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Writer's pictureKadira

Studio Tips - How To Create a Nurturing Space



easel on a deck

When I first moved to Australia we were living on the northern beaches in Sydney and I thought there wasn't anywhere for me to paint. However, I soon came to the realization that we had quite a reasonable size deck running along the north side of the house, so I resolved to set up my paint and brushes on the deck. I didn't even have an easel at this point, so placing my painting on top of a table, I lent it against the wall of the house and voila! A studio of sorts. Was it ideal? NO. Did it have everything one might want or even need in a studio,? Definitely not! We moved there in summer, and by the time winter came around I was actually ready and looking for another solution to the studio dilemma. Even rugged up, the cold weather eventually became too miserable to continue with this setup for a studio during the winter. In desperation I moved my painting operation into a small, tiny, corner of my bedroom, which was fortunately a fairly large room and there it remained until we moved.


Well, as my mum used to say, where there is a will, there is away.


We finally moved to a property that was two and a half acres and built a house there with a big garage, half of which was my studio - heaven at last!. Well that worked for a while, until I got to the point where I wanted to start teaching classes and so I needed more space.

Space, space, always more space! The problem was that art was such a space gobbling up activity in so many ways. You need room for easels, students if you have them, and of course somewhere to store all those dozens of paintings you are turning out and which become very problematic if you aren't moving them on through sales.

We never actually used this garage as somewhere to park cars. The other half of the garage was my partner's workshop with tools and so forth. However I gradually began taking that over and in the end I had this lovely big studio with plenty of space. Again the winter was a bit of a challenge as the building had no interior lining, however I found a small pot belly stove on Gumtree and had that installed. I've always loved a wood fire, it was cosy. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that studio space, as it was back in the day when there were no mobile phones and the selfie hadn't been invented yet!

I will say is that it is important to make your studio space comfortable, a place that you want to be in. I highly recommend a comfy chair or lounge suite, something you can curl up on and contemplate your work when needed, or relax in for some drawing practice.


Now, if you only have a bedroom, well I've done that too - buy some carpet underlay(if its bare boards or concrete) and a heavy duty tarpaulin and screw the tarp down over the top of the carpet, if you have it, or the underlay. This works like magic and solves the problem of ruining the carpet.


So no more excuses - go get your studio happening.

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