My Cricklewood Studio: Drawing Everyday Life in North London

There was a small fridge in my studio in Cricklewood, North London. I drew it more than once.

At the time, I was living in a shared house, but my room was almost a little world of its own. I had my studio there, my own bathroom, a small kitchenette and this fridge. In London, where space was expensive and privacy hard to find, that felt like a luxury. Really, it gave me autonomy.

I lived in Cricklewood for seven years, and those years shaped how I draw.

I spent an enormous amount of time in that room. I worked there, lived there, cooked there and gradually started drawing what surrounded me: the bed, the windows, the houses opposite, pieces of furniture, objects left on tables, clothes, corners of the room — and the little kitchenette with its fridge.

The studio itself became part of the work.

I didn't need to invent a scene. It was already there.

In this coloured-pencil drawing, I looked down into the open fridge from a high, tilted viewpoint. The pale blue of the door, the fruit, the wine bottle and the few objects inside introduce small areas of colour into an otherwise very simple domestic scene.

The wine bottle on top of the fridge had its own story. I met Amandine in London when we were working at the same place. She was French, and before leaving London for Canada, while clearing out her flat, she gave me a bottle of French wine. I drank the wine, of course, but the empty bottle stayed on top of my fridge and eventually found its way into the drawing. I still associate it with Amandine. Looking at it now, I realise how easily an ordinary object can become connected to a person, a place and a particular moment in your life.

The fridge and the kitchenette became some of my favourite subjects from that studio. There was nothing particularly remarkable about them. They were simply part of what I saw and used every day.

But that was increasingly what interested me.

Drawing these ordinary objects was a way of paying attention.

When you live with something for years, you stop really looking at it. You know its shape without thinking, what normally ends up sitting on top of it, what surrounds it and how you move around it every day. Making drawings of these familiar surroundings forced me to notice them again.

When I look at this work now, I remember that room in North London. London could be demanding and exhausting, but inside that small space I had created something that was mine.

And I could work.

Many of the subjects that still interest me today — domestic interiors, ordinary objects, personal spaces and the traces of everyday life — became clearer to me during those years in Cricklewood.

At the time, I probably wasn't thinking about any of this very consciously. I was simply drawing the place where I lived.

Years later, I realise that I was also drawing a period of my life.

The Fridge, Cricklewood
Coloured pencil on paper
100 × 70 cm

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