Extract from On Arriving at the Studio by Vivien Blackett

My understanding of the public expectation of what goes on in a studio is from six months' experience as Artist-in-Residence at the National Gallery, London. On Fridays the studio was open to the public and there were a number of regular visitors who used to look in during their lunch-break to view my progress. They would regard me with suspicion when I told them I had been working on a painting all week, when to them it looked pretty much the same as it had done on their previous visit. My work involves a repeated cycle of applying paint and wiping it off: and they didn't actually see this happening.

My very first visitor had travelled from Surrey especially to ask me a question about one of her own paintings: She had a problem with one eye on the portrait she was painting? I waited for her to unwrap the work in question but then realised that she hadn't actaully brought it with her. I was a little nonplused but suggested she do as I do, when a one small section of a painting isn't working: scrub it all off and paint the whole thing again. She didn't stay long after this.

The consequence of painting in a public space was that I learned to trust myself more. It was initially disconcerting when, having just started work on a painting, someone told me it looked 'great', and equally when they asked what my next move would be on a painting I'd just finished.

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