Interview
Interview transcribed as ‘intelligent verbatim’. Names of third-party individuals have been removed from this transcript. A redaction is marked by ‘…’.
Participant prefix key:
IV:		Interviewer		
IE: 		Interviewee


Transcript begins 00:00

IV:	So this is the 22nd March 2022 and I am here for the Sensing Spaces of Healthcare project with Sian Tucker who has kindly agreed to talk to me today. So firstly Sian can you just introduce yourself for the benefit of - ?	

IE:		Well I’m Sian Tucker and I live in Wales now but for a very long time I lived in London and that’s where I went to college, so that’s how I ended up going there, and stayed there for I don’t know, 20 years I think probably before we moved to Wales where I was making things.

IV:		So you say making things, how would you have defined your work?

IE:		Well I did textile design, that’s what I did, a BA and an MA, and then I thought oh, I don’t know how I’m going to get a job doing this, so I just rented a studio space. So rather than painting on paper, I just painted directly onto cloth, onto the cloth which therefore then you could make things out of, but I just really liked the physicalness of making big pieces with paint really rather than little things. Obviously there weren’t computers then so you didn’t do anything digitally, it was all very much hands-on.

IV:		Great, so when were you - what dates roughly, if you remember, were you doing this work?

IE:		Well I left the RCA in 1982 and we moved here to west Wales in 2005, so I was making all the time then.

IV:		So what drew you to the work that I particularly wanted to talk to you about today which is the kind of textiles and artworks in hospital or healthcare settings. Do you remember how that came about?

IE:		It came from, well you might remember his name, I can't remember his name, who was doing the Chelsea and Westminster? I don’t know how he found me actually, I don’t know how he found me, but he just kind of got in touch with me and said he’s doing the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, an incredible big brand new build hospital, and asked me if I’d like to get involved. Well of course I said, yeah, I’m really interested. I have done commissions before but nothing on that kind of level, and certainly not in a hospital.

IV:		Do you know how they came across you in your work?

IE:		I can't remember, I honestly can't remember, he must have seen something somewhere. I mean I had done quite a lot of work with Habitat and Conran and I had done Conran shop windows once and the Conran carrier bag, so I don’t know if any of that kind of filters through, I don’t really know.

IV:		So at Chelsea and Westminster you did a very famous piece in the hospital arts world.

IE:		Yes, it is now. I was kind of, because all those other properly famous artists were doing things in atriums, I felt like a complete unknown, but it’s great now, you know, that it’s lasted so long and it’s still there and loved after all this time.

IV:		Yeah, it’s the photo in all the hospital arts books, it’s always Sian Tucker’s Falling Leaves.

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		Was that the only piece you did at Chelsea and Westminster?

IE:		No, they had six wall hangings as well, they were like three metre by a metre and a half wall hangings, but they were painted on wool and I think with all that light on them they were going to not last really in that environment.

IV:		It’s interesting because you say a lot of your work was painted textiles, but obviously Falling Leaves is not?

IE:		No, it’s not, no. The moquette, I think I’ve still got that somewhere, it was only about one and a half feet high, a little mobile that I made out of cut out paper on threads of cotton, yeah. 

IV:		So I don’t know how much of this you remember, this is from 1993, but can you talk me through what you remember of the process of making that? How you came to the design you did? What your inspiration was?

IE:		I can't remember how I ended up with a mobile, but I’ve always loved mobiles and they took me to see the space, maybe they were interested firstly in the hangings and then thought oh, what about this? And so we looked at the space and it was a complete building site, you had to wear a hard hat and all the rest of it, and it was truly enormous, I don’t know why I wasn’t completely overwhelmed and daunted by it? So I did the little model and they said yeah, that would be great, and we talked about materials and luckily my partner, he’s very good at three dimensional stuff, so we worked together actually on it. I did the design and got the commission and he actually made it happen and designed the structure of it, the mechanisms of it, how it would get hung. It’s like on yachting stainless steel with little swivels that you get on boats for sails and stuff, so that’s how they all swivel around like they do. It was made of a material called, I can't remember what it’s called, but it’s like a plastic that we could sort of bend and then it was all painted by hand but then I know now that they got it re-done because that wasn’t faring so well, so it’s made out of, what’s it made out of now? Do you know?    

IV:		I’m not sure, I wish I could help you.

IE:		Well it’s like a thin metal, a very lightweight metal that they just sprayed with the colour.

IV:		So it’s not all the original?

IE:		No, it’s not all the original, they made it again, but they said they couldn’t get hold of me because I’d moved and so they got it remade but interestingly, when we went to the – I can’t remember now, how many years it had been, 25 years after it had been up or something and they brought a book out, and the colours aren’t exactly the same as the ones that I did in the first place because I think they’d taken the colours from when it had faded.

IV:		Oh that’s so interesting.

IE:		Yeah, so the colours that it originally was were much brighter -

IV:		Right.

IE:		- than it is now. Interesting.

IV:		Do you have any photos of the original colours?

IE:		Yes.

IV:		I’d love to see those or to get copies of those if you have them?

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		It’ll be interesting to compare.

IE:		I mean it’s only a subtle thing that we noticed, it’s just a bit like that.

IV:		I mean it’s interesting that that’s the, when they’ve made something new though, they’ve made it on the faded colours?

IE:		Yeah, well that’s what they had, isn't it?

IV:		Yeah.

IE:	Yeah, but I mean I think, I grew up in the countryside and my mother is from Wales by the sea, which is where we live now, and so it’s always been a big part of me, so now I think nature since the pandemic is a great big kind of like talked about thing, for me it was very much a big strong influence in my life anyway. I’m happiest outside and I think it’s funny how naturally I wanted to kind of create and bring some of that outside into a hospital in that big atrium, like when you’re looking up under a tree and you see all the leaves shimmering from underneath or looking out of a window at a tree, that’s the kind of thing that I think I wanted to instinctively make for a hospital, because it was such a kind of building, you know, with lots of glass and rooms and no views of outside.

IV:		Yeah, so being in central London that was part of your thinking for why the nature was so important, was it? 

IE:		Well that’s what I was doing anyway in my work, so it always had flowers and leaves and colour, but in quite a more abstract way, not in a totally literal way, but yeah, that’s what I felt at the time was really important, and it is.

IV:		You’ve talked a bit about the colours being important and obviously important enough for you to recognise the difference - the subtle difference - when they changed and the design of it being in motion.

IE:		Yes.

IV:		Can you talk just a bit more about, do you remember what colours you chose and why? And why the motion was important to you?

IE:		Well the thing about mobiles is that they are moving, isn't it? And that’s what’s so lovely and mesmerising about it, just that very gentle, gentle movement. You know, if you’re looking out of a window you’re not going to necessarily notice it’s spinning, it’s not spinning around, but the next time you look out you might just notice it a little bit differently. Colour, all my work has mostly been about colour anyway, to me that’s what it is, is colour, and then you just have slightly different shapes that are next to each other, but colour does have an effect on us, it does change our moods, doesn’t it, depending on what colour you’re looking at? And of course, it does have a sense on our wellbeing.

IV:		Do you remember the design of the wall hangings? So I don’t have a picture of those, were they also colourful?

IE:		Yeah, they were all really colourful as well. They were kind of like probably, they would have a bit of a story about, so there would be a sense of water in them or sky and there might have been some fish in them, very quite naïve, you know, I’m not really a painter, I just like pattern and shapes. Then there would have been some sort of like Russo type flowers coming in as well.

IV:		So as an artist were you given sort of free rein? You weren’t necessarily working with staff and patients to ask what they wanted, it was more from your artistic perspective? Or did you do that kind of work?

IE:		It was work that I did and I pretty much did what I wanted to do in the Chelsea and Westminster. It’s only later on when I went to the other hospitals, well on the Isle of Wight, that I had to have consultations with the staff.

IV:		Interesting, and I want to talk to you a bit more about that in a minute. Yeah, so after Chelsea and Westminster then, that was your first hospital work, and obviously I know about the Isle of Wight as well, which was, wait a minute though, now I’m getting my dates muddled up.

IE:		Have I got it the wrong way around?

IV:		I’m thinking, the Isle of Wight I think opened in 1990?

IE:		So I did that first then, did I?

IV:		No, I mean it doesn’t matter but yeah, I was just thinking I think, if I’ve got my dates right?

IE:		I’m sure you have.

IV:		The Isle of Wight actually opened in 1991 but it was finished in 1990.

IE:		So I did the Isle of Wight first and that’s how I got the Chelsea and Westminster job, probably.

IV:		That must be it.

IE:		Thank you. I told you I should have done some research.

IV:		No, I mean it’s fine, it’s interesting to know how you remember it. To be honest, I shouldn’t be telling you, I should just be letting you tell me what you remember, not correcting you, but I suddenly just looked at my notes and thought wait a minute, yeah. So yeah, the Isle of Wight job, what do you remember about that then?

IE:		I don’t remember how I got that one and I can't remember whether it was the cubicle curtains first or the floor in the children’s outpatients.

IV:		Oh I didn’t know you did the floor, okay. Well again, for the benefit of other people who are coming to this cold, can you just talk us through the different things that you did on that site?

IE:		So I did a design for a waiting area outside of out-patients, I can't remember exactly where, but it’s a floor in a waiting room in the children’s section of the hospital and so that was so that they could --, because children were always kind of on the floor, well not always on the floor but they don’t sit still in there, so I thought well it would be nice to have something in the floor, so it was like a rug on the floor but it was in lino patterned. So that was a bit like one of my wall hangings in that it had some flowers and fish and it was a bit like a pool, a rock pool or a pond, that was set in the floor. Have you got a picture of that?

IV:		No, I haven’t got that.

IE:		Well I’ve got a picture.

IV:		I’ll see if I can find it.

IE:		Yeah, I do have a picture of that somewhere.

IV:		That would be great if I could have that, yeah.

IE:		Yeah, and then the cubicle curtains were for the hospital and I did them in three different colourways so that it would be in the elderly patients, the general wards and I can't remember where the other one was, have you seen all the colourways?

IV:	I have, again, I’d need to do a bit more research. I think in the archive at the moment it just says floor A, floor B, so I could look up what kind of wards they were.

IE:		Yeah, so that was with consultation of the hospital staff. I did one and then I did samples of different colourways and they went on the walls in some corridor and then people could make comments on them and then I adjusted to the comments and the comments were I had to calm it down a bit because of people not feeling very well after they come around after anaesthetic and also think about the colours that elderly people might prefer more muted and more pastel colours. So that was interesting, that was an interesting experience.

IV:		It is interesting, also because I would say that I would think those curtains are quite bright, so I would be interested to see what they looked like before.

IE:		Oh yeah, I’ve probably got the drawings somewhere in a sketch book, yeah, and even the original piece of cloth. I’m not very good at throwing things away, so they’re all in boxes somewhere.

IV:		That’s what every historian wants to hear.

IE:		Yeah, I’ve got loads of cloth, hopefully it’s not moth eaten. I do check it from time to time.

IV:		It would be really interesting to see how the colour evolved through that consultation process and the pattern.

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		Do you remember whether you picked, I’m also very interested in colour, so I’m interested as to whether you picked particular colours to go with particular wards or what kind of colour schemes you chose for different people, if you remember?

IE:		I remember, I think it’s the general ward which was mostly blues, all different shades of blue, and I think there might only even be four colours in each curtain because of the four screens for screen printing, I think, and I was really aware that the Isle of Wight was surrounded by sea, it was an island, and the sea was very, very much part of the Isle of Wight’s, well they love it, don’t they? They love the sea and sailing. So one of them was blues and also to reflect the skies and the sea. Then I think the only one that went a bit off beam for me was the elderly patient’s ward where that was kind of much more kind of like coffee and cream colour. I think the other one was greens, shades of green.

IV:		Fantastic. I’m looking at the pictures right now, would you like to see them?

IE:		Yeah, no, I’d love to see them.

IV:		Let’s have a look if I can share. So that’s one.

IE:		Oh yeah.

IV:		This is in the Wellcome Library where they have the physical curtains.

IE:		Yeah, see there’s the sea.

IV:		So this wave here, that’s the sea inspiration?

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		Yeah, feel free to talk through anything that this prompts?

IE:		It looks a bit beach-hutty as well but I don’t think they have beach huts, and sails, that definitely looks like sails.

IV:		So yeah, there’s the reference if you ever want to dig them out. So this says see, for example, level A.

IE:		Yeah, so I think the one, the other one was more blue, I think that’s the greenie one and then the other one was more kind of coffee and cream.

IV:		So the other one I have is this one, level B. Don’t mind me, I was photographing marks just because I’m interested in how things change over time.

IE:		Yeah, you see that one is more blue, isn't it?

IV:		That one is more blue, that’s the full length. So the shapes are different here as well I think. I haven’t got them all folded out, are they the same pattern then?

IE:		Yes, it’s the same pattern, yeah, it’s the same pattern, just different colourways.

IV:		I’ve just got it folded slightly differently here, I don’t think I had enough space to fold out the whole curtain but I should try next time. Oh yes, there we go.

IE:		Yeah, yeah.

IV:		Then that’s level C.

IE:		Oh yeah, that’s the, yeah, see, look, it is actually brighter than I thought it was, peachy colour and pink.

IV:		Yes, that’s what I thought, I think of these as being quite vibrant, so I’d be interested to see what -

IE:		Yeah, in my own memory I really, really toned it down. It would have been really much brighter, like that peachy colour would have been red probably.

IV:		Right.

IE:		Yeah, well it is quite bright, isn't it? No coffee and cream.

IV:		No, I can't see any coffee and cream.

IE:		No.

IV:		There is a little maybe.

IE:		Yes, interesting.

IV:		So yeah, this is kind of sea inspired then?

IE:		Yes, yeah.

IV:		Oh that one says x-ray.

IE:		Out-patients and x-ray, hmm.

IV:		Then I’ve got one more picture, this is all I have at the moment which might just be of interest to you to see which is from a British Medical Journal article actually from 1990 which is in situ.

IE:		Wow, amazing. It goes with the blanket and the walls.

IV:		That’s what I was just thinking. So I don’t know if you remember what order that came in? Did they design the room around your curtains? Or did you design the curtains around the room?

IE:		I can't remember, I think they would have given me paint colours of the corridors and floors and wall colour but not the blankets, yeah, they would have done.

IV:		It’s all very well coordinated.

IE:		Yeah, I also pitched for something else at the Isle of Wight in an entrance lobby, another mobile.

IV:		Oh.

IE:		Yeah, which was kind of like a different kind of leaf shape, you know, just like a basic leaf shape, like a willow leaf, which could have been the hull of a boat or a canoe type thing, or floating like that -

IV:		Oh yes.

IE:		- because it didn’t have the height but it could have gone like that in the roof. I got down to the last two and I didn’t get that one.

IV:		So there was a tender or commissioning process that you had to compete against other artists for all of this work?

IE:		Yes, yeah. Then just before we left to come to Wales I got down to the last three I think up in Manchester in a hospital up there and that would have been an amazing commission, but I didn’t get that one either in the end, sadly.

IV:		It’ll be interesting to see the kind of hospital design that never happened as well, the artworks that were down to the last few in these competitions I think.

IE:		Yeah, and it was quite tricky because it was in a cancer, obviously in hospitals you get a lot of very, very poorly people and things have to be cleaned and sanitised, so actually having a lot of wood or a lot of materials that you’d like to use, you couldn’t use because it had to be cleaned, so therefore having to think about how you would get stuff on the walls or in the floor, well you know.

IV:		Do you remember how you tackled that with curtains?

IE:		No, because I didn’t have any choice in that, they commissioned that, whatever at the time you could make curtains out of.

IV:		So you just gave them the pattern?

IE:		The design, yeah.

IV:		The design, and they got it made?

IE:		Yes.

IV:		I see.

IE:		Yeah, I didn’t have anything to do with that.

IV:		I think what’s quite interesting about those curtains is that they don’t feel like a kind of traditional ward curtain, you know, they’re not printed on that sort of thin wipe down fabric, they are -

IE:		Yeah, cloth.

IV:		- yeah, they are cloth and they feel much closer to the kind of curtain you would have in a house than what you might imagine as a hospital cubicle. So I was wondering if you had anything to do with that?

IE:		No, I didn’t, no, it was just the design.

IV:		So in theory they could have taken your design and printed it onto a shower curtain kind of material, couldn’t they, that was very wipe down? So it feels like that kind of cloth was part of the vision.

IE:		Yeah, I don’t know how long they lasted though, those curtains, maybe for that reason, that they were on the wrong fabric.

IV:		They still seem in pretty good condition, I must say, having been to see them in the library, so it’s nice that they’ve kept them.

IE:		Yeah, no, it’s really nice, maybe they were the spares?

IV:		They do look like they’ve been used though, you saw in my photograph I’ve got kind of close-ups of where they might have got a bit marked, just because I think it’s interesting, a bit like you were saying about the mobile, to see how things change if they’ve been up for ten years or how they might get damaged or dirty or just kind of thinking about hospitals in use, not just the sort of perfect photographs of finished projects. So it looked to me like they’d been up but they could have just been in storage.

IE:		Yeah, no, surely they would have washed them.

IV:		Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		So were there any other hospital jobs that you remember doing? Or are those the two main ones?

IE:		Those are the two main ones, yeah, and the one that didn’t happen. I did quite a lot of work for it because it was about wayfinding.

IV:		Oh yeah, interesting.

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		That’s very colour based as well, isn't it, wayfinding? 

IE:		Yeah, really interesting, I really enjoyed all the research for that.

IV:		So how did you find doing, I suppose as someone who obviously works outside of healthcare settings as an artist and then did some, well two quite famous or big sites with big kind of arts programmes in the early 90s, what did you find that working in healthcare settings did for you as an artist in terms of how you had to work differently or think differently? Or did you find that it was just a case of bringing the things you were doing outside into a new setting?

IE:		I think it was a real privilege being asked to do those – to work on those with those new hospitals and I think at the time it was quite an early thing that they started doing and realising the benefit and I do remember a bit of a hoo-ha that people would complain that why are you wasting money on putting these things in the hospital when you should be concentrating on medical stuff? So there was quite a big argument as to why these things were important for people’s wellbeing when they were in those spaces, which was really interesting, and I’m sure that’s grown and grown from then. So that was interesting and I’ve never really spent hardly any time in hospital, either visiting or being in one, so that was a very interesting process. I did really like listening to the comments from the staff when working on the curtain in particular. I don’t remember having that same interaction at Chelsea and Westminster though.

IV:		Yeah, that’s interesting, so it might have just been a different process?

IE:		Yeah, and I don’t remember going through pitching for it really. I must have an incredible memory blocker in my head. Yeah, sorry.

IV:		No, it’s fine, it might just genuinely have been a different process, but yeah, it would be interesting to know what the brief was, I suppose, that you pitched for St Mary’s. Again, if that’s buried in your documents anywhere or if you remember? I guess I’m interested to know how much freedom you were given as an artist to come in and say this is my vision versus them saying this is what we want in our hospital, what can you do first?

IE:		I think probably, you know, when they choose an artist in the first place to come in or you’re going through the process, they’ll have looked at what you’ve done and what your work is like, so they’re going to have made a little judgement about, well we like this kind of thing, it’s then just trying to mould that into what works best really. I’m open to a lot of comments but at the same time you can't listen to absolutely everybody’s, kind of like there’s too many cooks, kind of thing, isn't there, sometimes?

IV:		Yeah. So before you did the Isle of Wight job, what kind of work were you doing? What kind of textiles work were you doing? You mentioned that you’d done some window displays and things like that.

IE:		Yeah, and just selling designs for getting reproduced into scarves or other kind of cloth that gets made into things, and I did shows like the crafts fairs and stuff like that selling one off stuff and also alongside then in the mid 80s I started doing children’s book illustration. So that took over quite a lot actually, doing the children’s book illustration, over the textiles, so I was doing the two alongside each other.

IV:		So then the Isle of Wight job is a combination of children’s flooring and textile design, that obviously fitted you very well?

IE:		Yeah, because the children’s book illustration was very early years, like for board books and bath books, just very early learning, so it was all pre-school and it was all quite simple shapes and bright colours and identification of things. Have you seen those?

IV:		What, the ones that you did? No, again, I’ll have to either do some digging or maybe eventually come to you and dig through your attic, if you’ve got all this stuff in a box!

IE:		Yeah, they did actually really well, they did really well.

IV:		Oh, I’ll look them up, or if you can send me a link if there are any online, I’d love to see them. It’s interesting as well to see how you take that through to your kind of hospital and healthcare arts as well.

IE:		Hmm, yeah.

IV:		I’m trying to remember what you said about the flooring as well, so would you say that your children’s book illustrations were a big influence on that rug, that lino rug, you said fish?

IE:		No, it all kind of like blended in really, because the floor was, I don’t know, three meters by a meter and a half and then the book is obviously like a little board book.

IV:		I see, yes.

IE:		So you might have one fish or two fish and then fish written underneath it.

IV:		Right, yes, I see what you mean.

IE:		So, yes.

IV:		So since you’ve moved to Wales you haven’t done any more kind of healthcare work or this kind of stuff?

IE:		No, I haven’t, no, when we moved here it was a whole different chapter of our lives really and we moved into hospitality.

IV:		But still with a strong interest in nature, that seems to thread through your whole career?

IE:		Definitely, yeah, and I suppose what I do now is I’ve had some blankets made, so I commission those and do all the colourways for that and socks and other products for our use.

IV:		You said you went back for the 25 years at Chelsea and Westminster?

IE:		Yes, that was amazing.

IV:		How did it feel to see it again?

IE:		Oh, actually I was quite impressed because I haven’t seen it for such a long time and it is quite big, and it was still there and it was doing what I wanted it to do. Yeah, it was brilliant, I was really pleased, very pleased, it was really nice.

IV:		It’s a sign of success that it’s still there, isn't it, a legacy?

IE:		Yeah.

IV:		And they bothered to replace bits.

IE:		Yeah, they made a whole new thing, yeah, which is great and so it should be there for a very long time which is good.

IV:	That was most of what I wanted to talk to you about. I am still very interested in colour just because you’ve talked about colour being important to you and those kind of shades like the peach and the blue and the green and the very vibrant colours in the Falling Leaves. For you, was it at the time about colour in general? I know you’ve talked a bit about blue representing the sea, but for you are there particular colours that do particular things? I wonder if you could just talk me through your process of how you choose colour as it’s very important to you.

IE:		Oh, that’s so hard, that’s such a hard question. I mean looking back at all my work I’ve got a very definite kind of palette that I always like, it is bright but it’s not kind of like what I would say is kind of gaudy and yeah, I think the Falling Leaves and possibly the Line of Floor represent my choices better rather than the cubicle curtains. I always found it really hard to be limited to just four colours, when I do the other work it’s got a lot of colours in it, maybe I’m happier with eight or more, but that’s just shades of a green or a blue. I don’t really like black, I don’t really like outlining everything in black, I find it quite hard. For example, when you are painting from life, like me looking at you now, there isn't a lot of black there, it’s just all shades of colours, isn't it?

IV:		Yeah.

IE:		I don’t know if I’m making any sense at all but I do like bright colours but not like really acidic colours, so it is much more like looking at a tree or the sea, there’s so many different colours within that blue or what you perceive as green, isn't there?

IV:		Yeah, so you’re sort of interested in like you said about the mobile, what you might see out of a window, which is sort of subtle shades of different colour in the real world.

IE:		Yeah, but then when you’re making something like a mobile, then you do have to have those counterbalance colours, those opposites to make it kind of work, I think.

IV:		It’s just interesting to me, I think, that there’s obviously a lot of shape, like your mobile has a lot of shape, the curtains have a lot of shape, but you naturally talked more about colour, so I was wondering if that’s more important to you? Or whether the two come together for you? 

IE:		Well I think you’re right, the colour is more important and then you’ve obviously got to put the colour onto something. So I do like simple shapes and I think definitely with the mobile, I do love Matisse and was obviously inspired and influenced by his cut outs and they’re the perfect simple shape to represent all those kind of things that I wanted to portray. I’m really not very three dimensional, I do like a flat surface, so that’s about as good as you’re going to get, isn't it? To make them all float.

… 

IV:		You’re very much talking about kind of how something makes you feel when you look at it, but you’re not drawing, for example, from like colour psychology?

IE:		Oh no.

IV:		No.

IE:		Yeah, no.

IV:	It’s interesting to check, isn't it? Because you know, there are some hospital arts where people are saying very much, oh yeah, I know, blue and green are calming colours, red is a stressful colour, they’re very kind of embedded in colour psychology and then some people are much more about feel and what they want to look at and the artistic or aesthetic qualities of colour, and obviously they overlap, but it’s interesting to know where someone is coming from.

IE:		Yeah, that is true.

IV:	I feel I dig a lot into blue, why do people choose blue so often in hospitals, so it was really interesting just thinking about why you did.

IE:	I suppose I’ve always been much more intuitive about doing things, rather than analysing why I’m doing it, so I don’t know, it obviously has caught people’s attention, you know, it fits a brief to a certain extent of what people want without me having to analyse it.

IV:	Yes, sorry, I’m putting you on the spot a bit asking you questions.

IE:	No, no, it’s fine, yeah.

IV:	Is there anything else you want to say, I suppose? Anything I haven’t covered or asked you about that you’d like to share with anyone who comes upon this video?

IE:		No, I do miss it, you know, making those things and hopefully one day I will do it again when I’ve got more time, but we’re still making people feel good.

IV:		Yes, and I think it’s so lovely that you might have only done two big hospital arts projects but they’re very well regarded and well known ones.

IE:		Oh good.

IV:		Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, I’ll just stop the recording now.

[recording stops and re-starts]

IV:		Okay Sian, you were just talking me through your sketch book.

IE:	Yeah, well I’ve got loads of sketch books but this is one I just picked up from there. So this one has got, like when I was talking about those canoe shapes that would be floating on the sea, but these are leaves that you could have and just ideas for water. There’s water there and these just like float, you know, if you were making a mobile and you’d be looking up from below, you’d see them moving like that, like flat discs of coloured Perspex.	

IV:	And this is one from around the time you were doing this work?	

IE:		Yes, so the cut out leaves was in here.

IV:		Oh yeah, that’s a familiar shape.

IE:		Yeah, that’s a very familiar shape. So I’d just be in the book cutting up paper, cutting up magazines, loads of paper, just sticking, just getting my colour palettes, there’s red kind of colour things that way, yeah.

IV:		Oh yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of the natural world in there as well, isn't there? Flowers and the flowers of the colour palettes.

IE:	Oh yeah, that quite flat kind of simple. There’s lots of blinds from like a children’s book kind of thing -	

IV:		Oh yes.

IE:		- and some birds. I don’t know what else I’ve got in here really. Those are kind of like painting flowers, that’s my kind of flowers, you know, when you do quite naive kind of stuff.

IV:		Yes, so is that painting, that’s yours?

IE:		That’s painted, yeah, just painted.

IV:		What kind of paints do you use?

IE:		Gouache.

IV:		Gouache.

IE:		And either paint paper or use pantone coloured paper, I bought a lot of that, it was very expensive then. I mean obviously this is all before computers, when you literally were cutting and pasting everything. I like that physical way of working.

IV:		All your cut outs there in your scrapbooks, do you remember where you would get those from? Just magazines?

IE:		Oh just magazines, yeah, yeah. I’m still a terrible hoarder, I can't even throw away magazines, it’s terrible. In the winter I had a massive clear out and chucked a load of them away, I thought, what are you doing with all of these? But then I still would go through them and tear out pages just in case one day I need them.

IV:		They’ve probably all got like little holes in the pages right, when you throw them out?

IE:		Yeah, exactly.

IV:		Thank you, I’ll just stop again.
       
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