"A Room of One's Own"

   I love these words. I have loved them since I first heard them. It is the title of a series of lectures given by Virginia Woolf in 1928 on women and fiction and later published as a book under the same title. In the opening lines Virginia Woolf states, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." As a painter I have had many "rooms/studios" of my own both large and small.
  When I began to paint it was my bedroom in my parents home. When I was first married it was a little building off the back of the tiny one bedroom house we rented. One end of the interior of the little building was just wide enough for a work sink and a washing machine and at the other end of the room my oversized wooden drafting table filled the space from wall to wall. In the few feet of space left in the middle stood my easel along with 2 bikes and some storage boxes.
  The little building set the standard and with each successive move my first thought when looking at a living space has been, "Is there space here for my studio?" Now this seems a simple question and as the years have progressed I have found many "rooms of my own", sometimes creative thinking was employed...a bedroom becomes a studio/a living room becomes a bedroom. Garages were an easy solution and many a year was spent and art created in garage studios and several times I have rented studios away from my home.
  My current studio is my fourth rented studio and is on the fifth floor of an old storage building built in the 1920's/30's. I am surrounded by wood workers with buzzing saws...furniture refinishers with sanders whining... a bicycle repair shop with an air compressor that fills itself hourly...a huge freight elevator across from my space that rumbles and squawks every time someone uses it... and yet, amidst all this chaotic noise, I have a space of my own, to paint in...dream in...write in...and be me in.  
 
 
 




For information or comment: mwinklea@gmail.com