The Artist Muse - Humans Are Weird

PC:
Hi May, and thank you for chatting with Paper Collective. To start, can you tell me a little bit about you and your practice - where you are based, your background and what you are working with at the moment?

May:
Yes, so my studio is in Wimbledon, South London although I do spend some time working down in Somerset where I grew up. I have had a rather circuitous route to becoming artist - I didn’t go to art school but went to university and studied History and Politics. While having a great time at university I felt an increasing lack of a creative outlet in my life and by the time I left I was acutely aware that I had to satisfy that need. I love writing and was lucky enough to get on to the comedy writing diploma course at the National Film and Television School. It was challenging but was a fantastic creative learning curve. Then we had lockdown and I started painting. It’s something I’d always done but now with time to experiment I started to see it as more than a hobby. That was about three years ago now and I haven’t looked back. I’m currently working on a series of chair paintings, which has been really interesting challenge for me as the simplicity of the concept means more relies on composition and colours.

PC:
You have a background in comedy writing. How does this inject itself into your art practice?

May:
It has a huge influence on my work even when it’s not directly obvious. Where there is text in my paintings you can see a direct influence but behind all my art there is a way of thinking. To write comedy you have to view the world from different angles; it is like a switch in my mind, when the switch is off, I go about everyday life without taking much notice of the normal but when the switch is on every little bit of normal can look funny. I processing everyday events and what I have seen and store concepts that underpin my work.

PC:
Being based between London and Somerset, how does the difference in pace and way of life impact your art practice?

May:
I find I need the mixture to keep the cogs turning. In London I’m always on, I’m going to the studio every day, I’m out seeing friends, the city is alive. The quiet pockets in the countryside are resets, and I find this time is when I actually can sit and develop ideas - ideas that may have been formed in London but only come to fruition in the solitude of the countryside. I am lucky to have both.

PC:
Your first collection for Paper Collective highlights the humour of the everyday commute. What is it about these seemingly mundane moments that makes you want to document and capture them in your own way?

May:
I find humans as creatures endlessly captivating. We are so weird and nuanced and complicated and confusing and funny - every adjective in the world is applicable to humans. The everyday commute is an interesting intersection of everyday people going about everyday life. It may be a mundane boring moment but if you stopped and sat down and chatted to every person on a tube carriage it would be completely fascinating. Everyone has their own story and I guess that’s what I was trying to capture. I like to imagine people in these paintings what the people are really like, not just, for example, what jobs they may have, but who they are down to their core.