ARTIST TALK | 7 questions for Joanna Turland
- gastlchristiane
- Oct 27
- 4 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Joanna Turland and Christiane Gastl talk about the artists new series "Faithful familiars".
Your recent shift toward drawings and other works on paper suggests a recalibration of scale and intimacy. What catalysed this transition?
I finished another body of work this year that was already quite a departure from my previous work but was still my usual size and scale. to keep myself engaged and making, I wanted to give myself a chance to do something wholly different, and let my hand be more playful by making smaller works and drawings, something I haven’t done before! I have always drawn alongside painting to generate ideas, but I’ve never had to think of drawings as final pieces or how they might function together as a set. I also wanted to test new ideas and be playful. Drawing feels somewhat freer and more fluid, and a chance for me to try a new medium of gouache.
Could you articulate the central themes of the new series? I am especially interested in recurring and also new motifs.
Faithful Familiars continues my ongoing exploration of the self, the magical, and the surreal. We see the familiar motifs from my previous works such as owls, donkeys, and toads, which I have come to call my ‘faithful familiars’. They appear on their own volition and I try not to overthink their arrival, they act as little messengers who inhabit a simultaneously domestic and imaginary ground. New symbols introduced in this series, including the violin, seahorse, snake, and goose, expand this language, creating fresh points of encounter for the viewer while maintaining the esoteric, symbolic resonance that runs throughout my work. Each motif functions less as a fixed symbol and more as an invitation to engage with imagination and perception in the same way that the visual language of Alchemy and tarot does.
What surprised you while making this series, and how did it shape the final pieces?
How difficult it is to scale down! I have been working large for years and thought I could do the same thing smaller. It does not work like that. I wanted more fluidity and gestural mark making, but I initially felt constrained by the small format. At first, I worked on a big table in my studio, but I quickly realised I needed to mimic my oil painting set up, put the work on the wall, be able to stand back, work on several pieces at once, and engage my whole body, because that is how I make work. Once I restored this ritual the frustration eased. The series took longer to come to fruition than I anticipated, but I am glad we gave it the time it needed to gestate. I am very pleased with the result, though it was harder than I expected.
What inspires you and what topics do you care about?
This year I have been deeply engaged with the intersection between art and magic. These are two important aspects of my life and I have come to see how interconnected they are. Within that I am visually inspired by the imagery of the tarot and alchemy, their rich visual language resonates with the library of symbols that surfaces in my own work. This year has been eye opening in understanding how these influences have shaped me and why the work looks the way it does. I am learning alongside everyone else, and that has been a really enjoyable process.
What is your working process like, a day in your studio?
This year I moved into a new studio ( in the same complex as my last) on Muspole Street in Norwich, UK. It’s a wonderful cluster of self contained artist studios, and I managed to get an upgrade, the nicest one in the building, I think. It’s beautiful, with large south facing windows and a view of the cathedral. I have fallen in love with the space, it has reinvigorated my practice and made me feel even more inspired. My day is spent moving from work to work, I need many things on the go at once and can never finish something in isolation. I feel the works need to be able to interact together in order to stay cohesive. I also spend a lot of time on my chaise longue. It serves as my chosen spot for reading, contemplating and the occasional nap.
How does this series connect to, or break from, your earlier work?
This series is closely connected to my earlier paintings in its lexicon of imagery but represents a departure in scale and intimacy. While my previous paintings envelop the viewer in a mythic, theatrical space, these works on paper bring that same energy inward, allowing the magic to be encountered in a quieter, more personal way. I was relieved to see that, once the drawings reached completion, they still said what I wanted them to. I would like to continue making works on paper alongside my practice, however I am still primarily an oil painter, and there's a certain joy that comes with working on a large scale that I'm not ready to let go of yet, so I see the drawings as an adjacent and ongoing strand.
What do you hope viewers notice first when they see the drawings?
It’s interesting to consider how viewers will engage purely online rather than in person. That was in the back of my mind as I worked, though I am not sure how much it influenced the pieces. Even so, I hope the first impression is one of playfulness and curiosity. I like giving the viewer a gateway to engage with the work and my world as I see it, full of uncanny, surreal and intangibleness that might otherwise pass them by.
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