In the Medway Towns, there seems to be something in the water when it comes to art. If you’ve walked down one of our high streets lately, chances are you’ve passed an artist or two. And if they were sledging along on a fridge, it was very probably Daisy Parris.
At just seventeen, Daisy has already attracted commissions from musician Rachel Fuller (partner of The Who’s Pete Townshend) and local artist, musician and twisted soul, Lupen Crook. With an exhibition opening on 5th February featuring her own work and that of local photographer, Phil Dillon, as well as college work to be getting on with, it’s small wonder that Daisy sleeps, breathes and dreams art.
‘It feels good that I seem to have constant motivation to create art most of the time. Everyone could do it, a five year old could, but I don’t think everyone has the belief in themselves or in their art to share it with people, and to be judged. Or passion. And I don’t think everyone is as dependant on art as those artists who commit their lives to it. I think I’m just in a constant art coma.’
It is perhaps not surprising that Daisy has followed such an artistic path. Several members of her family are creative. She cites her sister as being a particular influence. ‘She always used to bring home her drawings, paintings and sketchbooks. This was when she was doing her GCSEs, I was probably eleven years old, and I remember thinking how amazing they were because she did what she wanted. It got me knowing that I didn’t want to create accurate, neat, gentle paintings or drawings. I wanted messy, textured ones. I wanted really fat sketchbooks full of cool stuff.’
Daisy’s paintings are certainly messy and textured, but there is an underlying tenderness in the vibrant, chaotic swirls of her portraits, borne out of an affection for those who have influenced her in life and in her work. ‘Without everyone I would be nothing. Without all the things they leave behind; the fridges, the photographs, the inspiration, I wouldn’t have created some of my best, or actually any, of my art.’
‘There are a lot of artists, photographers and musicians around Medway that I really love, and that’s kind of what the exhibition is about for me. A thank you to show how much I appreciate the creative input of these people.’
Sledging on a fridge
So about this fridge… ‘I chose a project for my A Levels entitled “Art From Recycled Objects”, and at the very start of it, I jokily said that I’m going to paint a fridge, just because it seemed like an extravagant thing to do. During the project that idea went out of my head, but I just started painting on anything I could find; bits of wood, hubcaps, whatever. The things I painted on kept getting bigger and bigger.’
As the project neared its end, Daisy still lacked that final piece until one evening, out with friends in the snow, she came across an abandoned fridge. ‘My friends and I sledged back on it to my house in the snow. It was just weird how what I had imagined in the beginning actually happened. That never happens with art projects.’
Daisy has been painting for about four years now, much of it at school. It was at an exhibition of pupils’ artwork at Fort Pitt Grammar School that Phil Dillon first encountered Daisy’s work “in the flesh”, and it provided the catalyst for a joint exhibition.
‘I’d seen him around at gigs taking photos and come across his work on Flickr and the same goes for him and seeing my work. Phil really liked it and approached me asking to do this exhibition with him and here we are. And I can’t thank him enough.’
Daisy is currently studying a foundation course at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA). ‘I have two different styles of painting – one for educational purposes, in which I am willing to manipulate, experiment and analyse whatever I do, and one outside of education, because it gets to a point where I just need to paint, and so I just paint. It’s an escape because I don’t have to analyse or develop it, I just know it. The past year and a half I have used to explore paint constantly to a point where I think I have developed my own style and finally found myself as an artist.’
‘My preferred medium was acrylic paint up until a week ago when I started using oil paints. I had used them before about two years ago and I was the worst painter ever with them because I couldn’t understand how to use the paint. I loathed them and planned never to use them again. But I had a quick workshop and it just clicked. The whole thing feels more natural and liberating. I have done three paintings for the exhibition in acrylics, the rest are going to be in oils. It’s a bold change but it feels right.’
Painting of My Grandmother by Daisy Parris
As someone who can barely paint her own nails without making a pig’s ear of it, I’m amazed when Daisy tells me that, when all is going well, her portraits take somewhere between half an hour and two hours to paint. ‘I love it when that happens. A couple for the exhibition have taken six or seven hours, which doesn’t actually seem that long, but for me, that is a long time. I don’t think I think about anything when I paint, not even painting. It’s just like this unconscious moment where I’m having the best, or sometimes the worst, time of my life. Sometimes I feel like I’m dancing with paint.’
Hearing Daisy talk about paint is like eavesdropping on the ups and downs of a relationship. She works to understand it, gives her time and patience to nurture it, to gaze at it, and endows the paint with a life of its own. ‘When a piece is complete I can just sit back, look at it, know it’s complete and enjoy looking at it. When a painting isn’t going so well I will work on it each night a little bit at a time.’
‘I will go to bed thinking about how I need to improve it, will wake up doing the same and will think about that all day until I start reworking it. I just want to look back and be amazed and proud of all that I have created and know that I’ve survived it and that I can do so much more.’
When I asked her if art sometimes takes over her life, a foolish question in hindsight, she replied, ‘Yes, but it’s not a sacrifice, it is my life. If there were a circumstance that meant I couldn’t create it, then I would rather not live. It sounds like I’m a recluse, that I’m really hard on myself and don’t have a social life. That is partially the case but that’s because my art is so important to me. It is the best thing that ever happened to me and I am having the best time of my life.’
Medway sons
Daisy’s cynicism-free perspective and her desire to relate to people is evident in her paintings. Her influences share a figurative focus in their work too, an interest in the human condition rather than form alone. She cites Medway sons, Billy Childish and Lupen Crook, as her major local influences, and from further afield, the works of Francoise Nielly, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Peyton.
While I recognise flashes of these artists in Daisy’s work, the overwhelming impression I’m left with is one of almost devotional intensity to her subjects, like she really is making friends with the angels. Relationships are remembered and influences commemorated, with all her artistic growth and idiosyncrasies exposed in the saturated colours and tactile energy that her work exudes.
Her orbit has, so far, been limited as far as I can see, but I can’t wait to see what Daisy makes of the rest of the world. Wherever she goes, I hope she never loses her humanist outlook or her freshness, because that’s what makes her art such a pleasure to behold.
The upcoming exhibition, Two Sides of the Same Coin, is a Medway Eyes project and opens at The Brook Theatre Gallery, Chatham on Saturday 5th February and runs until Saturday 26th February. Entry is free. Opening hours are Monday – Saturday 10am – 9pm.
There is a private view on Friday 4th February at 6.30-8pm, followed by a free gig for all at The Nag’s Head, Rochester featuring Lupen Crook, Wheels and special guest, Dave Read. Music from 8.30pm.
Images (c) Daisy Parris
