Transcript of Linda Sgoluppi being interviewed by Bernie Keith, October 3 2016

…..Radio Northampton,

BK       Now, it’s already started but you have until the 18th of December to catch the latest exhibition by Linda Sgoluppi. Now that is a brilliant name!

The artist is based in Northamptonshire, Linda is an abstract artist but she’s taken time out this afternoon to come and have a chat here at BBC Radio Northampton. No stranger to BBC Radio Northampton.  Why and how did you get into abstract art as distinct from portraiture or landscapes that of kind of art?

LS      OK it’s really interesting, when you go to college you think you’re going to paint one thing and then, as you work through things, suddenly you go off at a tangent and you find those things are more interesting, so the actual surface of the paint, the paint itself as a stuff becomes interesting, and what you can do with it.

BK       The paint as are stuff ‘, I love that, you’re talking about in this almost 3 dimensional,

LS      Yes, I mean I throw paint I’ve used cars to put paint on,

BK       Cars?

LS      Toy cars, toy cars (before the advert, the famous advert, I might add). I’m throwing paint on which is, you know is old hat, it’s been done before, but it’s still the energy that you put it on with, and there’s an energy in a line of paint.

BK       So, if you’re going to throw paint at the canvas, you can’t guarantee what it’s then going to do? The nature of abstract you could almost say haphazard in that case, or can you place paint when you are throwing it, in a precise area to get what you want?

LS      You can, um.. there’s the happy accident, but you learn about that over the years, you know what’s going to happen, and then then there’s sometimes the other thing happens, that you don’t know and you think whoo that’s interesting, so then it becomes another path to go down.

BK      So when you’re throwing paint around do you soak a sponge with it, do you literally get a handful of paint and throw it at the canvas?

LS      I have used all sorts of things to throw paint it’s at canvases and I’ve ended up with more paint on me than I have on the canvas at times,

BK      Well, that could be an artistic statement at times.

LS      Well, it could be. This current work wasn’t made that way I might add, but it is one of the things, I’ve used rollers I was in touch with somebody in America to make a specific sort of roller to put it (the paint) on, one (the roller) that was hard to make and things like that.

BK      So, when you are doing abstract art, at what point do you, the artist know that what you’ve got, is what you want, can you put it into words?

LS       (Laughs), That’s saying, how do you know when it’s finished?

BK      Ya..

LS      .. and of course it’s experience, it’s all sorts of things, but a painting is..  one painting is many paintings, and there’re times you think I really love tha,t but actually when you come back in the studio and you look at it and you think well is this lovely and ..it’s, you know, it’s almost a pretty, pretty thing, and I’ve got to destroy it in order to make some real depth from it and to get that.. to get that connection with that thing inside you that you know is there.

BK       So, when you start a piece in that case, it must be the worst possible time for you start with an enormous, and I say enormous! (Linda laughs)  I’ve seen pictures of some of your work, you start with an enormous great canvas….

LS      I have done, yes.

 BK      ….that is feet wide and feet tall and it’s blank, does that terrify you?

LS       It used to, it doesn’t now.  I love it.. I love it because it’s many paintings before it’s the finished one.  I know that it doesn’t matter what I do in the beginning, it’s going to be something different at the end, and until I have something on that canvas I can’t… I can’t communicate with it. You know, the canvas talks back, so when you put something on that canvas, as soon as you get something on there you can make the biggest mess in the beginning and it’s the greatest fun. And it used to be scary, but it’s not now.

BK      You’re using all kinds of emotional adjectives and I have to say, I love the fact that you’re doing that, because by your simple words are saying that art is fun, making art is fun Where sometimes mindset I…I guess ‘preset’ with our minds that artists struggle for their work they suffer for their work..

LS      Oh, they do! We struggle and we suffer, but we have fun too, and if it stops being fun, if it stops being something you want to get up and do the next morning. or the, you know, the next year or the year after, stop.

BK       Some of the work that you have done, literally is enormous, I was looking at some of the hangings that thatyou’ve done they’re almost as big as some of the walls of my house!

           How do you get them hung, how do you get them through the door, and how do you get them into the gallery at the visitor centre of 78 Derngate  ‘cause that staircase is pretty small!

LS       OK, those ones are not so big, however, the large ones they’ve they’ve gone to America and all sorts of places, so they can go in places, and I’m very good at putting them on top of the car.

BK      And wrapping them carefully..

LS      (Chuckling) No, no, no!  I have really great system, it’s a ladder rack and couple of.. we sandwich them!

BK      I love the sound of this, we’ll have to get will have to get some footage of this onto the BBC before to much longer.  

Tell me about the exhibition which is now on at the visitor centre.

LS      OK, ok, this is a different technique I’ve been using and it’s acrylic paint skins, so it’s actually something that I can splash all around, I can make all these skins with the paint and then I put a particular product on it which means I can peel it off, and I did that initially, by mistake. I found some (paint) on the wall, because I put plastic on the wall to keep it clean (or try to) and then one day as I was taking the plastic off, it (the paint) all came off, and I thought wow and then I looked, you know, went to do a bit of research and I found something that I could put on it to keep it in one piece, and so I had a new technique to discover, not discover it’s been discovered.

BK      At this point that has the painting become sculpture?

LS      No, it could be, it could be, but it hasn’t.

BK      It’s definitely a painting?

LS      Yes

BK      OK. The work is going to be on display until the 8th of December how many pieces are up there?

LS      There’s 13 pieces up there, it’s called Plato’s Cave and it’s based on Plato’s analogy which is about reality, and it’s quite a narcy story really, it’s like people being chained inside a cave and what they see are images, that are deliberately sort of put up too to, to sort of not know what’s real, and of course then if someone gets out and find out what’s real think wow we’ve been fooled or is it just a mindset and they go back in try to tell the others and the others don’t like it and might kill them because they don’t like having the reality.

BK      Fascinating, we started ( the show) with storytelling and passing down generational stories from a particular artist who’s going to be the NN gallery, now we have an artist who’s telling stories through her abstract art, and that art is on the wall at the Visitor Centre, next door but one, 78 Derngate.

It’s going to be there until the back end of December, just before Christmas is when the exhibition finishes, so if you want to go along, taking 78 Derngate in its own right because let’s face it, that is an example of one kind of art, and go and see Linda Sgoluppi’s exhibition which is in the visitor centre as well, it is in the upstairs gallery, go and have a look. If you want to go and see a little bit more of her work there is a website that you can go and have a look at and it is Linda SGOLUPPI which I’m told is Italian, https://www.lindasgoluppi.com  and 

https://    lindasgoluppi.wordpress.com/    as wel,l go and have a look at The Cave paintings, on at the moment     in 78 Derngate.