Artist in Residence Week 6 - Lisa Hawkins.

Last week at The Old Lookout we welcomed local artist Lisa Hawkins, with her exhibition Freedom From The Known. This included a series of small paintings, sketches and photographs which were all designed to encourage a meditative feeling in the viewer. The paintings, which feature abstracted blocks of colour, are best viewed when stepped back away from, in order to take in the entire image rather than focusing on small details. In contrast, the much smaller sketches include short lines of text, thoughts form the artist, which need to be viewed much closer in order to read. Lisa noted to me that she wanted to encourage this to-ing and fro-ing that the viewer has to do, to keep the momentum constantly changing. This is reflected in the polaroid photographs that were also included in the exhibition, which were mostly new images, but interspersed with older family photos.

As part of the exhibition, Lisa also encouraged viewers to leave her a drawing, which was done on the same type of paper stock that her sketches were on. This linked it into the exhibition well, and it seemed like people really relished this idea. This was helped by the fact that it was anonymous - no one had to put their name on their drawing and it was dropped into a box. There were some really lovely results, which Lisa suggested she might be able to use in her artwork in the future. This makes a further connection to another theme of the exhibition, of things being one of a kind. The typewritten text, paintings and polaroids are all one offs, and cannot be reproduced in exactly the same way again. This small, unique work exhibited in a small, unique space I feel really related to people - Lisa mentioned that she wanted people to feel relaxed and at ease in the space, allowing their minds to wander and relate the images or words to their own personal experiences.

In terms of the practicality of the space, Lisa did encounter a couple of problems when it came to viewers being able to buy work. Although she did note that she had never thought of this as a 'selling show', she would have sold more work than she did had lots of people not wanted to pay on credit card. Obviously there are no facilities for this, and when people said they would go and get cash out of a machine, for the most part these sales were lost. Having said that, she did sell some work, and even had a couple of people fighting over one of the paintings! Once again, she also found that several people initially only came up to look at the building, but in most cases did end up staying and looking round the show. However, it was suggested that it might be a good idea to have some more information about the history of the building for people to look at and take away as almost another form of marketing - making more of the uniqueness of the space and the building. Lisa did have a flying visit by one of the men who used to spend time in The Old Lookout when it was a functioning lifeboat watch - a real character who said he loved that the building was still being used and open for the public to see in a more contemporary way.

Overall, Lisa said that she had really enjoyed the week, and almost everyone had a positive reaction to the show, being touched by the images and words. She noted that not having to pay for the use of the space is much more freeing for the artist, it can be used to show experimental work to gauge an audience's reaction. However, she knew that she didn't want to alienate people with controversial artwork or even over-the-top advertising, and instead let the viewers discover both the space and the work itself in a calm and meditative way.