Rick Janson Art Studio

When we first moved to our present house slightly less than 20 years ago, the intention was to set aside a room I could use as my studio. The house seemed enormous to us at the time, although when we started allocating rooms it was clear that the studio would be an issue. With grandchildren on the way, we knew that one spare bedroom would not be sufficient for family visits, and another of the four bedrooms had become an office/library.

In the previous house I had used an unfinished room in the basement. It had low ceilings and a lot of concrete. Light was poor, although a worklight was used to illuminate my work area. At the time I painted seated at a drafting table, most of my paintings smaller in size.

Visiting the Canada Blooms marketplace in 2009 we came across a booth by Duro-shed. The wheels started spinning and an order was placed before we left the show. After it was delivered and set up, an electrician was contracted to run a line out first to the garage then on to the shed at the back of the garden. We hired a colleague’s husband to lay some left over flooring, insulate and drywall the interior. A hole was cut out in the rear for an air conditioning unit we had brought from the previous house. I made sure there was sufficient power for electric heat in winter. There is a small fridge to keep myself lubricated. Voila, a studio.

The studio is about a thirty second walk from our back door. Unless it is subarctic, I don’t usually bother taking a coat. It does mean that I do have to regularly shovel a path through the snow to get there. In the summer time the issues are different. The 20-year-old air conditioner is starting to show its age and is extremely loud when it is on. With a deck directly in front, it is also mere feet from the swimming pool. Last summer I would spend days in there, then at 5 pm, put on my bathing suit and jump in the pool, sometimes with a drink in hand. Sometimes my sessions would be interrupted by a few minutes taking in the sun.

The outside structure is 8 feet by 12 feet, making the interior slightly smaller than that. The biggest painting I have ever done in there is six feet across, and that practically went from wall to wall.

Two years ago I attended a panel discussion by three emerging artists at Art Toronto. They spoke about the challenges of working in a small studio, often a corner of a bedroom or a living room alcove. That meant if you wanted to work large, you had to work in diptychs and triptychs not by design but by necessity. I haven’t gone there yet, but suspect that I will need to get larger at some point.

I am always thinking about how to better utilize space. I normally work on about four paintings at a time, which makes it difficult to place them somewhere to dry where I won’t be tripping over them. I recently ordered a drying rack, but I need a little less winter to rearrange things and set it up in there. When rearranging takes place, often items get hauled out to the yard until I can figure out how to fit them back in again.

Lately I have come to refer to my studio as the “art hut,” the term “studio” or “atelier” being a bit grand for what is essentially a glorified shed. Lately I have been thinking about the problem of storage as full-time art practice now means I am running out of space for canvases. Albeit there are a number of indulgences also in there, including piles of CDs and a good stereo system — some components of it acquired from thrift shopping. We also store other items in there, including our giant screen and projector for showing movies outdoors in the summer months. Fortunately the screen folds up into something about the size of a hockey bag. I also have my Where The Wild Things Are figurines and lately art books have been piling up too.

At one point I did change the orientation owing to where the light comes from. Having sunlight on your easel can be problematic. That meant having to go out and get another worklight, the nice bank of lights the electrician originally installed is now oriented too far away from my easel.

Having a peaceful spot at the end of the garden is ideal, if not a bit cramped. Today it has been blowing a hooley, and I thought that for the first part of the day maybe I’ll stay inside and contribute to this BLOG. I’m told there is a rather important hockey game on too.

Feature Photo (Top): The shed when it was first installed in 2010 prior to the arrival of the swimming pool in 2016.

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Want to check out some of my work? Click here. Want to see my work in person? Here’s where I am exhibiting (presently I’m in a group show at the Leslie Grove Gallery in Toronto). Don’t forget to subscribe so you won’t miss another post.