Contained in the Sketchbook of Katie Eraser

London-based Australian artist Katie Eraser is the featured artist for this month’s Contained in the Sketchbook collection. Right here, she describes what she wants from a sketchbook, the connection between the sketch and the portray, and what makes her sketchbooks so integral to her apply throughout mixed-media oil portray, set up, and sculpture.

Katie Eraser Takes Us By Her Sketchbook Observe

Since September final yr, I’ve been in my studio at Turps in Elephant and Fort on the Studio Portray Programme. I’ve focussed on utilizing one sketchbook which is a big black leather-bound e book with a thick off-white paper between A4 and A3 measurement. I solely like working at A4 and above, as I are likely to make massive scrawling drawings with sharp angular marks and canopy the pencil sketch with oil stick, pastels, charcoal, and leftover paint from my palette. Working any smaller leaves me feeling restricted and constricted, and I like area. The paper must be fairly sturdy as I add paint from my palette which is often blended with a medium or a solvent, so the paper wants to have the ability to maintain the burden of this liquid. I’m going for a leather-bound sketchbook as I are typically fairly tough and heavy-handed with it within the studio; it will get a bit battered being plonked round and dropped on the onerous flooring. Finally, it must be sturdy, I don’t like being delicate with something within the studio, the mess, and the splashing of paint and drips and footprints on work are the issues I like. I like exhibiting that I’ve been there, I’m by no means attempting to take away my imprint.

Sketchbooks have all the time been a core a part of my course of. Alongside sketchbooks, I work on free sheets of paper for sketching out portray concepts and planning compositions. Currently, I’ve discovered it vital to construct these formative drawings on free sheets as I’ve been incorporating them into the work they inform by affixing them to the floor of the portray. Exhibiting the sketch that knowledgeable the portray on the portray’s floor is a approach to collapse the hierarchy of sketch and portray. It additionally offers the identical weight to the sketch which is formally a ‘preparation’ ingredient solely. I stick these sketches on paper onto the portray’s floor with oil paint after which squirt thick globs of paint onto the corners straight from the tube. This mimics how I used to pin ephemera to a corkboard with vibrant outsized push pins after I was younger. It’s a nod to the popular culture that I used to be so determined to outline myself by.

My work are in oil and oil stick and charcoal, so naturally these mediums float over and into my sketchbooks. On the finish of a day within the studio, any residual paint on my palette will get blended with some solvent or medium and utilized to paper sketches that I’ve pinned to my partitions or have mendacity on the ground, or they are going to be used on sketches inside my sketchbook. Most sketches in my e book can have one thing utilized to them, they could simply be with pencil for some time, however I’ll quickly discover the proper color or inspiration so as to add to them. The sketchbook isn’t about making a ‘completed’ work, and color will all the time discover its approach in sooner or later. I take advantage of many materials modes of mark-making as that’s what appeals to me greatest. I get pleasure from bumping round from one software to a different, from a stick of charcoal to a brush to a colored pencil to a tube of paint, I don’t like several limitation, and I get uncomfortable if I stick with one medium too lengthy.

If I’m focussed on a portray for some time I’d break free from it and create some actually fast drawings on paper, which are tremendous free and rapid-fire to jolt myself away from the stuckness of being with one medium for too lengthy. On this sense, spontaneity is what I’m looking for, which requires a library of supplies available. Typically it’s in a cardboard field on the ground, or a field of pencils on the desk, or oil sticks mendacity in a puddle on the studio flooring, there are surfaces in every single place. I prefer to hold previous work laid out on the studio flooring too. I’m not treasured about them, they change into the ground, I stroll throughout them, drop issues on them, fling paint, use leftover palette residuals to color on them. They’ll change into components of works when required, and are a good way to carry the vitality of the studio, they signify time passing and maintain all of the studio clues somebody is perhaps looking for.

My sketchbook can be a folio for my hand-cut collage works. I make these on free paper after which repair them into the sketchbook. I discover this helps to maintain a transparent reflection of what I’m taking a look at and what I’m involved in. They’re one other key element of figuring out concepts and compositions. I’ve an infinite assortment of reduce parts that I can search via when I’m planning a brand new portray. I like the pliability of shifting parts across the web page, I really feel my concepts change into limitless after I’m enjoying like this. The choices are infinite, and I like the liberty it brings.

In my collage apply, I make work in a collection I name, ‘Minimize Archive,’ it’s a approach for me to look again on earlier work and drawings and reduce them as much as inform new work. That approach there may be usually an easter egg positioned in my work that hyperlinks to a earlier physique of labor, a motif that recurs that takes on new that means in its second iteration, I like to consider it as collaborating with previous variations of myself or my apply. This implies previous work is put into the tumble dryer to be spat out to permeate new configurations. It additionally means every part is all the time in flux, concepts are all the time hanging within the air somewhat than fastened, and though all these works are embedded into my sketchbook now, they could tackle new life later and be reduce out and reused sooner or later. The sketchbook probably received’t keep intact, it’s held at this second, however just a few years from now it may not even exist.

My sketchbook is all the time close by, it’s most frequently opened on a selected unfold I’ve been referring to, on the little shelf beneath the place I paint my work or on the studio flooring. I take a look at it usually, relying on the temper I’m in and what inspiration I’m looking for. I view my sketchbook like an archive, it’s vital for me to repeatedly reference it, so I do know I’m frequently constructing and exploring upon the themes that curiosity me. Recurring motifs have large significance in my work and all of my motifs are situated in my sketchbook and seem many instances over.

My favorite paint is Artwork Spectrum oil paint. They’re a family-owned Australian firm that makes probably the most good vary of oil paints. The vary of colors are so linked to Australia, typically after I’m utilizing them in my chilly gray London studio they make me pine for my sunny far-off residence. The oil paint that I’ve been utilizing principally right here is Winsor & Newton, the tube I’ve gone via huge quantities of is their mixing white – it’s the good 50/50 mix of Zinc and Titanium. I additionally love the pinks that Michael Harding makes, pink is my absolute favorite color, it pops up in most of my works. I don’t know if I’ll ever really feel its presence is just not wanted.

I like Sennelier oil sticks, it’s the one model I take advantage of and I’ve used Sennelier for the final seven years. Their pigments, and the marks they allow me to make, are such an integral a part of my apply. In amongst the costly Senneliers lay previous and busted markers and colored pencils that I’ve been utilizing endlessly, a budget and cheerful newsagent stuff that youngsters usually use is ideal for me. I don’t splash out on colored pencils identical to I solely ever purchase the most affordable brushes, I don’t consider in costly top quality brushes, ones from {hardware} shops and youngsters’s craft sections work nice for me.

For charcoal I like the thin tremendous deep pigmented sticks of black Willow charcoal the very best, they let me make marks like a pencil however with higher impression on the floor. I like the textures they decide up within the paint after I work on high of oil paint, they’re like little revealers, spotlighting textures and timestamps.

My recommendation could be that perfection isn’t stunning, mess is gorgeous, enable freedom and spontaneity in and depart precision and ‘rightness’ on the door. The opposite useful factor for me is mixing low forehead and excessive forehead supplies collectively – youngsters’s pencils with top quality oil paint or ironmongery store brushes with Sennelier oil sticks. I believe simply permitting your self area to play is primary, assume via concepts, chuck some stuff on the wall and make a mark, there aren’t any incorrect methods of approaching issues. And all the time have it available to check with, or higher but, depart it open on a web page so once you subsequent come to make work there’s a little observe of the place you left issues.

Realizing that the sketchbook is a ‘figuring out’ area is tremendous vital to me, it permits me to reframe that area as someplace the place the mess, errors, and crossing out is allowed, and nothing must be completed or absolutely realised. I can’t think about the vitality I might lose if I seemed on the pages as if every wanted to be a superbly articulated rendering of my apply. The fantastic thing about them is that one web page is perhaps a little bit of a multitude and the following web page may maintain a very nice picture that evokes a portray.

About Katie Eraser

Confrontations, collisions and disruptions act as co-conspirators within the visible language of London-based Australian artist Katie Eraser. Eraser examines with disquieting and disembodied voices the various media of enormous scale oil work, sculpture and set up. Eraser obtained a Graduate Diploma of Up to date Artwork on the Victorian School of the Arts, The College of Melbourne in 2021. She has beforehand accomplished a Masters in Therapeutic Arts Observe from the Miecat Institute (2020); and holds a Bachelor of Design from Billy Blue School of Design (2007). Since 2017, she has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout England, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Portugal.

Eraser is presently on the Turps Studio Programme in London, the place her studio is predicated for 2023-2025. In 2022, Eraser accomplished artist residencies at PADA Artwork Residency in Lisbon and Nocefresca Artwork Residency in Sardinia. She was a finalist within the 2022 BBA Artwork Gallery Artwork Prize in Berlin, in addition to the Girls’s Summary Artwork Biennial, Melbourne in 2020. In 2018, she was awarded the Fortyfive Downstairs Rising Artist Award, Australia.

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