Artists Working from Home: Aaron Kasmin

We were lucky enough to work with Aaron on not one, not two but three exhibitions since 2015. His work is the perfect antidote to our surreal situation, as his drawings transport you away to another world! You can’t help but smile when you see his work. These beautiful immensely detailed pencil drawings are inspired by his personal collection of vintage American matchbooks. Aaron lives in London with artist Sarah Kasmin. We asked Aaron what this time of isolation means for him and what it is like working from home.

“In this surreal time of lockdown, my working life is actually remarkably similar. I am fortunate that my studio is at home upstairs. Isolation is something I am used to; it is the way of life for an artist who paints and draws. My other love is our beautiful garden, which I spend a lot of time pottering about in and sitting in. The inspiration for my matchbook drawings comes from the genius artists who originally created them and also from my love of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood films – the suave and sophisticated, the glamour, the mood. It also celebrates ephemera; something I have had an obsession with collecting all my life.”

Dale Chihuly in Artsy

Learn about how Dale Chihuly – and other artists – are adapting to the new normal and making new work during Covid-19 in this Artsy article here.

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Artists Working from Home: Humphrey Ocean

We have been catching up with the brilliant Humphrey Ocean RA who has been keeping busy in his South London studio, where he admits to spending most of his waking hours now.  Though best known as a painter, Ocean discovered printmaking in recent years.  In 2018 we were honoured to exhibit Ocean’s prints, works on paper and sculpture in the show ‘I’ve no idea either‘.  He told us about what life feels like in this period of isolation…

‘I am of course naturally secretive, for my own sake, just superstition about talking before doing, in case one undermines the other.  Perhaps I should not be but I like this, being left alone.  To think, and think a bit more, and allow thoughts simply to connect. I wonder if this is what it was like for Jane Austen, the concentration to put so much into each sentence.  Anyway, all I will say is I am starting again something I began in 2004.  Maybe this is a better time for it’.

Artists Working from Home: Declan Jenkins

As we hunker down and work from home, Team Sims Reed are working out new ways of communicating with our artists as we continue to work on projects together.

First up we’ve been catching up with the superb Declan Jenkins about what it’s like to work from home.  Following RA schools in 2015, Jenkins had a solo show of prints with us in 2017.  He normally works from his studio in South London, where he lives with the artist India Mackie (also RA schools alumni) and baby girl. His expressively carved woodcuts explore the consciousness of being an artist and hover between writing and diagram.

‘The trick is to try and make the most of limited space and materials, but sometimes those limitations can yield real breakthroughs.  Working from home is more diaristic, with a daily routine of drawing and watercolours.  There is more space for reverie and it feels like I have gone back to being a teen, making bits and bobs in the bedroom’.