Saffron Cunningham is an artist that focuses on the in-between, choosing to paint run down spaces that have succumbed to the foliage around them, creating a sort-of purgatory. The paintings draw you in with the sheer darkness which is enveloped by the cascading light coming from outside. Her work is intentionally made to make you feel as though you are the only person left to walk the Earth, carefully exploring each unfamiliar environment to uncover what it has become without our intervention. Her paintings allow you to exist on an entirely different plane of existence alone, silencing all external sounds around and allowing you to ruminate in that silence. Saffron is currently completing her Masters in Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art, where these themes continue and grow to completely encompass the space, widening this world of decay and regrowth.

Hi Saffron, thanks for chatting with us! What is your earliest memory of being interested in art?
My earliest memory of being interested in art is actually my earliest memory overall, funnily enough. I distinctly remember being at nursery and creating multiple sculptures out of the cardboard from toilet rolls, I made so much that they had to put them all in a black bin bag for me to take home! I don’t remember exactly what I made that day, it was probably cars or something similar but I do remember the shock on my Dad’s face when I came running towards him with that bag when he came to pick me up at the end of the day.

Who or what inspires you? How do you interact with your inspirations?
The majority of my inspiration comes from video games. My interests in art and gaming mesh together quite well as I got into both through YouTube so there was already a connection there before furthering my practice into what it is now. These inspirations came come in many forms, the most obvious one is through The Last of Us which inspires my practice in an aesthetic sense, but also having those underlying narratives playing in the back of my mind is something I hope comes through my paintings.

Tell us about your chosen medium(s), why do you enjoy working with it/them?
For the majority of my paintings, I use gouache which started as a convenience as I got into painting as it is easy to use and convenient for travelling as I have one that comes in a case already. But over time I grew to love the way it made my paintings look. I have to be intentional if I want to add in specific lighting or else the gouache will reactivate and smear which adds an extra challenge which I love. For my larger paintings, I tend to use acrylic, again for convenience, as acrylic covers a lot better than gouache. I layer gouache over this, which adds a luminosity to my larger paintings. Another key part of my practice is keeping a consistent sketchbook. Ever since I began to seriously focus in on art when I was ten I’ve kept a sketchbook and I’m currently on number forty one. This way I get to play around with different ideas and trains of thought in one place. My sketchbooks have become artworks in their own right as I sketch, paint, and write in them making them a collection of a certain period of time in my life.

How do you overcome art block?
Pushing through it feels like an obvious answer but for me that is genuinely what I do. Taking a step back from what you normally create in your practice and drawing/painting something for fun is always what I do. It takes the seriousness out of making and gives opportunity to keep working on art pieces outside of a specific ‘theme’. That, or taking a step away from everything, sometimes the art block is purely just needing a break for a small period of time.

How do you think studying at an institution shaped you as an artist?
I think more critically about my art practice now, before I was making whatever I wanted and when, which hasn’t totally changed but now but my practice as a whole has more of a focus now because of studying. Studying at art school also gave me a confidence that I never had before, I would never have thought to paint to the scale that I do now. Whereas now I know that if I want to create one of my ideas to a certain scale, I have the confidence to complete it and work around any troubles that I come across.

What emotions or reactions do you hope viewers experience when they see your artwork?
People tend to feel uneasy when looking at my paintings, which was never my intention in the beginning. I think because the spaces that my paintings depict are so familiar, viewers tend to feel on edge and overwhelmed in a good and a bad way at the same time. I’ve always found the environments within my paintings quite comforting so I guess in a way I hope that others also feel that way.

Find out more about Saffron’s work on Instagram, and see her work in Starter Pack, our annual graduate showcase, running at Six Foot Gallery until Thursday the 27th of August.