[LAUIL601] Visiting Lecturer: Peony Gent

• Document how you're feeling in the situations you're in. Make poems.
• My Illustrations can be described as sketchy, loose quality. Authentic.
• I am currently in residency at the house of illustration
• I describe myself as an illustrator, artist, poet living in London
• I have a varied practice
• I always felt embarrassed that I never focused on one thing but now it works in my favour
• I focus on human nature and mundane moments
• Your work doesn't have to be in one medium to be cohesive
• I am the current illustrator in residence at the house of illustration
• I studied at Edinburgh arts and I'm at the RCA for an MA
• Observation and the art of looking
• Sketchbooks, no pressure place, trying out different things. People in the street. Experiment with colour in sketchbook
• I enjoy writing in my sketchbook and poetry
• You don't have to go somewhere to bring place to observational drawings. Court drawings. Every day situations. Life drawings. Ignore style and ignore staticnesss.
• Not caring about my style let me create something organic
• I set rules for myself
• Comics as catharsis
• My first comic was called Earth about a family friends who had passed away.
• I felt like I had something to say. Proud to share with others.
• I made lots of my own self published books. I've made 20 now.
• I made a comic last year about someone else who had passed away comprised of a much looser drawings
• It always starts with the writing. I have a basic plan. Draw over and again. The energy is in the lines
•  I scan the iterations and photoshop the best ones
• Anders Nilsen, Existential Dreads. That process of battling and figuring things out. Conversations with himself and his mental health
• A bad tutorial at the RCA prompted me to make a comic
• "Poetry transforms what can be seen or sensed into what can not be forgotten"
• The act of writing or drawing. Transforming art and poetry
• Taking the drawing, delicacy of line
• I like to record notes on my phone
• Combining text and image. Words reflect the images
• Changing the form of a book
• Having something that transforms into something else
• Risograph process. Each pack is unique
• Setsuka - duo make interesting books that are experimental
• Aidan Koch. Vague narrative in her work. Can feel an emotion is happening in the abstracted drawing

The author as a - reporter, record keeper, storyteller, voyeur 

• Telling the truth. It is the responsibility of reflection. Being aware of how other people are depicted.
• Impactful conversation. Emotional conversation
• I remember a conversation with a gentleman on a bench in London and I write down everything. I made it into a book. I didn't add anything and only used his words
• "To be truthful you don't need to be realistic" - Simon Moreton 
• Inspiring me to draw rather than pack it in. I still have things to say.
• I wanted to make work that can exist in the new world 
• Installations but putting into a space instead
• Report and make work as much as you want, everything you do comes from you. As you change why shouldn't the work change?
• Memory. Thinking through the act of making
• Accessibility in illustration. "Taking me home"
• House of illustration. 6 months working, 6 months exhibiting 
• Set a very vague brief about what I saw around king's cross 
• I started recording and taking photos, collecting objects, encapsulation of a place 
• Created drawings where I just enjoyed drawing
• Don't set yourself for failure
• Led myself around by chance
• Poetry poster series
• Bits of writing repurposed
• Reader can project what they want
• Am I still the author by repurposing? A facilitator?
• I like creating art out of what I find and what people say
• Unfinished comic. Continuing to make. Documentation of conversation. Man playing piano in London he travels from Nottingham.
• Questions
• when I stopped caring is when I became more confident and self assured
• Illustration of writing are both equally important to me. One should do something different from the other and tell something different otherwise it's just decorative.
• I like the sense of  immediacy in illustration and getting it done as a documentation 
• My early work was clean, my newest stuff is textured. Lots of smudges. Like a Xerox machine
• Sense of the hand being present.
• Emotion and memories – how to work through? Is it difficult and affecting? Make half of it and then do the rest when I've had distance. It can be harmful or hard to go through. I put it away.
• Feel it even if it's not in a clear way. Subject image is interpreted in different ways.