Margaret Mellis

Notes from the documentary Margaret Mellis: a life in colour

• her work centres around the link between colour and form
• documentary as a way of telling the story of an artist – podcast as my own version of this? presenting artwork in a official/designated space
• Mellis was drawn to Cornwall ‘because it was like Scotland’
• Hayle power station – 4 artists (that all lived together w Mellis) each designed and painted camouflage for each of the chimneys during the war – interesting concept of disguise: could I consider my work the opposite of disguise?
• she did some marble sculptures but didn’t want to keep working ‘in a medium in which colour was unimportant’ so she went back to painting
• interesting to hear about the logistical struggles of making work in the war, in a packed house while caring for children etc – also in a marriage where both are painters so there’s some competition in that sense – even just practically speaking how some artists turned to drawing because there was no room to sculpt
• layering canvases – playing with traditional grounds
• try collage (w beach photography images)? reliefs?
• collected driftwood – uses preservatives to keep crackled paint on etc
• One, Two etc are names for first wood pieces – really nice pieces
• Evening walk – self-referential title – pieces found on an evening walk, assembled to resemble an evening walk – could I consider more representational/figurative? could i try finding more interesting/unusual pieces to work with?
• groynes stop wood coming in but allow plastic in
• drawing on envelopes – interaction between drawing and envelope that mattered to her – similar to in my sculptures and the focus on the interaction between surface and drawing
• also in my own work: pink paint and drawn marks doing different things but both are, to some extent, in Mellis’ work?
• her process of joining is led purely by the materials – she describes it as more of a material agency and her as more of a carrier/vessel (around 1hr into the doc)
• really interesting bit at 1:03:35 about painting and its liveliness

https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/4246/Margaret-Mellis–A-Life-in-Colour