"Graphite," (2012). Ballpoint pen on paper. 44 x 53.5 cm.
It’s hard not to marvel at the array of media 33-year-old artist Boo Saville has tackled—and mastered—in her short career so far, from her breathtakingly detailed biro and ballpoint pen drawings of decaying faces and rotting bodies for which she first won acclaim, to a Rembrandt dissection painstakingly copied in bleach. There’s also her intricate etchings and haunting ink studies and her most recent body of abstract work: beautifully toned, Rothko-esque pieces in oil paint and ballpoint pen on paper, which featured in her London show, _The World, The Flesh and The Devil_, last September. Here, we speak to Saville about her multi-dimensional practice and the force that drives her to create…
_What are you working on at the moment?_
I’m working toward a charity project with the Drawing Room, a gallery in London. I’m doing a biro drawing of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who committed suicide over the Will and Kate scandal… And I’m working on a couple of little drawings in my studio.
_Is there a big difference in experience for you between drawing and working in oil paint?_
Yes. Especially with these big abstract paintings, you’re just working completely instinctively. I could probably talk with you on the phone whilst making a drawing, or watch a film in the background, but when I’m painting I can’t be disturbed. I’m completely, 100 percent concentrating on it. Making paintings about nothingness, which is what they were in a way, is incredibly hard because what you’re trying to describe is something you can’t describe.
_Do you think that honesty in art is important? Do you strive for a sort of truth in your work?_
I think all artists try to do something true, whatever that means to them. I’d definitely say that over the last couple of years my work has become a lot more emotional, more about how I feel about things and react to things…
When I started, I did a lot of images of dead bodies but I wasn’t engaging with them. I didn’t know who these people were; they were completely anonymous. I liked the fact that they were almost abstract shapes, and I liked the arrangement of them. Then, I got so bombarded with images that I decided to do abstract work. And now, approaching images again, I think, ‘What are the images which have affected me, or which have stuck in my head?’ Because I feel that by drawing them, or engaging with them for a long period of time, I can sort of readdress them as an artist.
"Nurse," (2013). Ballpoint pen on paper. 21 x 29.7 cm.
_You’ve talked about creating art in a machine-like way. Could you tell me a bit more about that?_
When I was making figurative drawings, before I did the show, I would make a drawing by working from left to right like a photocopier. So I would start on the left-hand side and try to copy it—without trying to do it in any particular style or exist in the work myself—to see how people would react to it.
_So, with the drawings would you say you were being scientifically truthful but with the abstract works you were being more truthful to yourself?_
I’d say so, yes. But when I was doing the abstract stuff I was still really obsessed with the surfaces being very even. I wanted them to be totally solid and I was constantly fighting with the fact that I am human.
_What would you say is the main driving force behind what you do?_
Probably the fact that I know I’m going to die one day. I think that’s the same for everybody probably, it’s why you do everything—have kids, make art. But for me that’s what it boils down to: trying to explore myself and my brain and my abilities and stuff, explore stuff as much as I can before I shuffle off the earth.
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Written by Daisy Woodward
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