The Other Side of Green - An interview with Vanessa Garwood

The Other Side of Green - An interview with Vanessa Garwood

16 November, 2010
by: Tom Jeffreys

Tom Jeffreys speaks to Vanessa Garwood ahead of the artist's first London solo show this week.

Vanessa Garwood is probably best known for her evocative portraits, for which she's previously been shortlisted for the prestigious BP Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery. But following a lengthy apprenticeship with bronze sculptor Dylan Lewis in South Africa, Garwood's work has developed dramatically in style and expanded in range and ambition. This November she has her first London solo show, 'The Other Side of Green',  at Aretha Campbell in Soho. Paintings, drawings and sculpture are all on display – the more recent work combining sensuality with a kind of formal gravitas that one doesn't see too much of these days.

I caught up with Vanessa to ask a few questions ahead of the exhibition launch.

So, what was it like living in South Africa and working with Dylan Lewis?
Being in South Africa, surrounded by mountains and such beauty in nature, was the perfect setting to work. It was also good to get out of London and see a different approach to art and understand its value on a different scale. I didn't know anyone where I lived, apart from Dylan and the 80 year-old Dutch botanist whose garden I lived at the end of! Although quite lonely I have never grown so much as a person and worked so hard.

Dylan is very non-judgemental and considers his work and his life in a very thoughtful and interesting way. Listening to him discuss what he was doing, and why, gave me the confidence to talk about my own as I hadn't before. The honesty and raw ability shown by his work is very inspiring to me.


What prompted your desire to move from portraiture into sculpture?
Portraiture fascinates me as it celebrates the uniqueness of an individual. Likeness is not a stable concept and is about how the artist reads their subject and the connection between the two. But I also wanted a change as the different process in each medium brings something new out of you.


How does the approach to the two differ?
My approach to sculpture is completely the opposite to how I paint as it needs huge technical planning (building armatures to support the weight etc) whereas with painting I usually let the work evolve and change as I go along. This process is, although painstaking, very exciting as it is then balanced with the actual act of sculpting which is so dynamic and much more physical/ freer than painting to me.


Are you excited/nervous about the show?
I'm very nervous about it! I have always worked mainly on portraits and commissions and this is the first time I have put so much of myself out for others to see!


Why 'The Other Side of Green'?
For me it was appropriate as the work reveals a growth or change in me and how I paint (the word 'green' comes from the Old English word 'growan' which means 'to grow'). It also has something to do with the topic that I discuss in some of my work about the subjective nature of seeing and of painting – that “grass is greener on the other side” approach which has featured in my life and the dangers of it. Green has so many other connotations including hope, nature, envy, fertility... the list goes on and I am interested to hear how others see it!


Your work, particularly more recently, to me seems richly sensual – is this a deliberate strategy?
I have been really trying to make the viewer think about the animal instinct of human beings and our connection to nature... and so yes sensuality is definitely part of that. Depicting the female nude was the best way for me to express this and a timeless symbol we can all relate to. I think that the nudes will read differently to everyone as the representation of nudes in art has such an ancient and complex history and its symbolism varies dramatically.


And what do your portraits of monkeys?
The monkey portraits I hope will make us think about our connection to animals and nature, and the comedy and absurdity in our lives. We should always be wary of taking ourselves too seriously....

Vanessa Garwood - The Other Side of Green is at Aretha Campbell from 17th to 20th November 2010.

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Tom Jeffreys