Black Cat Café, 1994, oil on canvas, (61X76cm)

Mary Fedden describes how she uses random objects for her painting compositions in oil or gouache.

Although now over 90, Mary Fedden continues to paint with all the vigour and individuality that has made her one of Britain's finest and best-loved contemporary artists.

Her solo exhibition in the Friends Room at the Royal Academy last year was both impressive and a sell-out.

She works principally in oils and gouache, often finding inspiration in quite ordinary objects, but using these in a very personal and exciting way as the basis from which to develop a painting.

"Each of my paintings is a mixture of things that I'm looking at, and my thoughts and imagination," she says.

Mary works in her studio most days. "The studio is across the garden from the house, just a few steps away," she explains. "I try to start work each morning at about 9 o'clock and I continue to paint until lunchtime. After lunch I usually have a rest for half an hour or so, and then I go back into the studio again and perhaps work through until suppertime at 7 o'clock.

"I never paint away from the studio. Occasionally I draw in my garden; in fact I spend a lot of time in the garden. It overlooks the river Thames, which is always changing and in its way is quite inspirational. And of course I used to travel extensively, particularly in France and Tuscany, and as a result there are many sketchbooks full of ideas. These remain incredibly valuable to me. If I haven't a subject that I especially want to paint, I look through some of my sketchbooks to find an idea that excites me."

Mary has lived at her beautiful house beside the Thames since 1949, when she moved there with her late husband, the artist Julian Trevelyan. The house formerly belonged to the sculptor Eric Kennington, and it is thought that it was in the studio he built that he and his close friend TE Lawrence printed the first edition of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Mary's early paintings were what she describes as "rather heavy still lifes and flower paintings". And while in time there were influences from a number of artists, including Matisse and Braque, it was really Julian Trevelyan who inspired the most dramatic change in the direction of her work.

Starting points

"As well as coming from my sketchbooks, or from particular objects that interest me, ideas might come from talking to people or looking at things," Mary says, "and other ideas for paintings come to me in bed. Also, sometimes people put things through my letterbox if they think I might be interested in them.

"I use objects a lot, but I never set up a conventional still-life composition and work from that. Instead I have things around me in the studio, perhaps beside me on a chair, and I add other objects as I develop the idea. I like the juxtapositioning of unrelated elements.

"Sometimes people comment that a certain object doesn't look a bit like the real thing. I'm glad it doesn't! I prefer to use my imagination and change things around — I am not after a representational image. Generally I start by placing a shape tentatively in the composition, but if it doesn't take form and begin to interest me, then I drop it and move on to something else."

The wealth of ideas and information in Mary's numerous sketchbooks comes from her past travels to many varied locations in Africa, India and the Middle East, as well as on the Continent and to different parts of Britain.

She has often stayed with friends near Arezzo in Tuscany, for example, in Scotland with the artist Anthea Craigmyle, and in Yorkshire with her stepson, who is a sheep farmer.

The Sussex landscape, around Lewes, Alfriston and Seaford, also features in many paintings. She often includes a landscape as the backdrop in her still-life pictures, as in Ben's Box, above, and Charlotte's Jug, below.

"I feel that if I work away from the landscape (using ideas from my sketchbooks) I can, so to speak, tell lies about it," she says. "I don't feel restricted by what I am looking at; I can use my imagination more, with regard to both shapes and colours."

The sketchbook drawings are mostly made with pencil or with a pen, and always in black and white. Mary doesn't find colour reference any help at all. While each tonal sketch conveys the basis of an idea, it allows her to introduce whatever colours she likes for the studio painting: whatever colours will suit the mood and impact she has in mind. Invariably her paintings have a dominant colour or set of colours and
are fairly limited regarding the colour palette.

The particular qualities of oil paint, its versatility and handling characteristics, suit her work perfectly. She also paints in gouache, generally on a thick rag paper using Winsor & Newton Designers' Gouache colours.

"I like the way in which you can vary gouache from wet, transparent washes to thicker, more intense opaque colour," she says. "And, if necessary, you can paint one colour over another. Traditional watercolour is not strong enough for the way I like to work.

"In the past a lot of my pictures included collage, although lately I haven't used this approach very much. I enjoyed working with unexpected materials such as a piece of a painting that I didn't much like, or a section from one of Julian's etching proofs that he had rejected. I would tear out shapes and incorporate them by sticking them down and linking them together with gouache. I liked the way that one thing could become something quite different — for example, a New York skyscraper could become a curtain in a still life."

Themes and variations

Mary always used to stretch and prime her own canvases, but now she finds it easier to buy ready-prepared ones, although she agrees that these are not nearly as interesting to work on. She paints directly onto the white canvas, starting with some broad brushstrokes to sketch in the composition.

Initially she works with very liquid paint containing quite a lot of turpentine. The advantage of this is twofold: with thin paint it is easier to adjust things; additionally, thin colours dry quickly and this allows her to continue working on the painting the next day. Whenever possible she likes to focus on one painting and see it through to a conclusion before starting another.

When the composition looks right and seems to work, Mary begins to develop the idea with thicker paint, perhaps mixing the olours with a little turpentine but never using linseed oil.

At the start she has in mind the colour key that she is going to use: whether, for example, it is going to be a very dark picture, or essentially a red, blue or perhaps grey one, and she sets out her palette accordingly. As she paints, she moves from one area to another, all the while considering how each shape relates to the next and to the whole design.

"In a still life I often keep the objects in the foreground separate," she explains, "as I do not like things overlapping. And I may well change my thoughts about a painting as it progresses, so that sometimes I replace objects or alter the composition. I like to keep my pictures fairly loosely painted. I usually know when they are finished, although sometimes I wish I had left a painting at an earlier stage.

"If I get hooked on an idea I will develop it further in other paintings — not just repainting it, of course, but creating a different interpretation, and sometimes in a different medium. But whether it's a theme, something I have seen, a subject from a sketchbook, or perhaps a shell or pot that I have picked up in the house, I am never short of ideas. I never go into the studio wondering what I am going to paint!"

Taken from The Artist, May 2008 issue.