CLAIRE SCULLY SHORT BIO
Claire Scully is a multi-disciplinary professional Illustrator / author / educator specializing in drawing. With a focus on pattern and line and how images are constructed through details and the importance of the minutia within visual language. In her own personal research and drawing practice she strives to answer the questions of ‘what lies beyond the horizon’ by looking at the notion of landscape, memory [individual and collective] and projections of the unknown.
Claire's work explores a variety of themes including the relationship between ‘man’ and his environment, the ‘silent struggle’ between Nature and Humanity.
interview with claire scully
FM: Where are you from, where do you live now, and how did you grow up?
Claire: I am from London, I was born in London, in fact in the very house I live in now. So I grew up here on a north London council estate. I feel quite privileged to have grown up in the time I did, a lucky generation, a young childhood with very little technological influence (perhaps the occasional donkey kong game might float around between siblings) but childhood was more about the outside world and physical creativity. Also growing up with lots of independence within the outside world from a young age, I grew up in a time of ‘playing out’, a culture which has since rapidly fallen out of favour. Then as I matured, so too did technology, it’s a really interesting position to be in, to straddle two worlds, to remember things the way they were, to see the benefits and disadvantages of both. When I first studied, we didn’t have the internet - not in the way it exists now. It wasn’t a resource, you had to go out and physically search things out, the uni library, cool design shops with interesting magazines etc Inspiration was a much more experiential activity.
FM: When did you take an interest in drawing?
Claire: I have always drawn, drawing was always an activity encouraged at home and supported through school but I was actually originally more interested in photography. I didn’t start drawing, let’s say ‘consciously’ drawing until I was almost at the end of my degree at London College of Communication.
FM: What is the first thing you remember drawing?
Claire: I don’t remember drawing it but there is a biro scribble on my medical card from when I was a baby… I don’t remember the first thing I drew but I remember some of the lightbulb moments, like understanding about light direction and shade and drawing noses ‘properly’ they are like these moments of clarity, like you never look at the world the same again.
FM: Why did you visit Nevada? What has brought you back so many times and how does Nevada affect your drawing practice.
Claire: I came to Nevada the first time with my partner, Stewart Easton, he was invited for an international artist residency and originally I was coming along for the ride but actually also ended up doing a residency of my own. We have visited Nevada 4 times now, partly because of the people, when you travel with your art it can open you up to a much wider audience and the people you meet through this can be really surprising. The people we have met from Nevada have such warmth and generosity, it’s another part of what I like, the distinctive differences between London and Nevada, not to say Londoners aren’t generous, they are, but in a very different way.
My interest with my work most often sits within the landscape and the Nevadan landscape is so spectacular it actually pushed my drawing practice. I began looking more at drawing from observation and memory, how we remember a place to be.
Racoon - Lake Tahoe Nevada 2013
FM: Your drawings are obsessively intricate, how did this develop as your particular voice…
Claire: It’s not something I consciously developed, I guess it is just who I am and how I look at the world. I actually have actively tried, in the past, to simplify my creative practice - but actually only made things more obsessive. It was actually after making a fancy dress costume that I began to develop the ‘bejewelled’ body of work, I made a paper headdress of a peacock that went alongside a Chinese wedding dress. I really liked how this paper peacock looked so began to develop the drawing style, over a few years it became an established part of my practice. AND really quite complicated long drawing process.
Heart
FM: Your work seems overwhelmingly positive in tone, from the urban landscapes to the animals filled with their contextual environments. Can you talk about your viewpoint as it relates to ecology and human interaction with nature?
Claire: It’s funny, I remember early on my MA at Central Saint Martins, we had just submitted our main project proposals and mine had this heroic save the world eco-warrior political tone to it, I wanted it to be important and I felt it could only be important if I was speaking on behalf of the people of earth. My tutor quickly saw through the thin vale of insincerity (unintentionally insincere of course) and brought me back into my own world, thankfully so, I was still working from that idea of what I thought I ‘should’ be doing and not what I wanted to be doing. It’s hard at first to think that what you feel about something is of any interest at all to anyone else, but the first lesson I learnt here was that the first person you need to please or at the very least interest is yourself.. So my interest started from exploring my own relationship with the world, my environment and how it shaped me and how my memories and interactions with it had a profound effect on how I looked at the world. I don’t have any solutions to our current ecological issues, that’s for people with different brains to mine, but what I try to do with my work is highlight things that might otherwise be overlooked, sometimes by seeing the beauty of a piece of rubbish caught in a tree. It’s a starting point for a much bigger conversation. It’s my way of standing and pointing at the global problem with plastic and saying “look” there’s some… and there’s some… and there’s some etc etc and so on. But it’s not all about that either, spending time crafting out a detailed drawing of the back end of a run down garage on a starkly contrasty bright day is also my way of taking a step back and celebrating life, capturing a place at a specific time also reaffirms my own existence in relation to it.
FM: What is your philosophy of life and where/how does the quiet revolution fit into it?
Claire: I am a painful optimist, and if doors open - I walk through them. I figured out a long time ago, I liked being happy and I wanted to spend my life being happy, the difficult bit is working out what makes you happy, this can take some time to understand. Having an open mind helps, I never meant to become an illustrator but it was the path I ended up walking, being brave with your choices helps too, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t go according to plan, it’s what you learn along the way that is important. The quiet revolution was the title to my MA final project and continued to be the crux of what I do as I moved forward, it’s significance lays in relation to building confidence in your ideas, not listening to the voice that says ‘why should anyone care’ and trusting that people will connect with your way of looking at the world.
FM: Can you talk a little about the book Desolation Wilderness.
Claire: Desolation Wilderness is part of a continued project looking at ‘landscape and memory’ - our relationship with the environment, effects we have on the world and space around us and in turn it’s profound affect on our own memory and emotions. There is a place called Desolation Wilderness, the good folk of Nevada and California will probably know about it. But to most people further afield I have to tell them ‘It is real and it does exist’. It is a collection of drawings based on the notion of the ‘idea’ of a place and the assumptions that are made about the nature of its existence and where its boundaries lay. In some ways this book explores the memory of a journey through a new and unfamiliar environment, the convergence between physical experience and memory. The idea for desolation wilderness came from a series of drawings that came from a process of both visual recall and reference. I found through contemplative observation and physical experience you are more able to create a more accurate ‘feel’ for a place over drawing from reference to duplicate. The illustrations are an immediate offering of a sense of place, but also an invitation to lose your self as you are enveloped into the series of landscapes
FM: Who publishes it and where can we get this book?
Claire: Desolation Wilderness is the second part in a series of books published by a small independent publishers in London called AVERY HILL. Avery Hill are a great team of people that have an amazing selection of artists and books that push the boundaries of visual narratives.
FM: I understand you are teaching in the Art department at Brighton University, how does this affect and relate to your own work?
Claire: I love teaching, as much as I love the solitary existence of freelance illustration (and I really do) I love the atmosphere and attitude of the art school. I loved my experience of university, it was a privilege to get that education and it shaped who I became in such a strong way. So part of why I teach is to perhaps open that experience up to other people, it’s such an exciting time in someones creative journey and I feel lucky to be a part of it. But it is definitely a two way thing, I get a lot from the conversations I have with students, we talk about good working practices and with the variety of creative minds in my year group I am constantly challenged to think outside my own bubble. Often, after tutorials or crits I walk away feeling excited about my own work.
FM: What are you working on at the moment?
Claire: I am working my way through a pretty huge drawing project, its called ‘Parkland’ and its an interaction between London and those that operate within it, a particular part of north London in fact, there is a social commentary laying under the surface and it’s fed by a pychogeographic approach to the observation of this ‘place’. It’s a reflection of how many people exist within a city space, not really engaging with it, barely even conscious at times, but through repetition and subconscious you begin to catch little glimpses of familiarity which I find quite inviting. I’d like to think it will encourage people to look deeper and to
It’s beginning to take shape now and I am building a clearer picture of what I want it to be, which is a book - much like photographic art books and halfway towards a graphic novel but without a heavy narrative storyline, that bit is left open to the viewer. Each person has their own personal history and this is what drives people to read images through their own filter making it a unique experience for each person.
FM: Thanks so much Claire for letting us peek into your wonderful wonderful world….. Where can we find you and more of your work?
Claire: www.clairescully.com and @clairescully instagram
