ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the conditions the artist needs in order to work. Based on the artist interviews, it suggests that many artists need a containing space within which they can feel free to enter their working state of mind. The chapter draws on the work of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott to draw a parallel between his concept of the ‘facilitating environment’ provided by a mother for her infant and the boundaried space the artist provides for herself. It argues that this containing space has both external, physical components and internal, mental ones. This chapter explores the ‘external frame’, constituted by physical spaces such as the studio, temporal boundaries and procedural factors, and, drawing on Marion Milner’s concept of the ‘framed gap’, the space of the work itself. The chapter includes quotations from interviews with artists Jo Volley, Hughie O’Donoghue, Nina Rodin and Deborah Padfield.
