24th
It’s so clean! I recall being inspired to paint messier by similar images of the studios of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach in the early 90’s. I can smell the linseed and walnut oil just thinking about it. Gorgeous.
NB: For my fellow Americans who didn’t attend the weirdest school in the U.S. with me, we know “6th form” as 10th grade over here. Sophomore year of high school.
The place I spent most of time during 6th form at boarding school, aged 17 and 18, was the Art room. This photo of the sinks in the corner of the room reminds me of the smell of oil paints (still one of my favourites) and white spirit, the scrape of gritty soap under water that was freezing whatever the season, the sound of girls’ laughter, the feeling of intense concentration.
The tap on the right dripped constantly, despite all efforts to mend it over the two years I painted there. When we were silent and concentrating it was annoying, so we’d put old sponges where the water fell to muffle the noise.
We had tea and coffee in old mugs, old mugs very similar to those in which we cleaned our brushes with white spirit. Hence the signs (clearer in the bigger version). Even with the warning, I almost drank muddy-looking white spirit a number of times, and dipped my oily hog’s-hair brushes into my coffee.
I still paint in oils, but miss this place, its light, its space.
Its smell.(via my Flickr. You can embiggen if you like).
