Hard Hats Required On Site!

“I have been in my current studio for a bit more than a year now, I say a studio; it’s actually a condemned, derelict flat. A friend of mine offered it to me on a temporary basis just before I was evicted from my old studio. He had inherited the 2-bed basement flat in a really bad state years ago, having had no money to do the place up it started to rot. When I first moved in, after about an hour of working, my clothes would be heavy and cold from the damp, dust from the crumbling brickwork would mix with my paint, the drains where blocked and there was a rodent problem.

The studio is only a few minutes walk for my home in St Leonards, and it feels like it’s an extension of it, I’m able to spend several uninterrupted days a week in there painting. In time it’s become a really good working space, I’m not a clean painter and use a lot of messy methods in making my work this has been partially inspired by my studio itself. Sometimes the paintings surface resembles the decaying floors and wall in my studio. As its lower ground it gets little light also very little traffic noise, it’s like a burrow where I can whack up my stereo and not be too concerned with the devastation that might ensue around me.”

Rob Sample talking exclusively to Mel Deare about his rather unique studio space. Click HERE to see more of his work.