PAINTER. LONDON. UNITED KINGDOM.
My name is Pie Herring and I live and work in West London. A teacher once said to me, “make your next piece of work your best piece of work.” In recent years it has become a bit of mantra in my studio. I believe what he was saying to me was, be daring, don’t play it safe and come away from every piece you create with a new understandings of making work as this will enable you to grow.
When I was younger, most of my free time was spent in a shed at home caking the walls in spray paint and experimenting on canvas with any materials I could find. I went on to university to study Painting where I was awarded the chance to exhibit in various shows. After a year of working in that same shed post university I was able to move to London and set up shop in a beautiful studio in West London, where I remain today.
I have always been drawn to the figure and therefore my work has consistently taken on a representational quality. Conscious of photography’s true-to-life aesthetic I am consistently seeking ways to represent human form in an exclusively painterly and contemporary way. I am completely taken in by artists who are working in a similar fashion, such as Flora Yukhnovich, Francois Bard and Jenny Saville, to name a few.
My studio is a huge part of my identity, you can learn everything you need to about me just by taking a visit. It has always been a safe and calming space which provides a place for me to escape. I am lucky enough to have a diverse range of artists working in the same building as me which I am grateful for as it provides invaluable opportunities for creative collaboration and conversation.
I have to mention one of my most memorable studios. This came about when I spent some time away from my London base and travelled to Kenya to produce a body of work for a recent exhibition. To enable flexibility and with the help of others, I was able to move locations with two large sheets of plywood. By propping these against any avaliable wall and attaching unstretched canvas to them, I was able to create paintings on a relatively large scale and roll them up in tubes for transportation. It was a fantastic experience which informed my work a lot.