#StreetArt : 'Chalk1'

The Saatchi gallery's #SaatchiTakeover theme on Instagram this week was to create #StreetArt at home, indoors or in your garden - so I did! I've been doing the #SaatchiTakeover themes for a while now, so when I saw the new theme on Monday I immediately started imagining how I'd like to respond to it. It was a beautiful, baking hot, dry day, (one of the best so far this year) so I decided on doing my street art outdoors in my garden on one of my various walls. At first I thought of using my outdoor paints, but while sipping my coffee I suddenly remembered my first street art in my garden at home where I grew up. My mother was teaching me hopscotch and for that you need to draw boxes and write numbers in chalk on paving in order to play the game. So I had white chalk sticks and a pack of chunky multicoloured ones which I used to write the numbers and decorate the boxes. From there I decorated more of the pathway and my mother encouraged me in this and soon I had extended my chalk drawings all the way down the pathway and onto the outhouse wall. When the rain washed it away, my mother would ask me to replace them with more chalk drawing murals and paving designs. Unfortunately, I no longer have my multicoloured chalks, but I do still have two packets of white chalk so that was my restricted colour! Being used to using my chalk on rough, bumpy outdoor surfaces I naturally gravitated towards a rough brick wall in my present garden. The subject matter occurred to me earlier in August (3rd) when the British Museum asked on their Instagram post - "how would you illustrate your favourite song?" I already had a sketchbook in which I had drawn quite a few sketches responding to pop songs so I revisited this sketchbook for inspiration and this is the result, drawn freehand! 

It's located in a rustic area of my garden which makes it more evocative and atmospheric. Irrespective of whether one is in that area of the garden or if looking out of the window at it, it retains that unsettling, eerie vibe. I didn't give the artwork, or the photo of it, a specific title (or say which song inspired me) because I want people to let their imagination run wild and make themselves part of the artwork by entering into the imaginary with me. The white chalk, I think, enhances this by freeing the imagination, which is a lucky accident because I was restricted to white anyway! A title would limit the viewer's interpretations and emotional response thereby ruining the viewer's personal experience of this street artwork.  

So far the rain hasn't washed it away because it's in a sheltered area and that particular wall has a little roof over it. But when the weather does eventually wash it away, my mother has already put her order in for a new chalk street artwork to replace it. It need not be the identical chalk drawing, it can be taken from something else in my 2008 sketchbook which I used for this 'Chalk1' or anything else that occurs to me! Indeed, if she had her way, all the indoor walls would be covered in my murals / street artworks as well as the outdoor walls! But so far I have stuck to regular DIY painting!                    

#libakauckyartist #streetart