Q&A on Creativity and Space with Diana Meredith

Artist Diana Meredith's Studio

It came as no surprise that after thanking Diana Meredith – independent artist, writer and critical thinker – for letting me interview her in her Wiltshire Avenue studio, located in the Junction district of Toronto, she replied with, “I only wish I had remembered to show you the bathroom where I’m storing art in the shower!”

Diana relocated to a new studio late last year. A mad scramble to find a suitable location ensued after she was given a 30-day notice to vacate her former studio she shared with other creatives for 9 years.

Only a month into her new studio and Diana was telling me I could move things around to capture better photos. But I didn’t dare. Everything was orderly and placed or displayed thoughtfully. From the canvases wrapped in matching Dollar Store pillow cases and stored sideways to the beach stones with patterns of white calcite veins placed atop a bookshelf.

Original Art work by Diana Meredith
Punnet, 24”x30”, Mixed Media on Aluminum

Sure she was expecting my visit and a superficial tidy-up may have been in order, but Diana was pulling open drawers and cupboards, even flipping open toolboxes and catch-all containers for me to capture. And yet, everything was perfectly arranged like a still-life painting. Which is the one subject matter you’ll see very little of in her work.

What was intended as an artist profile on Diana Meredith, became a look at how space, both physical and mental, affects creativity.

Organized art supplies in artist's studio

SCW: What do you think are the biggest barriers to creativity?
DM: Creativity has different kinds of barriers. There are all the external world barriers which mostly boil down to – how do I make a living and be creative? Some people make a living from being creative, but sometimes the price of that is doing work that isn’t necessarily the work you want to do. If you do another kind of job, then you have the time/energy barrier. Of course, there are lots more variations on the external world barriers.

Then there are the internal world barriers – self-doubt is one of the biggest ones. Sometimes I sabotage myself even before I start. Sometimes mid-project I don’t know where to go next and self-doubt rushes in to fill the vacuum. Other internal barriers are not having steady work habits or not accepting that problem solving is part of the creative process.

Portrait titled, "Rick" Mixed Media on Pellon
Rick, 16“ x 20“, Mixed Media on Pellon

SCW: What factors do you consider to be helpful to your creative process?
DM: I’ve learned to foster certain ways of working which help my creative process. One is my ungrammatical motto, “limitations are my friend.” It can actually help you when you come up against something you can’t do. Recently I decided I wanted to make really big pictures, but 24” is the widest my big inkjet printer will go. So I started making diptychs and triptychs – one picture made of 2 or 3 panels put together. Once that door opened, I suddenly realized I could travel across a whole wall in small pieces and that they didn’t even have to stay in an even grid. I could jig-jag my way up the wall. All this opened because of something I couldn’t do.

Another most useful tool to help creativity is a deadline. Nothing like a little pressure to help me make creative decisions. It also helps me focus. Suddenly that inBox full of unanswered emails doesn’t matter because Art First.

Wooden Artist model figure in studio

Steady work habits – a practice – will do wonders for creativity. To paraphrase the writer, Tom Robbins, “all you need to do is to show up everyday – then the Muse knows where to find you.” This is the stuff that takes me through self-doubt and a dry well. I come in everyday and I do it because that is what I do everyday.

Lastly, I have to take an interest in the world. Although my art making is done privately in my studio, my job is to filter the world through my process. I have to be awake enough to notice what’s going on around me. That might be noticing how early morning light falls on the garages in the back alley. Or, currently I have cancer, so I spend a lot of time in hospitals. I watch how the intertwined pharmo/medical systems work and I watch how people live with cancer and what happens to them because of it. All that gets woven into my art.

4 pieces from artist's series, Mortal Selfies
Meredith’s work from Mortal Selfies

SCW: Do you have a favourite quote about creativity?
DM: I have two favourite quotes:
1] To achieve great things, two things are needed: A plan and not quite enough time. Leonard Bernstein
2] Pay attention; Be astonished; Tell about it. Mary Oliver

SCW: If you could visit a studio of any artist’s (living or dead), who would that be and what would you hope to gain from that experience?
DM: I’d like to visit the studio of William Kentridge in South Africa. I’d like to be a fly on the wall and watch him work. I’d like to know more about his process. Does he use preliminary drawings? Does he talk to himself while he works? How many hours a day does he work? Do all his projects come from externally commissioned sources or do some of them come from things he wants to do? How big is his space? Does he have assistants? If so, how does he organize them? I’d like to see his workflow.

SCW: You have music playing in your studio. Is music always on and if so does it help in your creative process?
DM: I typically have music on. Most often I want the energy that the music brings. If I’m moving around the studio doing physical things like stretching canvases or applying protective coats, then I want dance beats or rock and roll. If I’m at the beginning of a painting or drawing, I need complex World music. Writing requires music with no words, either classical, jazz, or lately, minimalism. If I’m doing my accounts I need something comforting like folk music. Sometimes, though, I like the silence that comes at the end of an album. I like how it can fill the space.

Beach stones with white calcite veins

SCW: Do you think being methodical can sometimes be the antithesis of creativity?
DM: I think creativity needs a healthy balance of method and chaos. It is almost as if we come into the world more inclined towards one than the other. I tend to be more in the chaos, wild crazy creativity camp. And that’s great – it feeds my creative spirit. It gets the ideas rolling and reels in the inspiration. But at some point I realized I couldn’t live on pure air and fire. I need my inspiration to be grounded in earth and water. I needed to cultivate method. For someone like me, that was hard. I had to knuckle down and learn perspective, learn how the paint works, get inside Photoshop, understand digital printers. I had to get more methodical in my practice. As a teacher, I’ve watched students struggle with these two aspects of creativity – method and inspiration. Some people can draw amazingly well but they don’t have anything to say visually that hasn’t been said a million times before. Others have lots of ideas – but not enough method to manifest them. Which ever way you are inclined, you need to also work at the other path too.

SCW: Are you working on any project currently that you’d like to share?
DM: My current project is called Fractured Identities. It is a series of 5 portraits of people who are living with cancer. Each portrait is made up of 4 separate canvases, so the image is fractured into quarters. This fracturing is a metaphor for how cancer breaks you open. Your identity in the world is no longer the same. Whoever you were before the diagnosis, you are now forever changed. The viewers initially find it visually difficult to put the face together in their minds, but then it suddenly works. That jolt helps them see how illness maps itself onto faces.

Sketches of current project on artist desk

SCW: Why did you feel the need to return to some of the fundamental principles of drawing?
DM: I’ve been drawing and painting faces for a long time. My faces are very wild and colourful and expressive. I’ve always said I wasn’t into realism and my goal is to capture the spirit of the person. But I don’t necessarily capture an accurate likeness. It was hit or miss. Sometimes it would happen but sometimes not. For a long time, I didn’t really care because I was after something else. But when I started this new portrait series, I decided to up my game. Even though I’d done all those fundamental exercises years ago about the proportions and relationships of heads and faces, I wanted to go back to the beginning again. There is an odd paradox where the beginning makes much more sense once you see where it is going, but you don’t know that when you are there the first time – that’s why it is the beginning! If you get to revisit the foundations and build a more solid building, you understand how the whole thing is constructed. You understand why you are doing certain beginning things. I find that I’m more patient now. I know that I have to invest in the foundations of a head if I want to make a convincing visual statement. It is really back to your question about method and creativity.

Artist's sketch book

SCW: If your studio had a soundtrack, what 10 albums would fill your space musically? 




Anouar Brahem Trio, Astrakan Cafe Album





Thank you Diana, for sharing your thoughts on creativity and space. For more on Diana Meredith and her work, please visit her website.

Photograph of artist at desk

*Sadly Diana Meredith passed away on January 27, 2018. I’m very thankful to have met her. Rest In Creativity Diana.*

20 Comments

  • Wonderful interview. I love Diana’s answer about creativity needing method and chaos. A question I ask myself daily as an illustrator.

  • Thank you both for such a thoughtful and visually interesting piece. I love the photos and the accompanying conversation, I feel as if I’ve been invited for tea.

  • This is a fantastic interview and the photographs are great too. It is great to know how Diana thinks about her art and the creative process. There is much to be learned here. Thanks!

  • Interviewing is also an art form, and there are so many who do it poorly: congratulations on letting more of the world know Diana better!

  • What a beautiful and diverse collection of work. The method/structure and creativity balance is something I guess we all play with! Thanks for sharing your insights.

  • Diana is an inspiration to me!!! I am not a creative person yet her art exhibits that I have attended have overwhelmed me!!! I can relate because I can see what she is envisioned and created. She is an amazing, caring person!!!

  • Wow thank you for the inspiration I feel the love courage you give to us all. I don’t believe in god per say but I feel all humans are connected that is my god. God bless you

  • Your comment about showing up to let the muse find you is interesting. I think you are right. The muse must be the initiator but you have to be available. Thank you; we artists work alone but this interview brings us into community.

  • Diana’s insights about creativity are very inspiring, and helpful in science as well as art. Feeling the freedom to play around with ideas that may be crazy, going back to first principles, having a deadline, facing fears of self doubt — wow, all of these things resonate. Gracias!

  • A throughly enjoyable read!
    Great questions and thoughtful answers.
    Finely tuned observations and loved that you included samples of favorite music! I downloaded a few I’ll will use in my creative endeavours.
    Thank you.

  • Fabulous interview with a very wise and wonderful artist! Thank you for the thoughtful questions and the equally insightful answers. I love Diana’s work and getting inside the artistic process is so inspiring and enlightening.

  • Hi Diana,

    Great interview! Good ideas on the mix of method and chaos- resonates with me. I thought your mix of music was interesting, too- I don’t know any of your music picks except Phoebe Snow, but I like the way you related the tasks to different sounds. And I am totally impressed that you are creating through your health challenges! Well done!

  • Excellent interview with a very articulate and experienced artist. A pleasure to read and muse upon. Great pics too! Big thanks to both Diana and the interviewer.

  • Wonderful interview. Diana, you are among the few artists I know who can speak about creativity so clearly. So often an artist falls into highly intellectual verbosity and I end up scratching my head, like HUH? I particularly like what you say about balancing method and inspiration. It’s fundamental, but yet very hard to achieve.
    Thank you for the inspiration. And of course, the gorgeous wild images.

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