Studio Practice: Development and Critical Reflections

July – August 2018

When the BA students left the college the MA painters were given the opportunity to expand into their spaces and I was allocated some highly coveted studio space. I determined therefore to take advantage of this opportunity and paint Big.

I stretched a canvas which was 120 x 150 cm which was larger than I had ever attempted in the past.  

I found that painting on a large scale requires different skills to when painting on small canvases. My friends Shoa and Gabriel from the 2017-2018 cohort, who were experienced in painting big, helped me acquire some of these skills. For example I had to invest in large brushes and large containers and had to learn to handle large quantities of paint.

The assessment feedback from Unit 1 indicated that I had to increase my technical competence in painting. I therefore set myself the challenge of painting precisely and using an architectural photograph of a beloved building in New Delhi, I painted the following.

 The Blood Moon over the Lotus Temple in New Delhi . Oils 120 x 150 cm

The above is what I painted over the period of 2 months. It was extremely difficult to draw the curves and I tried various techniques but ultimately relied on eye- hand coordination. I had to take the canvas off the stretcher and pin it to the wall, as it was too loose to get a precise effect, despite my attempts to prime it properly: I had been told by my then colleagues that it was enough to prime the canvas with several coats of PVA glue, but the thickness of the material really needed rabbit skin glue. Also my Chinese colleagues and I stretched the canvas over the frame by hand, unaware that there is a crucial tool to use to stretch canvas tightly. The canvas flopped about on the stretcher and it was impossible to paint curves with the precision that was needed and so I problem solved the issue by pinning it directly to the flat surface of the wall. This was a major learning point for me.

 I discovered to my delight the mottled effect seen on the black could be created by applying black acrylic paint over oil paint then washing it off, then applying spirit and turpentine to lift off the acrylic. I shall use this technique again. I also experimented with the use of masking tape to get the effect of the light rays from my Venetian blinds falling upon my canvas as I painted.

 At times I thought I was failing in my ability to upgrade my technical competence and therefore asked Geraint Evans for tips and techniques, which proved very useful because of the precise nature of Geraint’s own work.

 I also experimented with using black on black in the fashion of Idris Khan. Though this experiment is invisible in the current photograph, it is available to the naked eye. The Lotus temple is a place of quiet meditation and so I embossed the following words from Julian of Norwich, who was a woman and a 13th century Christian mystic. These words have been very important to me as I travel my spiritual path towards acceptance and equanimity.

‘All will be well and all manner of thing will be well’

Julian of Norwich.

The picture you see is a Banyan tree. I have recently been in India, in Mumbai and banyan trees are prolific there. I was fascinated by them, because they are so large and from their branches they send down roots and create new trees. Last year I spent a lot of time painting an uprooted tree that had lain on its back for many years and had sprouted new trees while lying on its back.. Some time ago I was fascinated by my discovery of conjoined trees in the Devil’s Punch Bowl. Conjoined trees are trees that have produced roots that are both intertwined and exposed. They look like a community of trees expressing solidarity. So trees help me project meaning. The trees that I have described are analogous to my own immigration history. I was uprooted 20 years ago when I first came to Britain and had to start life from scratch anew. Now I feel fairly well established and am putting down new roots. Soon I hope to find a community of people where I experience solidarity, like the conjoined trees.

 Thus my emerging philosophy of art is that painting is an outward expression of an inner journey.

 September 2018

I contributed a piece to an exhibition at Wimbledon Art College title ‘Dissecting the Archive’. We were invited to have a conversation with a piece of artwork housed in an archive. During our visit to the British Museum in June- July 2018, I chose the work of Philip Guston and used my iPad to respond to his work.

Here is Philip Guston’s painting:

I produced 3 separate drawings with accompanying video on my iPad in response to the above. I learned with the help of Mariana Fantich at the Digital Media Centre to stitch these drawings together into a single video. Though I was in India for the duration of the exhibition I am told that the feedback was good. On the evening of the Private view for which I was present I noticed the work captivated the attention of the children who came to view the exhibition. I was delighted! I also developed an imaginary conversation between myself and Philip Guston about this piece of art.

 An imaginary conversation between Nimmi Hutnik and Philip Guston on June 30th 2018

 NH: It is interesting to me that you use hooded people in this post- abstract- expressionism phase of your art. I wonder why you do it?

PG: Well perhaps it is my way of representing the human condition in a gender-neutral way, even though in most paintings they seem to be men holding cigarettes in heavyset hands.

NH: But why hoods, with eye slits?

PG: I don’t really know. The Ku Klux Klan wore hoods, didn’t they? Who are the hooded people in your time?

NH: Well I immediately think of young men wearing hoodies, representing anonymity and violence. But I also think of young women in some countries who are required to cover up and all you see are these very pretty eyes. I find myself wondering about what is behind those beautiful lashes. It is only a week ago that women in Saudi have acquired the right to drive a car. They must have been dreaming and campaigning about this for a long time.

Women in Saudi Arabia Dreaming of Being Allowed to Learn How to Drive Inspire Pro Painting on iPad

Please double click the screen above for the video.

 October 2018

In 2017 a report (Longhi & Brynin 2017) was published by the government about the Black and Minority Ethnic  (BAME) Pay Gap in women compared to white women. My doctoral work in psychology was on Ethnic Minority Identity in Britain and I published a book of the same name in 1991(Hutnik, 1991). I was shocked at the findings of this report and my shock found its way into a painting titled BAME Sisters: The Gender Pay Gap.

Having first made a collage of magazine images of BAME women, (using collage in the tradition of Zoe Mendelson, Faith Wilding and Rose Wylie  (Mendelson 2018;  Wilding, 2018; Wylie, 2018).

I projected this collage on to a canvas and then painted it using found objects as does Lubaina Himid to emphasize the rich and varied cultural backgrounds of these women. I produced this against a yellow background because yellow signifies to me vibrancy and life and though these women are disadvantaged in the extreme in relation to their white counterparts, I wanted to portray them as strong and resilient and able to flourish despite adversity. This is the third political painting I have made since the beginning of the course. The first was Betrayed by Brexit and the second was Women in Saudi Arabia Dreaming of Learning to Drive.

 Geraint was enthusiastic about this painting and encouraged me to leave the background unpainted, which was valuable advice. At this tutorial I also showed Geraint two felt tip pen drawings I had done in my sketchbook. Geraint was very enthused about these when I told him that I had been influenced by the art of Amy Sillman for her presentation of 50 red and black paintings as one whole, Adam Pendleton for black and white ink paintings and Bob and Roberta Smith for the use of text and autobiography in painting while doing these sketches. Geraint encouraged me to do one of the sketches every two days and thus ‘The 6 am Paintings’ were born. He referred me to the work of Chris Offili, who is a British born Afro Caribbean concerned with similar issues, Njideka Akunyili- Crosby, a Nigerian born Black American dealing with race and ethnicity in the USA whose recent work at the Brixton Underground is noteworthy and David Rayson who uses acrylic pens akin to felt tip.

October 2018 to date


With regard to the 6 am paintings (insert link or copy block), Geraint noted that they were in the same vein as my painting titled Resilience (insert link), that they were my inner language while the BAME Sisters painting seemed more like an outer language. I was captivated by this idea. Geraint’s challenge to me was to somehow find a way to marry the two.

 I described BAME Sisters and the felt tip 6 am paintings to Anna Bunting Branch who immediately commented that the 6 am paintings had a fresh quality to them and that I should continue to produce them. She referred me to the work of Raymond Pettibon whose background in punk rock and politics produce angry paintings and whose pen an ink sketches resonate with my work.

 I talked to Anna about the marrying of the inner and outer language and spoke to her of the Modigliani exhibition in which a headset transported the viewer in 3 D right into the studio-cum-bedroom of the artist. I spoke of a wish to create an artwork similar to this enabling the viewer to get a glimpse of what it feels like to be a 64 year old woman of ethnic minority background in Britain. Anna whose work recently has been about virtual reality (Bunting-Branch 2018), alerted me to the fact that there are now 360 degree cameras available in which the viewer is transported in 3D and 360 degrees into the room where the artwork is being filmed. I have now accessed the camera fro the Central Loan Store and have had an induction into the creation of videos using this remarkable piece of technology. I had hoped to use the camera over the Christmas period but was not allowed to do so. I shall therefore borrow the camera next year and focus on developing key moment of my life on the camera. Hopefully this will effectively marry the two languages.

 November 2018

My attempt to marry the two languages has also led me to create a series of colourful inner paintings using acrylic pens (insert link to block). Each of the 6 am paintings are done on A3, while these more colourful inner paintings are done on A2, I aim to produce a wall of paintings on paper of roughly  6’ x 7 ‘  or 180 x 220 cm. and these will be produced gradually over the remainder of the year.

 Meanwhile, in my role as a cognitive behaviour therapist, I have been dealing with a number of young male executives who are functioning alcoholics and cocaine and ecstasy addicts. They earn 6 figure salaries, live in posh houses, drive posh cars but are wasted within. I transposed the gender of these young people (all mid- thirties) into the following unfinished painting which depicts alcohol and the chemical formulae for cocaine and ecstasy and asked Mark Farmington for his comments. His immediate response was that his was an illustration not a painting.

I then showed Mark my Inspire Pro work on this painting. Mark was fascinated and thought that I should present the Inspire Pro videos as the artwork itself as indeed Robert Gober in his work titled ‘Slides of a Changing Painting’ does (Temkin & Als 2014). Here they are below sewn together into one single video. During the student –led crit on December 12th 2018, my peer group told me that the background of this painting is much too busy and that I should consider blocking it out in the way that Alex Katz has flat backgrounds to his work. Thus I am playing with changing the background colour to blue and turquoise. This is a work in progress and I would welcome comments on this work.

Please double Click the screen to watch the video.

Artist Decisions: The Enemy Within. Inspire Pro Painting on iPad.

Please double Click the screen to watch the video.