Dada-News
Blog: September 2010 • Colin Hambrook
As part of my series of in-depth features with artist advisors on the Dada-Exchange programme, this month I interviewed Dada-Exchange artist, Sally Booth.
Sally Booth’s artwork is characterised by a sense of immediacy. Sally would always describe herself as an artist first. However at the forefront of her arts practice is a dialogue about how her type of vision affects the nature of her work and relationship with the subjects she paints and draws.
Over the last few years in particular, much of Sally’s work has been about landscape. She has consistently pushed the limits of her work in terms of the range of materials she uses and the methods she employs in creating finished pieces.
Her art is influenced by the methods and gestural qualities of artists like Monet and Turner who worked directly in the open air, painting what was in front of them. She talks about having a debt to Monet in particular, as one of the first recognised visually impaired artists, who opened up the way painting is received to authenticate artwork made close up, out of focus, with colour and light at their heart. 
She says: “I like nothing better than to head off with a black bin liner and sit in a field, whatever the weather. There is something about the way weather moves and changes the light, in the time it takes to put down an image. There is a three way process – you, what is in front of you and the weather. It has an impact on what the work looks like and how long you can do it for. For example the large 360 degree drawings on Japanese paper and acetate I made at Holton Lee were done in the freezing cold. The lines have a big, staccato feel to them. You can tell by the quality of the line that I was about to seize up.”
Sally has used a wide range of unconventional surfaces to paint and draw on including till-rolls, balsa wood and acetate. “I began using acetate during the residency at Holton Lee. I was looking through blinds at what was on the horizon and that led me to think about using transparent materials. Using more than one transparent layer allows you to create a number of different versions of the same drawing – so you can end up with a selection of partly obscured composite images.”
Much of Sally’s work has a dreamy quality, capturing light in a way that gives an oblique reference to her vision: “I used a similar method in the drawing tent at Liberty Festival in 2007 and on the South Bank last August 2009. That experience led me to thinking about using semi-opaque surfaces to represent a diffuse vision of the world.”
‘I Think, I See’ is a film by Carl Stevenson of her working in the drawing tent, available to view on Sally's website. (Scroll down to August 2009)
“My favourite palette has come about through looking at other artists – and feeling what colours work best for me. When I had cataracts in my twenties, the importance of reds and violets and blues took on more of an emotional importance. And they tend to be colours I go back to again and again.”
Another short film on Sally’s website shows her working in her studio with transparency and panoramic formats. The Dada-Exchange continuing professional development money helped towards the costs of producing this subtitled film: “I wanted to make something a bit more accessible, and a bit more personal than just having a wordy description of my professional arts practice.”
Sally has found that being a Dada-Exchange artist has been a great project to have on her cv: “A softer outcome of being a mentor has been that when I’ve applied for things people have asked me about Dada-Exchange. Generally there has been a lot of interest in my role as an artist advisor.”
“The way the progamme was set up allowed for a sense of a real chance for two people to get together and make some headway in sorting through professional development issues. I really enjoyed the fact it wasn’t a conveyor belt. Three years went surprisingly quickly. I met artists and writers from different disciplines. Sometimes travelling and the administration took a lot of time and the matching process didn’t always neatly tie in with when we were available. But that is the nature of being a freelancer.”
“It was good that we were able to give five sessions of an hour or an hour and a half. Anything less wouldn’t have been enough to get the kind of satisfaction I found in seeing the individuals move on and do things in ways that perhaps they wouldn’t have been so focussed to do.”
Sally Booth is currently working as an artist in residence with Graeae Theatre Company. She will be drawing Graeae’s performance of Against the Tide at the Liberty Festival in Trafalgar square, London on Saturday 4 September.
Sally will also be running workshops in Hastings Museum and on the Stade during the Creative Landscapes Heritage Open Days events on 11 and 12 September 2010.
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