“This can cause huge problems if I have to change my job mid-stream. I like to know exactly what I’m doing and I like to plan ahead.”
In The Woman Who Fell From a Plane, Chamberlain constructed the set inside a black cardboard box. That’s how he often works, he shines bright lights from different angles.
“I think, with that painting, I thought deeply about what I wanted. I wanted to paint a figure. I actually wanted to paint that doll,” Chamberlain explained. He shared that his father, also an artist, would go to charity shops looking for items Chamberlain might like to paint. Once, his father acquired a Barbie doll during a trip. Chamberlain removed the doll’s head and attached it to the body of another doll. “I changed my hair and everything. So it was butchered a lot,” he said. He considered having characters fall from balloons or rockets and then board planes. “I think for most people, falling out of a plane is more relatable than falling out of a balloon.”
He noted that the sets he built were not as elaborate as the museum dioramas. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t do it right,” he said. The ladder of the slide in “Woman Falls from a Plane” is made of balsa wood, while the slide itself is paper. In the foreground, you see a curve that could be a river or a road—”it’s just a sinuous line that leads the viewer into the painting,” Chamberlain said. That’s also made of paper. The streetlight in the foreground is “a wire with something glued to the end.”
That’s part of the point. Chamberlain wasn’t trying to replicate a specific place. “I love that art can take us outside of the world we live in, outside of the world we’re familiar with,” he said.
Over time, Chamberlain changed parts of his process. “When I was in college and I was working from life, and especially in the years after that, I was absolutely against the idea of using photographs,” he explains. “I’ve changed a lot now. I work from photos. I work from life. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I think the restrictions you put on yourself, saying you shouldn’t work from photos, is ridiculous.”
In Night Wind, Chamberlain combines the world he has constructed with the real world. He set up the scene outside and took photos that included the scenery surrounding the doll and her box. He then brought the doll’s world back to the studio and painted from still lifes and photographs using similar lighting.
“If possible, I try to paint from life using objects and dolls because it’s easier than relying solely on photographs,” he said. “If I had photos, I’d print them out on a crappy printer, but there’s not a lot of information there. That would work.” He added that this method fits the context better, but he probably didn’t want to go into too much detail.
fell from plane more meaningful than falling I think that’s a balloon for most people. ”
Although the scenes Chamberlain constructed were often the basis for his paintings, this was not always the case. Take for example his painting “Chair”, in which a chair and a small potted plant sit on a terrace at night, with light pouring in from the window behind them.
In early 2023, Chamberlain and his family moved to a small town near Brighton. “I’ve never lived in a town. I’ve lived in a city. I’ve lived in a village, but I’ve never lived in a town,” he said. The scene here is based on a photograph of Chamberlain’s own garden, with his house in the background. The chair pictured belonged to Chamberlain’s late mother, who was an artist like Chamberlain and his father and brother. “Actually, her drawings are more detailed than mine,” he commented.
Initially, Chamberlain considered mentioning his mother in the title of the work. “I did consider calling it my mother’s chair because there was a hint of presence behind it with the tree behind it,” he said.
However, Chamberlain noted that he also doesn’t like to be overly descriptive in his titles, preferring to make the meaning easier to explain. “I don’t want this to be too personal for me,” Chamberlain said. “They are drawings for other people to look at. Just because I drew them, it doesn’t mean they are about me or my experiences. The fact that it’s my mom’s chair is irrelevant to some extent. It could be someone else’s mom’s chair.”
Chamberlain photographed the scene and drew inspiration from these images. “It’s just not practical to sit there for hours at night in the cold in January,” he said.
The details in “Chairs” are impressive, from the traces on the terrace in the foreground to the traces of domestic life faintly visible through the windows in the background. “I work in a very meticulous way. That’s what I do. I’ve come to realize that that’s how I work naturally and instinctively,” Chamberlain said. “It’s completely unrealistic. If you want to actually make a living from your work and put on an exhibition, there’s a limit to the amount of detail you can put into it, but I find it hard to get away from it. I often want to do that. I’m often frustrated by it, but it’s my instinctive way of working.”
I like the idea that art can take us outside of the world we live in, outside of the world we are familiar with…”
Among his current projects is a drawing that has been in the works for several years. It began as a mannequin head designed for Chamberlain’s daughter to practice applying makeup. “She never used it once. It stayed in the house for years,” he said.
Chamberlain planned to take the object to a charity shop, then realized the head might be suitable for his work. But the problem is that it’s too clean. “So I took it to a nearby forest and stayed there for about two and a half years. When I came back, it was unbelievable. It had grown. It was filled with insects, dead leaves, snails and all kinds of stuff. The skin had changed and there were lots of spots.”
After returning home, Chamberlain placed the head in a shed for another six months to dry, then placed it on a piece of white paper. “All these things are falling off the top, and I love it,” he said. He added moths, flies and other odds and ends and started painting.
The work in progress is stunning, with Chamberlain capturing a doll’s head of hair, which later transforms into something closer to a bird’s nest, all tangled with leaves and branches, hanging over one eye.
The duration of the project is not only the result of the multi-part process, but also the priority of the artist’s work. “I don’t know how long I’ve been painting. It’s time-consuming and I need to make a living,” he said. “As most artists know, you can’t just sit there and spend years doing one thing while not doing anything else. [You have to] Make a living. “
Work continues. “I would go back to it occasionally if I could, but in the meantime I need to sell my work…so I need to do something small that doesn’t take four years…so I can make a living…so I can go back and spend some time doing something that takes four years.”*
This article appears in the print edition of Hi-Fructose, Issue 69. Get a copy of the full issue here and thank you for supporting our independent publication.
