Bridget Riley says there is freedom in restrictions – you think less about one thing, you can think more about another thing. Therefore, much of my artistic quest centres on how to make an interesting composition, how to paint in a new and personal way.
Strangeness and humour are Stephanie Douet’s mantras.
How did your tryst with art begin?
As a child I was gifted at drawing. Everyone told me, “You’re going to be a famous artist!” When I was 12 I changed schools and fell into the hands of a mean-spirited teacher who utterly popped my bubble. “Find something practical to do,” she said. When I was thirty, feeling I could no longer carry on with my life without trying to become an artist, I took a week-long painting class at my local college and ta-da! Overnight I turned into an artist! I had such a surge of energy I got electric shocks off everything I touched! From that day I never looked back.
Tell us about the evolution of your practice over the years.
I am self-taught, apart from lots of life-drawing classes over the years. I began by painting at night in my spare room when the kids had gone to bed, looking at art books and going to exhibitions whenever there was an opportunity.
Because my children were small, I didn’t feel I could do a full-time degree in art, so I tried three times to get onto a master’s course and on the third attempt succeeded. I got into Norwich Institute of Art and had the best year of my life.
Though I’d started painting I moved into sculpture, making life-size figures from painted wood and cloth. Because I was self-taught, my work looked good but was actually really wobbly. I had to shout “Don’t touch!” if anyone came near my sculptures! But I loved the whole process of cutting plywood with my electric saw and sanding and fitting things together, so I never got my work properly made by a craftsman. This was a mistake!
I’m very driven, filling endless sketchbooks with drawing, writing and plans for work. I’m always interested in studying historical styles and doing my own take on them. This has included 19th century Gothic, contemporary chinoiserie, and since I first visited India in 2015 I have been obsessed by Mughal miniature painting, particularly the extraordinary and beautiful manuscript known as the Badshahnama.
What were your biggest lessons and hurdles along the way? Which is the most memorable moment?
My biggest learning is the ongoing work of imagination and practice to discover my own authentic style and voice. You have to put the hours in, and hours and hours!
My breakthrough came suddenly one evening when I was on my way to a drawing class. Someone crashed into my car, not badly, and when I got to the class, my usually neat drawing style was shot through with a crazy nervous energy. This excitement has stayed with me, and enabled me to dare to take risks with my painting, listen to my inner voice, however odd it may be, and try new audacious feats – you can always paint over the mistakes!
You also have to ‘murder your darlings’, to be a strict but generous critic of yourself. If a little voice tells you the work isn’t working, listen to it – but don’t paint over in too much haste, just bit by bit, and take photos all the time to record successes and failures.
What is the primary role of an artist? How do you describe yourself in the context of challenging people’s perspectives via your work and art?
Some artists are adept at expressing political and abstract concepts and ideas within their art, changing people’s ideas about the world through art. At the moment art is very political – so many facets of life are extremely worrying – climate, political extremism, the refugee crisis, and many artists feel called upon to make work that mirrors these issues. Sadly, I am not gifted in this regard, maybe because I can’t help but see the funny side of life. If I try to do something serious, I seem to end up adding a curly moustache or a sausage.
How do you balance art and life?
Work is still fitted around the family, but now that they are older I sneak away to my studio before anyone thinks of some domestic chore for me. I have promised my family that one day I will be extremely successful, and they have come to believe me. In fact, I have come to believe myself.
How do you deal with the conceptual difficulty and uncertainty of creating work?
Because I’m confining myself to portraits, subject matter is not a problem. Bridget Riley says there is freedom in restrictions – you think less about one thing, you can think more about another thing. Therefore, much of my artistic quest centres on how to make an interesting composition, how to paint in a new and personal way.
How does your audience interact and react to your work?
It sounds bad, but I don’t really care what people think! If they like what I do, that’s great, but I’m always a little surprised if they do. People think my work is surprising and odd, they haven’t seen anything like it, and because it’s both skillful and humourous they often don’t know how to react.
Wordless painting. 2019.
What are you looking for when you look at other artists’ work? Which shows, performances and experiences have shaped your own creative process? Who are your maestros?
I love strong drawing, strangeness, colour, surrealism, seeing something totally new and imaginative. I don’t like prettiness, sentimentality, obviousness, conformity. I like Picasso, Patrick Caulfield, Mughal miniatures, Pop art, Rebecca Horn, cartoons, conceptual art, and textiles. I also like looking at people, staring really, at faces and bodies, storing up images to put in paintings.
You have spent time amongst artists in flow. What have you observed?
My experience is of being an isolated rural artist in an otherwise empty studio. I have two studios, one in a field where I work, the other in the city of Norwich, where there are 86 artists, but they are mostly not working there. There is a lot of heartache in many artists’ practice. On a practical level, they may have little time to work. In the UK very few artists survive solely on their art. On an artistic level, there is anxiety too about whether their work is going well, if it’s good enough, whether they are exhibiting and selling. My main experience of being alongside artists is their self-doubt.
What is that one thing you wished people would ask you but never do?
Interesting question! Can I say that I wish the curators of Kochi Biennale would offer me a residency and exhibition.
What are you working on now? What’s coming next season?
In July I was lucky enough to get generous funding from Arts Council England for two mentors, and a travel allowance. Both have visited my studio and made many practical suggestions, including that I spend a good period of time without exhibiting, just experimenting, trying out new techniques and ideas.
When I am not experimenting, I am working on a series on large canvasses inspired by early Indian photographs from the Udaipur City Palace collection, Mughal art, and by the use of different skin colours like blues, greys, greens and multiple limbs found in Indian art. The images are of a single ‘person’, mash-ups of maharajas, political agents of the Raj, my sister-in-law, odd celebrities, and inventions. I’m fascinated by making a person that is not real, a hybrid like a centaur, but a personality that engages the viewer through the gaze. I would love to exhibit this series of works in India, in a gallery like Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur. It has a lot of space and a big lively audience.
I was also shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize, which opens in London next month.