S2, Ep7 - Lotte Little

Lotte Little is an artist and maker based in London, England. The episode was recorded in February 2022. 

Podcast details:
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Website: www.artiststales.net
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Transcript

0:18

Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode, I'm chatting with Lottie Little, who's a London-based painter. Welcome, Lottie. It's good to have you. Thank you, Heather. I need to correct you first of all, rather than being a painter, I think you'd have to call me a maker. A maker. I stand corrected then. I stand corrected. So tell me a bit more about yourself and explain what you mean by a maker. I think for me it's, I've never considered it an art thing. I've always considered it a creative thing and I do dislike this word creative because it's being used as a sort of catch-all for people who make things which is not quite the same thing. I think that my life has been centered around creating things, creating people, but particularly creating things in various different ways. And I've come to see it, first I thought maybe I was just a dilettante. And I've come to see that actually, I think it's part of a life view of how you manage things. that you, if you're like me, that everything you do is a creative act. And some are more successful than others. And some have more point maybe than others, but I can't separate what I am from what I do. That sounds very Quakerly in some ways, because we met through Quakers. Maybe, maybe that's been quite an influence on me actually, as I went to a Quaker school. Oh, did you? Yes, I did. Yes. So that was probably quite a strong influence. And for a long time when I was younger, I thought I ought to be doing good works rather than making art because art was so useless. And I have always found it difficult to say what the point of art is. And I think probably there is no particular point. It's what we do. And it's very important that human beings do it, actually, that they create. So why do you create? Oh gosh, because I can't do anything other than create. If I weren't creating something either in my head or on bits of paper or with pieces of wood or whatever, or with material, I would just be sitting doing nothing, really. And I can't see you do nothing? No, very difficult. That is Quaker. So what do you create? So I... said you're a painter and you've corrected me, so what do you create? Yes, well I have painted and that is the way I came up through art school as a fine artist, but more and more I found I was making stuff. I actually, in Manchester when I was at my original art college, we had to, if you did fine art you actually had to do a, what they called a craft, you had to do two crafts so-called and It was fairly random. My choice was silversmithing and fashion because Manchester was very good for fashion at that point. A lot of factories and a lot of production there at that point in the 60s and actually, funnily enough, it's been incredibly useful, the fashion. I thought it was awfully silly at the time but it was very, very practical. You learned how to pattern cut and make stuff. And when I had children, I ended up by making all their clothes. I also got quite good at knitting and I ended up by running a knitting business while the children were small because it was something I could do at home and make money from and that the, in the seventies, it was at that point, it was a very good time to sell hand knitwear. It was very popular and I did quite well and was able to run the business same time as having the children. So that's partly why I say I'm not a painter because during none of that time was I painting really. So it sounds like you've done different things over the course of your life. Yes, many different things actually. And then I, when the children left home, I decided I'd had enough of the knitting business really, because it's very hard work, especially if you're doing a lot of the hand work yourself. And I decided I wanted to go back and I wanted to teach, which was something I'd never wanted to do first. But I thought I understood enough by that time, I knew enough about people to actually put over what I was interested in, what made me tick. So I went back to college and took a teaching qualification, but because My original degree was no longer currency. I had to start all over again. I had to do a part-time adult degree in Canterbury College, or Canterbury Art College. And they made me start not completely at the beginning, but partway through. And so I had to do the degree all over again. And at that point, I began to start carving because there was plenty of time and plenty of space to do it. So I started carving things. I started first of all making little plaster things, which you do in your sort of junior years as a student, and then went on to carving out the plaster. And then I found I was really quite good at carving. So I went on and I tried some stone, small stone pieces. Stone is all right, but it doesn't suit me very well. And then I went on to bits of wood, which I absolutely love. And I'll tell you later on, I have a great affinity for trees or with trees. And I think that's why I lit upon wood to carve. And I'm still carving now actually. So that's been a very strong strand ever since I discovered that I was quite good at it. There were reasons why I didn't start carving early. but those are personal and familial and they probably don't need to be gone in too, really. So then I was at art college again and finally got my degree and my teaching qualification and started scouting around for teaching jobs. And at the same time, I decided I would do an MA and I really wanted at that point, I think while I was doing the degree, I thought there are many different ways of putting over all the things that I want to say, because I'm quite interested in words as well. Now, I'm quite interested in language and I didn't want to write on paintings and I didn't really want to paint anymore. It didn't seem that I was, that was a path I was wanting to take really. And then I just covered making little books. Instead of making series of paintings, which is what I was doing, or series of prints, I decided rather than having them all on the wall, which is a great nuisance, you've got 30 little prints, where on earth do you put them? I thought much more fun to have them in books so you can leaf through them, but you've got them all in your hand. So I started making little books. I had no idea at that point that I was making artists books. It's now a module taught in college, but never mind. Phil, you're a trailblazer. Yes, I am a trailblazer, but I never, I never tell anybody about it. I just sort of plod on and people overtake me. Anyway, so I found that very interesting because in a book, if you make your own book. know, the physical book. You can actually do anything you like. You can make it out of anything you like. You can carve it if you want to. And I mean early lettering was carved, which was lovely, out of wood. And you can print in it. You can sew in it. You can do what you like in a little book. And putting it together is quite interesting too, how you put it together, in what format. and so on. So it began to answer a lot of the things that I was wanting to do. And so I was doing that as well as teaching. So I did get adult ed teaching in the end, and I enjoyed that actually. And I was teaching watercolour, which I am still quite good at, although I say I'm not a painter, I do enjoy watercolour, because it's just so beautiful. It's such a beautiful medium. My pupils were quite accepting actually. We had quite fun. But tell me more about carving and your relationship with trees. Yes, that's interesting, isn't it? I saw that your, one of the questions was how you got started. Yeah. And when you started, and I can't remember a time when I wasn't looking at things and trying to. put over what I felt about it. It wasn't that I wanted to repeat what I saw in front of me. I'm not interested in regurgitating what's in front of me. I want to put down what I feel when I look at it. And that started my, honestly, my earliest memory. I must have been about three. We lived with my grandparents, because it was war time. My mother and I lived with my grandparents. and they lived in a lovely house in the countryside in Norfolk. And there was a massive tree in the driveway. My grandfather decided that it was in his way, so he had it cut down, this fabulous tree, and a great big stump was left. And I remember my earliest memories sitting on this wonderful stump and painting. And where my mother got paints from, I have no idea. But there I was. with nice bits of paper. And that was really my most pleasurable and earliest memory is sitting on this big tree stump and painting. And then the other memory, which is very strong in me, is again, I must have been about five at this point, living with the other set of grandparents. They had a large house in Essex and in their driveway was also a massive tree. But it was an enormous chestnut tree with branches that came right down to the ground. And I remember hiding under there to go and draw or read or whatever, and sitting on the ground under this massive tree and thinking, gosh, I feel safe. This is, this is quite a feeling here. And these two very strong memories actually, when other things have passed me by, you know. So obviously it's been. part of my life ever since I can remember. I'm wanting to, as I say, wanting to express that feeling. It's very difficult to put into words. It's not something, unless you're a poet, which I'm not. I think I'm a visual poet, but I don't think I'm a wordsmith, really. I can't, I don't have enough control over words to say, as you can tell in the way I'm stumbling around. You're not stumbling around, I think you're doing wonderfully. I would say I'm a visual poet. I think I'm a, I call myself a romantic. I am a nature romantic, in the sense that people like Turner were romantics. It's not the time align myself with Turner. But that, that sort of feeling that the landscape is, you are part of the landscape and the landscape expresses what you're feeling as it were, or the landscape can be used to express what you're feeling. So it sounds like the role of art or the role of creativity or the role of making things has been quite central in your life. Absolutely, absolutely. And everything else, I can't say that everything else has come secondary to it because when I had my children, they always came first. And sometimes I resented that actually. I found that quite difficult that I would like to have been making things, but I couldn't. I couldn't. I knew people who did. I knew people who put their children in nursery and just got on with it. But I've never been able to do that. So I gave in. Well, you say that, but you also did the knitting, didn't you? Which was making things. Exactly. Well, I made all their clothes for starters. So. And that we did, which was quite fun. And feeding them is quite creative. You have to be quite creative actually to get any food into children, little ones. Particularly fast ones. Yes, yes, yes. Most of them are nuisance about food, yes, because they can be. I was mutter at them, think darkly about the war and having only bits of dried egg to eat. But if you if you have everything. on tap, you don't understand that at all. So what influences you? Well, I think the natural world, really, natural world all around me. And actually, it's been very interesting moving into London because I had a beautiful garden in Canterbury. I was up on the top of the hill above Canterbury and I had a wonderful garden. I called it my little Eden. It really was very lovely, suburban garden, you know. It was in a very special spot and it was very influential. And it's been interesting moving into London and I've done two gardens here now. And it's different. They don't influence me in the same way. I mean, I'm very creative in the garden. I love gardening and I'm a good gardener, but they don't influence me in the same way that my garden in my Eden did in. up on the hill there. So that might be one reason why I've come to the quiet patch, the quiet creative patch. And it certainly sounds like trees have also been an interest. Absolutely, absolutely central. And I do have on my list of books to make a book about trees and language, but that has been, that's marched away for a very long time in that book and I'm still not quite sure how to do it. actually. And again, you see, my idea started such a long time ago, and now lots of people have written books about trees and language. So I've been superseded while I was thinking about it. So I was originally going to write to various people, I knew, because I've got friends all over the world, and ask them what their, not their favorite tree, but what they, when they first thought of a tree, what did they think of, and to get them to write about it and to put that in a book and... illustrate it with bits of bark and whatnot. But I think somebody's already done that. And then somebody brought out the most beautiful book called Sylvia. I don't know if you know that. It's an American artist's book, huge, and it's about a particular patch of woodland. And I mean, that really tops it all. So I don't really need to do that. So it might be that book has just been superseded. And there might be other ways of saying what I would like to say about that and put down what I would like to do about that. And how about your carving? Are you still doing that? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I've got some little roundels. It's very interesting. My father gave me, I love relief carving because it's such an interesting problem to carve something in relief because if you carve it in the round, it's easy. People can walk right round it. But with relief, you've actually really got to create. a space within a particular thing. So the object isn't an object that stands there, it is actually something which is enclosed and you have to work your way into it. So it's a different sort of carving. And my father, quite late on, not long before he died, gave it thrust some little bits of wood at me. He'd cut down a laburnum tree and it was about It was about like that, sort of a hand span, the trunk. And he'd cut it into little roundels. So the roundels were about an inch and a half, two inches deep. So I've got eight of these little, or seven of these little roundels. And I started carving into them. And laburnum is very beautiful wood. It's very poisonous, but it is very beautiful to look at. It has a beautiful white outside. And then inside the heartwood is really quite glossy and close textured and quite a deep color so it's very different inside from its little containing frames it was. And I when I started carving I was carving because they're round is just asks for holding hands, so the carvings are actually of little creatures and little people, but they're held. within hands and each one is different. And I've got one more to complete, several are unfinished. So I've got to finish them, but I've got one more to actually start. And then, cause I'd like to get those done, actually. I would like to have those finished. I don't finish lots, but I would like, would like to get those finished. But do you have anything else you think you might work on or are you just- Yes, I've got various books actually. I've got a book on Australia I want to make. I've got, because often when I have prints or paintings and things I get fed up with, I just tear them up. And I've got a lot that I did a whole lot of rather undistinguished prints and some paintings. And I tore them into pieces about this big. And I thought, hmm, they're really nice when they're small. They... They're real little pages of a book and they're quite thick, you know, encrusted with paint and whatnot. And I thought, that reminds me of Australia somehow, the colours and whatnot. And I think, actually just something else on it to bring it together. And I was in the studio and I walked on one and my shoes left an imprint on it. And I thought that is really interesting that That is something quite poetic about Australia, which has been crampled all over by. So I've collected a whole lot of old shoes with different treads and I'm going to do a different tread on each page. And they actually look a bit like Aboriginal, I mean they're nothing like Aboriginal paintings because they have a meaning, but they look like them if you see what I mean, they're sort of a homage to Aboriginal paintings. And I thought That's too literal. I don't need the shoes really. What I can do is I can do some wood cuts that look like shoe threads, then I can make them the patterns that I want, and then use them. So that book is going to come on. And when I've made the pages, then the interesting thing will be how to put it together. That's one little book. And then I have one going back ages, which is a book. on Spain, my spouse and I did a lovely trip to Spain, to Andalusia and I was very taken by the, by the, the colours, that sort of, and the patterning in Andalusia. I know it's, it's very hot, but when you, it's very difficult to put it over actually, and I was very influenced by the tiles everywhere, the Moorish tiles and by the shadows everywhere. And I'm, I'm got a book mapped out, which is going to be watercolour actually, very fine watercolours using very precise patterning. But anyway, so that will come on eventually. So that's three things I've got on, which will probably keep me busy actually, in between gardening. This is the fifth garden I've made now. I've passed... four gardens on to other people. But this one I'm going to walk out of feet first, I think, hopefully. You have a beautiful garden. I love your garden. Yes, it's very nice actually. I've done away with all the lawn now, all the lawn. It's all just flower bed now. I forgot to mention that I went with my sister on a wonderful trip. to gardens in Japan and we went to Tokyo and Kyoto and obviously the gardens were incredible and a very different way of gardening from us. And that was really interesting, but you can't reproduce a Japanese garden in Britain. We just don't have the atmosphere for it. And we don't have the plants actually. But what really knocked me over was the Ikebana, the Japanese flower engine. And I thought, because in the hotels that we went in, there were enormous arrangements of big pieces of wood and huge flowers. And I thought, gosh, that is really up my street. So when I came back, the first thing I did was to find an Ikebana teacher here in Britain. She lives in Croydon. So I happily trot over to Croydon each Monday and do my Ikebana, because it's a wonderful my love of nature and the expression of nature and sculpture and intimacy. It's very intimate ikebana. It's also incredibly skillful and you can't be unruly, you've got to be very ruli. So that's very interesting for somebody like me. But anyway that is my newest love is the ikebana. Great so that's another project for you to work on, isn't it? Certainly is. I was going to ask what challenges have you faced if you faced any? Yeah, many, actually. I think my own personality as much as anything. This this sort of I have a very long period when I when I faff about not doing much and thinking and then I'll have a very, very productive period when I really do a lot of work and make a lot of things and get a lot of things done. And then it'll stop again. And I think that's just my nature actually. I try not to bully myself about it too much because that gets upsetting really. In all honesty, I find I have quiet times and spurts because I'm into photography and I just find it, I call it ebbing and flowing. Yes, yes. Well, that's a much wiser way of putting it, yes, actually. But my time is a bit short now and I think I ought to get on with it. And people are always saying, you know, are you in the studio? Are you doing any painting? I don't know. Also, I am a very, very private person, actually. I don't normally talk about what I do. People always ask, parties people ask, what do you do? And I hedge, I say I'm a lady water colorist and that usually shuts people up. And I won't let anybody into my studio. And I very, very seldom talk about what I'm actually doing. So I think I'm very private. I'm not sure why I keep it so private, but I do. So that can be difficult, really. I have collaborated making books. I actually, I've got several books in the Tate artist library, in their book library. And particularly I've got one very big book that I made, a silk scroll that I made with a friend, which was great fun. We made a collaborative book. That was, I'll tell you about that another time because that's a story in itself. I've heard, no not to take mine, now you've... Peaked, yes. What interests, so please. They have several of my books because I didn't think, they're slightly, they're the bigger books and the one-off things. And I didn't think, because I keep moving all the time and I didn't think it would be very good for the books. I thought it was much better. And I had quite a good relationship with the... the then librarian, I think she might have left by now. And she bought several of my books that were in small editions, you know, I do sort of edition of 10 or something. And she bought several of those. She quite liked what I did. But so I followed up by giving her the big pieces actually, because I knew my children wouldn't know what to do with them. And if I have them, they just sit. in a box somewhere and nobody sees them, which is a shame. And I thought, well, if she has them, they're always there for people to refer to if they want to. And she used to bring books out. And, you know, when she was talking about these books and so on, she would bring various books out and I knew she would show mine from time to time. And also they would preserve them properly, which would be good, because that one had gold dust on it, that book. It was silk and gold dust and watercolour, so that was a very beautiful, or water dye actually, it, that was a beautiful book. As I say, I didn't really think my children would have any, you know, it would just sit in their attic really. So I thought it better to give those, so those were given to the Tate Library. And I think I gave a couple more of the bigger books I've made. So the last question is, it sounds like you've had a really interesting journey with your making things and your creative side, if I can say that. I guess what, you know, if you're talking, so I know you've taught art or you've taught, yes, you know, adults, I guess what sort of, I don't know, advice or guidance would you give people who were either getting into the creative side of things or, I don't know, even a little bit of tidbits of even people on the journey that you've learned along the way. Yes, well, I mean, that's difficult because my creative life has always been kept for me. I've never had to sell it or do you know what I mean? I sell it if I want to, the books I've sold, which was quite fun. So I've not, I wouldn't say that I've lived the life of a sort of artist in a Maybe not a public artist, maybe not. But you're still an artist. I've lived, yes, I am an artist. And I've lived a very busy creative life. I've created a lot of things. I made a whole lot of paper flowers during lockdown. My sister said to me, why don't we make some paper flowers, she said, just to keep ourselves. I don't know why she thought that. And I rushed off and made some really fantastic big paper flowers. So they're really. hope rather nice. I mean, what do you do with a whole lot of big paper flowers? I thought maybe I'll make a garland. But then I ran out of steam, if you know what I mean. But I did have all this wonderful coloured paper, which I've been carting around for years on end, wondering what to do with it. So I did make use. So this stuff gets used. What would I say to other people? The thing is that nowadays there's so many more creative jobs than there were when I was coming out of art. college first time around. There were no creative jobs, honestly. You either were an artist, and God help you, or you taught, really. And I didn't want to teach in school. I didn't want to go near a school, although I did have to teach when I first came out, because you had to earn money to live, really. But my heart wasn't in it at that point. It wasn't until later on I thought I could do that. So I don't know what I would really say to somebody going out in the world now. I'd say just do what you like doing. Go where your heart leads you really. And it may be that you don't earn money from what you like making. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't stop just because you can't do it at a certain time. That creative urge doesn't stop. And actually, when I was teaching, I thought that was the most important thing to teach people was not to get it right. They came, they got very anxious about getting things right. And I said, that's not the point. The point is, really, that you want to say something. And you want to use this particular medium to get it over. And I'm here to help you to do that. That's my job. and to, if possible, get you to enjoy it and not beat yourself up about it. So I think my, my advice probably would be just do what you enjoy doing. And if you make money from it so much, don't undersell yourself. That's very important. Never undersell, never give paintings away for peanuts. If they've taken you hours, count the hours and charge for them. Makes me very cross when people sell paintings for a den. often people, like I've exhibited in, you know, not many, but some, that, you know, some shows with other people. And it's amazing how many people, some people get, yes, you pay and you pay properly and everything. And other people, it's like, I want to pay a fiver for that. And I'm like, well, it's costing more to produce. Absolutely not. Yes, absolutely not. No, but you don't sell it. No, I don't. No, I, and stick up. What upsets me is so many people who could be creative and could enjoy themselves don't or are not given the opportunity or are squashed early at school by somebody who says you're not very good at this or whatever. You know, it's a shame. Great. Thanks Lottie. It's been wonderful chatting with you. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode with Lottie. I hope you enjoyed it. More information about Lottie along with the podcast can be found in the episode notes. If you're able to, please rate and review the podcasts in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Elizabeth Munce, who is an actor based in Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada. Here's a clip of her conversation. I find that knowing anything background is essential as an actor because, well, in order to know... One, you should know the other. Like I'm not saying all background people need to learn how to do acting, but I think any actor should know the fundamentals of being backstage or being behind the scenes of film and TV because you get a more appreciation for the people that help create the work that you're a part of. Like yes, you're acting these things, but there's a lot more that goes on in theater or film or movies than the acting. And I find that sometimes it doesn't, they don't get enough credit. So knowing Having that knowledge of what's going on, the other people that have accomplished and contributed to the show, it makes it just as successful as someone acting in a show. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode with Elizabeth.