Viva Brighton Issue #78 August 2019

ART
.............................
Focus on: Shadow
by Michaela Ridgway
Who is casting
the shadow? I
don’t know. It’s
a person in a
photograph that
I came across.
I usually work
from photographs
that I’ve taken
on my phone or
sometimes on a
Holga camera:
a cheap Chinese
camera designed
for the massmarket
that you
can get for about
£16 on the internet.
They are badly made and let light in, so you get
a pleasingly unpredictable result.
How do you choose the subjects for your
paintings? Photographs are always the jumping
off point, but there’s no theme. What informs
the choice is the composition of the image and
the way I’m feeling that day. I work with black
and white images because I don’t want to be
influenced by naturalistic colours. I’ll print
out the photograph and turn it upside down
to disrupt my sense of how things should be. I
don’t want to copy. It’s a bit like writing a poem
when you have a prompt of some sort, you might
take a line from page 67 of a random book. My
way of composing a painting is a bit like that.
Tell me about your use of colour. It’s a
function of what’s happening, in the moment,
on the palette. If I were asked to mix a flesh
tone or a cactus green, I would probably get
there, but I wouldn’t find it interesting. What
I love is to mix colour and the surprises that
result. I have no
plan other than
that. I use a lot
of paint and will
cover a table with
cellophane for
a palette, which
allows me to
develop a large
range of colours
over the course
of a session. I’ll
work on two or
three paintings
at once and like
to see how the
colour relationships
develop and differ
over the three canvases.
You’re a painter and a poet. How do those
things work together? I’m very verbal most of
the time but, when I’m painting, the thinking
process sinks to a non-verbal level. I find writing
agonising – poetry is particularly agonising, but
I do really enjoy it. If I start a poem, it will have
me in its grip for days. Painting, on the other
hand, is much less painful, and much faster.
It’s very gratifying, very visceral. And it’s more
about the process than the finished painting.
If I like the end product, that’s a bonus. That
said, I usually do like the end product. In fact,
I’m probably the biggest fan of my own work!
I love looking at my work when I’ve finished a
piece. This feeling wears off though. Quite soon
all I want to be doing is discovering the next
painting… Interview by Lizzie Lower
See more of Michaela’s work at Gallery
40, Gloucester Road, from 20-31 August.
michaelaridgway.com
....59....