{"id":598,"date":"2019-12-13T10:39:25","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T10:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk:\/studiodiary\/?p=598"},"modified":"2019-12-14T17:23:17","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T17:23:17","slug":"laura-boswell-is-not-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/?p=598","title":{"rendered":"Laura Boswell is not at home…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not good with heights or indeed with the wild outdoors. As a child of the city, I used to spend summers with friends in Lincolnshire. Daughters of a farming family, they were perfectly at home running wild all day with their father\u2019s horses, up trees and lighting fires. I was not. I was unfit in almost every sense and, put up on the farmer\u2019s expensive hunter, allowed her to run onto the main road before falling off and needing stitches. With the wisdom of age, I see that I was not the clumsy idiot I felt, just skilled in other ways. Navigating the tube with ease by ten and possessing a Londoner\u2019s knack for jumping on and off moving buses. This was the seventies when kids were free to roam and, provided I had the sacred 2p for a phone call, a fair chunk of London was my playground.<\/p>\n

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Hoping I live long enough to turn this view into a print…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These days I work with landscape and you\u2019d think I\u2019d be better at being out there. Sadly, it isn\u2019t true. I\u2019ve just a couple of days drawing, first on the North Yorkshire Moors and then at St Abbs Head up in Scotland. The moors were everything you would expect from a Yorkshire December bar the snow, while St Abbs Head is a magnificent length of Scottish Coast: picture a rucked-up candlewick bedspread falling into the sea from a great height.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fit enough these days, but not what I would call comfortable. You can see it in my urgent, \u2018get me out of this weather and into some dry\/warm clothes\u2019 sketches. Add the dizzy plunges of St Abbs Head and I go from grumpily uncomfortable into properly scared. This part of the trip I alternated between a sort of locked-knee mincing walk and, anywhere near the edge, I opted for all fours or a sort of amateur commando elbow shuffle flat out. Nobody falls off a cliff lying down – am I right?<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think I\u2019d give up landscape for bowls of roses and cityscapes, but my work is increasingly looking to wilder places and I think there\u2019s probably good reason. It\u2019s my discomfort and craven fear that makes these places so damn exciting for me and so much more productive for my printmaking. It\u2019s the \u2018hiding behind the sofa while thrilled by Doctor Who\u2019 syndrome. Perhaps I\u2019ll get happier at being out there, though probably not, but I\u2019ll feel the fear and keep on going regardless.<\/p>\n

This week on Ask an Artist<\/em><\/a> podcast we discuss writing an artist statement. Funnily enough I don\u2019t say anything about my clumsy and reluctant embrace of nature in mine, but then I think they\u2019re best kept short.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not good with heights or indeed with the wild outdoors. As a child of the city, I used to spend summers with friends in Lincolnshire. Daughters of a farming family, they were perfectly at home running wild all day with their father\u2019s horses, up trees and lighting fires. I was not. I was … Continue reading “Laura Boswell is not at home…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-touch-printmaking-lino-cut-woodblock-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}