Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/488332
12 unworthy of a photographic record. These 'source photographs' informed the drawings and studies she made while preparing paintings. She never considered herself a photographer and explained to me that when she began her career as a commercial artist, ...you needed to meet deadlines and get projects finished and so you used a camera to record things. It's only a piece of apparatus that helps you get a job done. It helps things sink in a bit. Lots of painters use cameras – Robert [Medley] does. So does Patrick [Procktor] and Michael [Leonard] and Francis [Bacon]. Because when you look through the camera you're selecting something that has caught your eye and you filter out things that are not important. Doesn't matter if you don't use it – it trains your eye, helps you notice... It's just another kind of pencil, a er all, you know. 5 Prunella's studio was the nerve-centre of Moore Park Road and, later, Sherbrook Road in Fulham. Larger canvases were stacked against the walls and smaller paintings were arranged separately, in neat groups. Unstretched canvases were rolled up, like carpets, with their painted surface to the outside. Once I asked her about how she had made a certain texture. She said: Well it's just paint, in the end, and you push it round 'til it works – that's all. You get better at it over the years but you build up your marks and your way of doing things. And art makes art – it doesn't just come from what you see, you know. You've just got to keep on doing it. 6 There were always piles of canvases lying around. If a painting wasn't 'behaving itself', as she would say, she had her way of dealing with it: If it's not working, go on to something else. Or put it away until later when you might be able to tackle it. I take some of them off the stretchers and fold them up into heaps and get them out later. They're cooking. 7 Over the course of their gestation the 'disobedient canvases' developed pronounced creases where paint cracked around the folds. These were subsequently transformed into her 'quadrant' paintings. Works on paper were painted on the flat surface of her small studio tables. The process took place among rags, stencils, brushes, tubes of paint, tin cans for mixing her colours and ashtrays full of her old smokes. Studio 'ciggie breaks' were handy for pausing, looking and assessing her progress. She capitalised on the chance marks and happy accidents that occurred in her organised chaos. Virgin canvases, for example, would be dragged across the floor to pick up oily deposits or paint pots and dirty rags would be placed on them to generate marks to kick-start a creative journey. This might sound somewhat slap-dash and a bit 'chancy', but Prunella was a stickler for correct procedure and good workmanship; she had her own systematic dis-organisation and her ritualistic processes were scrupulously observed. Having experienced rationing and the deprivations of the war, she abhorred wasting materials. Brushes were thoroughly washed at the end of each session and lids were put back on varnish pots or covered with cling-film. Paintings had to be laid against the wall properly: face-to-face and back-to-back. Despite the surrounding mess, hers was an orderly, efficient workspace. Most painters work in a direct manner, transferring pigment from the brush straight to the canvas. It is surprising just how much of Prunella's painting was made in an indirect manner. Being also a printmaker meant that she was familiar with working in a step-by-step manner before taking a final 'pull'. This procedure filtered through to her painting, which was a drawn-out affair, full of expectation and anticipation. She would coat pieces of card with pigment and press them to the surface of her canvas, labouriously building up a patchwork of small, mono-printed marks. An 'over-all' texture would slowly materialise. This might be partially obliterated or reworked with further velatures and glazes. She created stencils from chicken mesh, perforated sheet metal and hole-punched hardboard. 8 These were held against the canvas as she dabbed and sprayed pigment through them. Pieces of string or scratched Formica might be rolled with paint and