Hazel Dooney's Enamel Studio

Hazel Dooney was kind enough to send us images of her art studio space and fill us in a bit on her process of art making. Read Below:


My main studio these days (one of two), actually belongs to the painter who works as my assistant but over the past few months, every part of it has been overtaken with my commissioned enamel works, ranging in size from 1.5 sq metres to over 3 sq. metres. It is a large, well ventilated space – essential when working with a toxic, carcinogenic paint – in a dense, industrialised suburb about an hour's drive west of the centre of Sydney.



I spend up to 12 hours a day here, working with Jim on up to four paintings at a time. It's slow, painstaking, precise labour aimed at achieving a high gloss, flawless surface on each work, removing any trace of human – let alone artistic - intervention, an art in itself and demanding a high level of technique.



The contrast between the studio and its environs and my home, on a cliff-top right above the Pacific Ocean, about 20 miles north of Sydney, couldn't be more stark. And yet, somehow, I need both. My art is driven by the stress and clutter of the urban and it does my imagination good to take a break from the endless, blue ocean horizon and the half-moon of orange sand that fringes it below my home. The saline air flushes my nostrils of acetone and paint but it also, sometimes, flushes the intensity of my drive – and I'm not altogether sure that's a good thing.

Thanks Hazel!