Q&A: An Interview with Nell Mitchell

Your notebooks seem like an important part of your practice. Could you talk about how you use them, and whether you consider them to be works in themselves or part of a larger process?

My sketchbooks are integral to my practice and there is no one without the other. I started using sketchbooks regularly whilst studying in Glasgow, about 2019, and I see them as an extension of myself at this point.

After therapy I’ll draw in a cafe whilst trying to maintain some kind of calm, or in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep I’ll grab my sketchbook and draw how it feels. If I’m feeling super anxious I’ll write down how I’m feeling, like in a diary, and it helps to clear my head. 

My sketchbooks offer me a sense of structure and form when life can feel quite the opposite. I’ve often toyed with the question of whether or not they are works in themselves, but as long as they’re informing my practice and providing me with the catharthism they always have then I’m good with that.

Are you ritualistic or chaotic when it comes to creating art and maintaining a studio practice?

Oh it’s a mess - although it’s my mess. I know where everything is and belongs and there is some vague kind of order to it. It all feels quite essential to the process too, and I have a tendency to enter hyper focus mode whilst in the studio. 

The environment that I work in, much like my living space, is eerily resemblant of my brain. So I’m quite private and sensitive about it in a weird way, as it feels exposing to have your brain spilled all over a room for other people to look at and walk around and judge. Surprising perhaps due to the anything but private approach I have to sharing intimate details about my life in my work, but there you go.