Studio Life - Mark Hearld

Studio Life

In November 2018, Christina Jansen visited Mark Hearld in his studio in York, in preparation for Mark’s solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in February 2019 - Studio Life. Here is an insight into Mark’s studio and his working process as well as a conversation between Mark and Lotte Crawford, especially conducted for this exhibition.

Studio Life - Mark Hearld in conversation with Lotte Crawford Lotte Crawford is writing her PhD on Enid Marx’s Interwar textiles, she is affiliated with Coventry University and Compton Verney Art Gallery.

LC: Describe your studio?

MH: I have my own space which is at one end of a building called The Cottage, it’s the ground floor of an Eighteenth Century print studio. My work table is actually the communal table in the centre of the space, it is a long bench that has a range of material on it. However hard I try to keep it tidy it is always chaotic - it is actually quite often just a heap of paper. I like the dynamic of moving between the communal table into my space to find things. Creativity comes out of chaos for me. It enables me to see potential and to make visual connections between disparate things if there is an array of materials about.

LC: To what extent does your studio experience affect your work?

MH: It is very important, I thrive on dynamic exchange. I am surrounded by people making paintings, another who makes mobiles, a jeweller, someone who works with textiles. I feel that just seeing their use of colour, gesture or mark making filters in.

Of course, it is very easy to be creative when everything is going wonderfully. But when everyone is doing their thing it makes the more difficult moments in the creative process much easier.

LC: What has been your inspiration for this exhibition?

MH: My interest in the natural world has been central to me since childhood, but I been on an outing to Stafford to a rather wonderful poultry fair which made me w range of rare breeds. There were thousands of different varieties of chickens, geese, tu fowl, ducks. The names are wonderful like the Appenzeller Spitzenhauben - a Swiss bir Sebright hens and Oxford old English game fowl.

For this show I began by making work with cut paper, some of it that I have made and p using a technique called paste paper, where you mix a flour and water paste and then to it, paint it out and it dries very slowly so it holds the textural marks in a really exc pieces of paper could easily be discarded by somebody else or thrown away. But somet a piece of paper and think that it is amazing. If I like a particular bit of paper I might just random way. It is all these little rich details that add up and make a collage more than parts, that you drop in that makes for the most interesting results.

Collage is an inherently abstract process, you want somebody to read the image as a r of something but also as a piece of paper, so I tend to think of space made by the s elements, and the layering up of things. It is all about edges and layers, there is a built-u collage, I think of it as a flat exploration of surface. Sometimes I have exciting momen a pile of 1940s venetian paste papers- the last of it in a shop that has now closed down. are particularly rare and I have used them to create texture- to inform the glossiness back for example.

have recently want to draw a urkeys, guinea rd with a crest,

printed myself n add pigment citing way. Tiny times I will find t include it in a the sum of its

representation side-placing of up surface in a nts, like finding . These papers s of a pigeon’s

Process LC: Describe your creative process?

MH: There are no rules - it really varies. I don’t usually begin with a pronounced theme for a show, but I start with an idea for a picture which leads to another picture and then groups of work develop out of that. The way I work is led by doing, the actual act of making generates ideas.

To create energy within an image you need moments of calm to accentuate moments of speed: busyness and openness, a broad mark, perhaps played off scratched linear marks. It’s about mark making and literally doing it- using a finger print. Gesture is really important, it is the way in which you can bring energy into an image. I like to use the analogy that drawing is a bit like dancing, it’s the trace of a physical movement. So it stands to reason that if you are open and expansive and physical in your approach the image, that what you create is going to be energetic and dynamic and vital. The best images I make have some vitality to them.

Mark Hearld b. 1974 Born in 1974, Mark studied illustration at the Glasgow School of Art and then completed an MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art. Taking his inspiration from the flora and fauna of the British countryside, Mark Hearld works across a number of mediums, producing limited edition lithographic and linocut prints, unique paintings, collages and hand-painted ceramics. Mark hold tremendous admiration for artist/ designers such as Bawden, Piper, Nash – artists well regarded for their forays into the world of commercial design.

Mark Hearld has recently completed commissions for Faber & Faber and Tate Museums. A children's book illustrated by a series of Mark's unique collages was published by Walker Books in May 2012. In Autumn 2012 Merrell Books published "Mark Hearld's Work Book" - the first book devoted to Mark's work.

Selected commissions: Faber & Faber; Tate Museums; ‘A First Book of Nature’ published by Walker Books. In Autumn 2012 Merrell Books published ‘Mark Hearld’s Work Book’ – the first book devoted to Mark’s work.

Awards: Elle Decoration British Design Award 2012 for ‘Harvest Hare’ wallpaper for St Jude’s.

Photography Š Kirsty Lorenz All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.