A Room With A View

  When I was in college, and needed to be painting, and had no motivation to do so, I learned that I could rebuild my motivation by looking at pictures of artists working in their studios. If that was unavailable, pictures of the studios also worked. This has taken a life of its own and I continue to have an interest in artists’ studios even though I am also motivated to go to my own studio and make art.

 So I have looked at lots and lots of studios. One that mystified me for a long time was Pierre Bonnard‘s studio at Le Cannet. It’s tiny. Adding to that, this tiny second story room has a four foot tall platform filling about three quarters of it. This room was Bonnard’s choice. It was his house, and he was a well known established artist when he moved in. So it wasn’t like there was this frustrating situation with his grandmother or something. Bonnard said that he really liked this studio.

 As you can tell, this mystified me for years. Then I was hired to curate several shows in galleries around town for the annual arts festival in Columbia, Maryland. I visited an artist, Effie Gereny, at her quite beautiful studio in Baltimore, that had been added to her house. The studio was big enough to spread around many of her large paintings to sort out the best work for the show. I had to go up several steps to leave, since the floor of the studio was lower than that of the house, and I paused on the platform before entering the house. As I looked down at the work I had been spending time with, I was able to have a fresh look with each piece, giving me new insights about the work and how to show it. I also now knew that this was what was happening with Bonnard, who liked his little studio with high vantage points.

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