Wet and translucent: walking through her studio is like being inside of her paintings.
Artist Clare Price’s studio is based in a 1920s brick-built former ships’ propeller foundry in deep Deptford, as part of Acme studios, where the artist has been working for thirteen years now. “Sorry, I’ve just made a painting, I had to”, Clare greets me as she opens up door number 70, which hosts her studio space. Undoubtedly, spilling water and painting with her hands onto the raw canvas has kept her entertained all day, a technique she describes paralleling to a Russian roulette, where one can either win or fuck it up in less than a blink. In other words, the artist realises her paintings ‘in one act’ – this process is an intense one that takes a lot out of her, but feels clean, liberating, light, and joyful at the same time. Inside, I walk around a dog’s mattress and trip over her 90s Nike’s that are scattered under the table. The artist has a rigorous daily routine in which she drives to a woodland to walk her dog, gets to her studio and makes coffee, eats whatever food on hand, and gives the dog her lunch. After that, she then finds the will to get into the painting clothes and start stretching canvases. Zee, her studio partner is not in today, and her dog, who seems to have a bit of a reputation in the local parks, isn’t in either. I reach the large wet canvas that the artist has been working on for the past days, which is resting on the floor. We both sit down around the work. Clare, who wears a rose quartz necklace, offers me a coffee, and as she leaves the room, I find myself blowing onto the glossy surface of the wet paint, hoping to move the mountain of deep pink fluids of water covering the work, and prey in silence for her not to notice. The studio is illuminated through its large Victorian windows, which subsequently accelerate the drying process of her works during Summer. Under those circumstances, her work still takes ages to dry during winter, however Clare has found a way to keep herself occupied whilst waiting for these to drain: the artist makes daily ‘private’ performances, which she shares snippets of through her Instagram account, a ‘safe space’, which functions as her sketchbook. Price shows me around her mood-board, covered with images of Joan Mitchell and Blinky Palermo paintings, and the objects piled on her table, including the book ‘On Violence’ given to her on the same morning by Sharon Kivland herself. Finally, we finish the visit talking about makeup tutorials, and exchanging chocolate cookies for a used hairband with neon spheres.
