As a picture grows, so does its ego, but I refuse to be rushed. I start and finish in a series of short bursts with long gaps to keep my judgements fresh and ruthless. Nowadays, I prefer the confines of my studio. I rarely use brushes, I prefer rags, fingers and fingernails. I paint through most of the night, then go for an early swim. Next day I often end up wiping out what I’ve done the night before. It’s tough but that picture is going to be out there long after I am gone.

In the 1980s things were very different. I was crazily busy with commissions and projects starting to come in and I was still teaching part-time. I seemed to be juggling several subjects, each of them stretching me in a different way: Moscow, Naples, the Channel Tunnel, landmark architecture of the 1930s. It was exciting, I was learning a lot and gaining fresh skills. With this versatility came a new confidence. I felt I could draw in almost any situation, and I got used to attracting spectators when I sat with my drawing board on a busy street.

‘What’s your next project? Where are you off to?’, people would ask. Not only was I doing work that I really enjoyed, my friends seemed to find it entertaining. Perhaps I could do this forever? Find an interesting place, become immersed, make frequent visits, draw and paint on the spot then create larger images from memory back in the studio and finally organise an exhibition.

I found that a strong subject will often take charge and tell me what it wants: the graceful, linear rhythms of the emerging Tsing Ma bridge in Hong Kong insisted I dilute my oil paint until it became semi-transparent. After returning to Moscow to observe life behind the scenes at the Russian Circus the dark tones of oil pastel conjured that potent, stifling atmosphere. Likewise, attacking the paper with greasy sticks of pure colour trapped the midnight heat of Naples. The Seville Feria’s controlled horsemanship demanded the matt tones of gouache. 

Deauville, on the Normandy Coast, called for liquid breezy watercolours, which I always carried on my travels. I love their freshness and spontaneity, the way they seem to say ‘I’ll work even better for you if you don’t think too hard’. Working instinctively is fun, and sitting in one spot for two or three hours has got to be the very best way to really BE in a place, sensing its daily rhythms and tasting its character, and I could recount dozens of stories about what went on around me while I worked.

It was wonderful but I knew it couldn’t last. I hadn’t the capacity to reinvent myself every time I moved to a new location, and I was beginning to sense that although the subjects were very different the process was the same. The quantity of work involved in each project was enormous but I had been fired up with enthusiasm so that had never been a problem.

By the mid-1990s I knew it was time for a change. I had come to realise that to fully explore a subject it is essential to remove surface layers in order to get at what lies hidden beneath. For years I had been rushing around, too busy to think about digging deeper. But what if I stayed in one place, fixated on a single theme, and just kept working at it? If I dug down far enough I might find something rare, a precious seam that would feed me creatively for years. Surely that was a risk worth taking?

I needed to refine my ideas, beginning with subjects familiar to me, but hungry to explore new ones. The images that started to appear were more stylised and minimal. What I didn’t anticipate was quite how difficult this process of distillation was going to be. But I persevered and I’m still climbing that path. My craving for simplicity only increases with age. I want my pictures to emerge above some imaginary tree line into sparser territory, where there is less to see but the clarity is so much greater.

Drawing and painting as a child, I was thrilled to find I was discovering a new language, and that feeling still lives with me now. But I never dreamt it would open so many doors or give me such a long and exciting career. 

Pivotal Moments

From a chaotic mass of events and experiences throughout my working life, there are a few which jump out at me as pivotal:

Stumbling across a book at 14. These were drawings by Graham Sutherland. Inspired by nature but not naturalistic. Figurative one moment, abstract the next, brimming with sinister energy. I had no idea why this made sense to me, but I knew it was the world I wanted to be in.

Escaping from college to watch sheep-shearing nearby on the Sussex Downs. Here was a performance with its own special choreography I could watch over and over again. It sowed the seeds for a way of working I would use for the rest of my life: observe and draw till you know your subject inside out, then work from memory and imagination.

Borrowing my mum‘s car to drive up the M6 to Cumbria during the second year of my degree. I grew up in the cosy leafy Home Counties and this stark elemental landscape was alien to me. But that’s what made it so liberating and inspiring… Suddenly my head was bursting with new ideas and possibilities.

Teaching etching and lithography in Belfast during the Troubles. This led to more part-time work in art schools within reach of London, enabling me to spend at least 3 days a week in my studio from my mid-20s. Looking back, it made all the difference.

Drawing on the spot at Greenham Common and discovering to my amazement nobody viewed me with any suspicion or even asked for an explanation as to why I was there! Greenham was my stepping stone to Moscow where I drew on the streets for two months. It changed my life.

Opening my pocket-size sketchbook back in London to find a couple of tiny rushed scribbles of two Russian soldiers on a Metro escalator and Muscovites huddled on an icy bridge trying to catch a few fish for their tea using sticks and string. I had never before worked entirely from memory, but both images in my mind’s eye were so vivid I somehow pulled it off. In the exhibition that followed those two pictures attracted the most attention.

Swaying about on the skeletal Tsing Ma Bridge 600 feet above Hong Kong Harbour, I realised I could interpret it as a giant stringed instrument. At last I had found my way in to this vast and complex subject. The sense of relief was enormous! 

Much of what I have written here recalls my years as a student in the 1970s. If you wonder why, it’s because what mattered to me then still matters to me now. 50 years ago I was being teased about my eccentric obsessions. I would retaliate, saying my obsessions meant everything to me, they helped me find subjects and pointed out ways to express them. They still do today.

Education

1955 born Kent

1973-7 Croydon and Brighton Colleges of Art

1977-9 Postgraduate student Goldsmiths & Camberwell Schools of Art

1979-96 Part-time lecturer at art schools across the UK

Solo Exhibitions

1985 Greenham Winter – daily life at the Greenham Common peace camps / London and Sheffield

1986-7 Site Visits / The Building Centre, London
Work in Progress – the new Lloyd’s Building & Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster / Barbican Centre, London

1987-8 Moskvoretsky – paintings and drawings from inner-city Moscow / Morley Gallery, London; Bath International Festival; National Theatre, London; Edinburgh Festival; Bloomsbury Gallery, UCL;  Gulbenkian Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

1989 Naples – Leighton House, London

1991 A Celebration of 30s Architecture / National Theatre; The Building Centre

1993 Recent Paintings – Deauville, Russian Circus, Seville Feria / Leighton House

1994 Paintings commissioned by Winchester Health Authority – touring exhibition

1996 Paintings from Venice – Leighton House

1997 Tsing Ma Bridge / The Barbican Centre

2008 Tabitha Salmon Retrospective / Cork Street, London

Residences, Commissions and Special Projects

1981-5 Three series of paintings commissioned by Westminster Hospital, Westminster Children’s Hospital and Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton

1984-5 Numerous visits for work on location in the women’s peace camps at Greenham Common US air base

1985  As winner of their Young Artist Award, commissioned by Bovis Construction in their Centenary year, to work on two landmark building sites in the City of London and Westminster.

1985 Artist in Residence, Southwark Arts Festival

1986 Invited to paint on location in Moscow by the Mayor of Moskvoretsky District (twinned with London Borough of Lambeth)

1986-7 Two series of paintings commissioned by industrial paper mills: Townsend Hook Ltd and Kimberley-Clark Limited

1987 Paintings commissioned by Nusteel Structures Limited

1987/9 Exhibition of 50 pictures, A Celebration of 30s Architecture, Commissioned by The Building Centre, London

1988 Officially invited to travel and work in Georgia, USSR

1988-90 Invited by Eurotunnel to paint on location in the UK and France during the excavation of the Channel Tunnel

1990 Painting commissions for British Nuclear Forum, First Leisure plc, RIBA Publications

1990 Invited to paint in the vineyards of Napa Valley, California, as part of a delegation from Georgia, USSR

1991/94 Artist in Residence, Winchester Health Authority

1995-6 Series of paintings of the construction of the Tsing Ma Bridge, Hong Kong, commissioned by Trafalgar House (Cleveland Structural Engineering)

Selected Group Exhibitions

1979 Stowells Trophy / Royal Academy
Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool
Orchard Gallery, Londonderry

1981 Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth

1982 Hayward Annual / Hayward Gallery, London

1983 Greenwich Theatre Gallery, London

1984-93 Leicester Exhibition for Schools x 5

1985 Artists against Apartheid / Royal Festival Hall, London

1988 British Artist as Traveller / Brighton Polytechnic

1990 Warwick Arts Trust

1992 Lasers Exhibition / Science Museum, London

1994 25th Anniversary Exhibition / Morley Gallery

1994-5 Centuryscape / Science Museum (five Channel Tunnel pictures from their Pictorial Collection)

Tabitha Salmon’s clients have included

The Science Museum, London
Bovis
Lloyd’s Insurance
The Savoy Hotel
Eurotunnel
Westminster Hospital
First Leisure
Kimberly-Clark
British Nuclear Forum
Institution of Civil Engineers
Winchester Health Authority
Allied Lyons
Art Insurance
The Building Centre
Association of Metropolitan Authorities
Queen Mary’s Hospital
Trafalgar House
Cleveland Structural Engineering