Sketchbook Sunday with TOAF & BAL: Rebecca Moss Guyver

Rebecca Moss Guyver is an American artist living in Suffolk, United Kingdom. As a painter and printmaker, who also incorporates pastels and collage into her practice, her depictions of still lifes and her surroundings turn everyday objects into ephemeral dances of light, color, and form. Along with her personal work, Guyver brings her passion for art into communal creative endeavors, through exchanges of postal art and a virtual drawing group. You can view more of her artworks on her website and see her ongoing projects on her Instagram. 

In the description of your Volume 14 sketchbook, “The Colour of Objects,” you describe the process of arranging the found objects in your pastel still lifes and the incorporation of book pages to create a kind of collage. When did you first begin combining text with image in this way? Are there any objects that re-appear in your larger pieces or in your sketchbooks? 

In the early 2000s, I made my first altered book. I was working in schools as an artist and making journals with children, teachers, and parents. These journals were handmade books that we used to think about the world around us. From these workshops I went on to do a master’s in education and made a visual journal to think in, which was part of my final thesis. One theory I followed was that thinking and learning worked better when text and imagery were combined. Anecdotally, this seemed true. It was certainly more enjoyable, and teachers often commented that everyone could succeed, and their work was often more ‘authentic’. Teaching children has always affected my own work. I could never teach without doing first and that doing might take me in a new direction.

My degree was in painting and drawing from Stanford, but I was also given an honorary degree in English since I spent as much time in the English department as I had in the art department. So, I guess words and images were intertwined, for me, from the beginning.

As far as my objects, I have a ridiculous selection which I have found at charity shops and car boot sales. Yes, I often reuse them. It’s about the color, the shape, the story, the pattern. Oftentimes, a small drawing that works will lead to a larger piece, but usually something will change. I work from what I see in the first instance but will also move things around physically, or in my head, to make things work. 

What role do sketchbooks play in your daily art practice? 

I always have sketchbooks on-the-go. I began making altered sketchbooks when I stopped teaching so much and I use these (often thematic) books at least once a week. I have plenty of them. I have bought the same book a few times because I like the title or the cover or I want to configure it differently and see what happens. But I don’t exclusively alter books to draw in. I use something called ‘Pink Pigs,’ which is a sketchbook you can buy here and I make my own sketchbooks. I have a wire binder and sometimes book bind them. Drawing leads to everything I do.

At the moment I have a few altered sketchbooks that I am working in. One is called “Nature Rambles”; In lockdown, I have been drawing in it in our garden which has a pond, a field, flowers, and trees. I have a French easel that I have turned into a table and a traveling pastel kit that I carry on my back. It is making me look hard and find interesting things to say about a space I know well. I learned this trick when I was in Kenya in the Peace Corps (in my twenties) because of the snakes. I wouldn’t venture too far to draw but did it every day at lunchtime, in the middle of my teaching day. It isn’t often a linear thing. 

Sometimes I get really excited about a drawing and will use it to do another kind of altered book which I call an ‘opened book.’ I glue the pages down and open the book out. The original drawing might become a starting point for either a two-page spread or a drawing on each page.  Sometimes I take a prepared opened book out with me and work directly from what I see.  These are usually landscapes or still lifes. 

How did you get into art-making? 

My mother is an artist and, when I was young, I liked to do what she did. I have set up studios on tables since I was a young person. She had a set of pastels from her college days and she gave them to me when I was thirteen and taking a life drawing class. I had a teenage boyfriend at the time who was an artist and he used pastels and then so did I. I have used them ever since. I love the direct color, the marks, the immediacy. Lately, I have been using egg tempera.  Using pure pigment is enthralling, it dries quickly and the possibilities with layers and marks seems endless! Actually, I love most media and I guess each does something others can’t, quite. 

Can you describe your current workspace? How do your surroundings help you stay motivated or get through creative blocks? 

We built a strawbale studio about ten years ago. It turned out to be larger than I imagined but I have filled it without any effort. I have workstations so I am able to move between ideas and media. I have all of my vases, figurines and favorite objects out and around me. I have a big cupboard of fabric and boxes of stuff that I have saved just because they might be useful. It’s a bit like a grown-up primary school art room 

Who or where do you go to look for inspiration?

I am a mail artist and sometimes I make mail art every day, sometimes I am delinquent. I receive a lot too. The playfulness of responding quickly to an idea or image keeps me endlessly entertained and ‘stimulated.’ Sometimes, I even research things that I would never have thought about and that leads me to something else. I repurpose things to send out as mail art. I have thousands of life drawings and one project I call “Life X-cavations” where I turn life drawings into landscapes and make those into books. I send these out to my mail art network. I have collected art books over the years and they inspire me. Jennifer Bartlett’s book, In the Garden, taught me to use what I have around me as inspiration, no matter what. Since I can’t go and see art in London now, I rely on what’s here most but I use Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, too. I have a drawer of old magazines and have many old books that I might use to alter that are chock full of ideas. I visit my ‘retired’ journals to remember how I was thinking in another time.

How have present circumstances impacted your creativity? Do you have any advice for those struggling to make art right now? 

I haven’t found it too hard to keep working during the lockdown. I listen to the radio. There is mostly something on in the background, even podcasts on my headphones. I have found that I want to make peace in my work these days. When I set up a still life, I seem to be trying to make the most beautiful relationships between my objects that I can and I choose color relationships that make me happy. I’m not surprised. These days, my space is often chaotic.  At the moment I am sharing it with 2 twenty-somethings who are working from home. It is natural to want peace at the moment.

When I was in the Peace Corps, they taught us not to write home with dire news. They said it would seem worse than it really was weeks after it had happened to people reading it there.  I cultivated the practice of reflecting back a world that was more exciting, more beautiful, funnier. My life was pretty mundane and, on the surface, it might have seemed like there would be nothing to say. Because I wrote a few letters every evening by lantern light, I needed to find a world to share that would entertain my correspondents. I made lists of funny, different things I wanted to share. I drew pictures on my letters and envelopes and exaggerated ers to tell of an even more exciting world than I was actually inhabiting.  I ‘flipped’ my life and in doing that I was happier. That’s my advice. Make the world you are living in work for you, even in the time of coronavirus!