Beatrice Lettice Boyle
Chelsea Arts Club Trust / Zsuzsi Roboz Scholarship
Website: http://www.beatriceboyle.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatriceletticeboyle/
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Q&A with Beatrice Lettice Boyle – June 2020
How did you get started?
I graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2018, since then I’ve been working in a studio in Camberwell alongside peers from the MA Painting course. I had a relatively long gap, almost a decade, between my BA at Central Saint Martins and the Masters. I loved being in the old building on Charing Cross Road and meet people I’m still in touch with, I valued my time there but I was 19 and had no idea what direction I wanted the work to go in. The two years at the Royal College of Art were instrumental in terms of the work I now make. I can’t remember ever making the conscious decision to paint, it seemed like the obvious choice because it was what I loved doing most, so after school I went to Camberwell to do a foundation year… I haven’t gone very far, I was born in London!
What type of work do you make?
The hardest question to answer! The work I am currently making is part of ‘The Composite Witch’, an ongoing survey of various witches, or could be/would be witches or hags; women accused of madness, Maenads… a recurring motif which crops up in my work. Several paintings are of a Maenad from the 1862 Richard Dadd painting Bacchanalian Scene, which I have visited in the Tate since I was a child. Maenads are female followers of Dionysus, the word comes from the Greek maenades, meaning ‘mad’ or ‘demented’. During orgiastic rites Maenads roamed the mountains and forests performing frenzied, ecstatic dances. The actor Shelley Duvall is another recurring motif, I’m compelled to paint the face I fell in love with in Robert Altman films. I’m bewitched by her. The title of a series of paintings That Is Real Moss On My Face. That Is Oatmeal And Dirt In My Hair is a quote from an interview with Bonnie Aarons, the actor who plays the role of ‘The Bum’ in the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive. In a silent role Aarons startles the viewer, an unsettling character many assume to be male… another part of The Composite Witch. The RCA Show in 2018 allowed me to realise an ambitious, site specific project. A 16 by 10 foot wall was clad with compressed cork, on which hung a constellation of 16 paintings. The cork wall allowed for the suspension of images, which enabled the multiple references to exist on a simultaneous plane. Originally intended as sound insulation, the cork is formed by a process in which heat swells the particles which then expand (like popcorn) and adhere to one another. I chose the cork after research into various organic materials which invoked the environment depicted in the paintings (which referenced, amongst other things, a 15th century painting attributed to Bosch and Disney’s 1937 Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs). An integral part of the installation was the scent of the cork, the heating process meant it retained a heady burnt wood smell, which filled the room.
Describe a typical day in the studio?
I had a hiatus from the studio in lockdown because I didn’t feel confident travelling and working there, but I’m excited to have been back in the studio during the past couple of weeks. I attempt to get there relatively early, it’s only a short walk from where I live. I find it hard to paint in artificial light, so I only paint during daylight hours, I sought a space with abundant natural light. I chose to establish a studio set up with friends after the MA in order to foster engagement with other artists, something essential to my practice. I had been in studios in the past where I was working in a space on my own and felt isolated and cut off from the opportunity for conversation surrounding the work. I recognise it’s important for me personally to have other artists around to exchange ideas with and discuss the work as it’s being made.
What are you currently working on?
Although I wasn’t in the studio, I had set out to make work during lockdown… But I found it impossible to focus on painting. The only thing I could focus on (contradictory to what many friends have said) is reading. Books offered a retreat and comfort in the face of uncertainty. So I read a lot of books and didn’t make any paintings. Then in the past couple of weeks I have been making coloured pencil drawings, something I have wanted to do for years but never had the patience, or felt like I’ve had the time, to do. I am grateful (in this sense) for this strange time for resetting my attitude towards time. Drawing has a different pace to painting and when I sit at a desk and draw it is a meditative state in a way that painting is not (for me, at least). There is more uncertainty and risk involved in the paintings and the pace is almost manic, so the drawings offered a change in medium which in turn has prompted a change in pace. The pencil drawings are something I can offer as part of the Artist Support Pledge initiative, with 20% of proceeds going towards local charities Southwark food bank and the Stephen Lawrence Trust. A solo exhibition in Bordeaux was cancelled this spring, but I hope a group exhibition which is due to coincide with Frieze London in October, curated by Shirley Morales of Ltd. Gallery in Los Angeles, will go ahead.
What are some of the key influences for your work?
This is a hard question for me to answer because I think the artists and work I love and am excited about do not necessarily coincide with the art that influences my own practice… Pierre Klossowski is someone whose practice I’m obsessed with and think about a lot. He’s often referred to predominantly as a writer and translator, but he made compelling large scale coloured pencil drawings to illustrate his fiction, which I’ve had the opportunity to see at the Whitechapel Gallery and Cabinet in London and the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin. Klossowski is the older brother of Balthus and his mother’s lover was Rainer Maria Rilke, whom he grew up around. His work is one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to work in coloured pencil, another reason is my mother, who used to work on coloured pencil drawings before I was born and when I was a child, so the medium invokes that era for me. Other influences in my work include Quattrocento painting and Courbet’s L’Origine du monde in the Musée D’Orsay.
What kind of cultural engagement are you turning to while we are temporarily unable to get to museums, galleries, theatres and events?
In the beginning I was consuming everything I could online to the point of saturation, then I realised perhaps this time could be a respite from the constant consumption of culture, amongst other things. Again, it has been a change of pace. I have been reading a lot of fiction (predictably I turned to Ulysses and War & Peace in this time), I also finally read White Girls by Hilton Als in its entirety, which is incredible and The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson which is excellent and, like many recent works of art, feels particularly prescient now. I have been following Roland Barthes’ The Neutral lecture course, pretending I am present as one of his students in 1978. I haven’t engaged much in online exhibitions and viewing rooms, but I am longing to visit exhibitions in person again in the near future. I cannot wait to return to the National Gallery to pay a visit to my two favourite paintings in London, which live in the same room, Uccello’s Battle of San Romano and the Piero della Francesca Nativity.
What is the most surprising thing to you about the Chelsea Arts Club?
How relaxed it is, which I like about it… I also like that phones are banned
The thought that gets me out of bed each day is… What I can see, read, eat