I learnt as an illustrator come in very useful –‘Your work has a graphic clarity which is calming and easy to live with’ commented Susan Wood during this interview. The joy of a commission is that your work will definitely be seen outside the studio! It’s important for people to meet the artist, and nowadays people are keen to sustain the local economy. Normally we aim to have an Open Studio twice a year, but people can contact me any time.Fennel flower, Switzerland (oil on canvas, 89cm x 122cm) was a commission for a couple living in Sydenham. It’s based on a flower from my father-in-law’s garden. I tend to do what I call ‘photo drawings’ – I take a photo then base the drawing on the whole photo or one small part of it. Sometimes I start from the flower’s actual shadow. Most of my works are of plants, but they also remind you of other things. My son, for example, said that my fennel flower painting reminded him of a Roman candle. Dioxzine Cadmium (oil on canvas, 135cm x 135cm) (see image at top of page) was commissioned by a collector of mine. She wanted one image to spread across 3 canvases. As it was for her library, which had little natural light source, I used a very bright warm yellow to compensate for this. The client is a very keen gardener, hence her passion for flowery images.‘I-U’ was a collaboration with artists Bruno Maag and Dan Prescott for a charity auction at the ICA. The theme was to capture the true meaning of love, set by Love-in-the-Sky TV. I drew a heart shaped wreath which I wanted to be quirky and whimsical. The concept was that we all would use a heart shape – in the end the middle section departed from that shape: it was an abstraction of the letters I and U, this introduced another dynamic. Collaborating was great. We all bonded during the project and found the artists’ dialogue motivating and inspiring.


‘I-U’ (mixed media, 46cm x 122 cm. Institute of Contemporary Arts, London








What are your plans for the future?
I am at the drawing and conceptual stage, of some new work with the SLWA BANKSIDE show in mind. …Readers, over to you!