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The artist describes how he “gets ready” to paint.

Question: What is your process?

Scully:    I… work along media.  I worked in prints.  I take photographs.  I do little sketches.  I do water colors, the pastels, small paintings, big paintings and of course most important I’m looking and thinking.  When I start to painting for example I draw with the carbon on the end of the stick, charcoal on the end of the stick then I make the paint and it’s in buckets and now [waiting] to wet and hopefully I get it in one session, and if don’t I have the difficult task of waiting so I can revisit the painting which sometimes, well, no actually often hands and then I go back again.  And I keep doing it until it’s, until it’s mine. 

Question: Do you have a specific routine?

Scully:    Yeah, I’m very habitual.  I get up in the morning just like everybody else and then I do something that I guess it’s called getting ready.  Because my work is extremely dependent of being ready because it is much a dance as it is visual.  So, I do my correspondence.  I mess around.  I walked around.  I play with the cat.  I had my telephone calls.  I go in the studio.  I nearly start work.  I leave the studio out.  I go back in the studio again and I try to start work again and maybe on something small and then I’m kind of into it, maybe I stop for lunch and then I’m ready.  So, afternoon is crescendo time.


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