Nobody Panic - Bonus Episode: How to Understand Art with Annie McGrath

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Want to say something more than “I like that” when you look at art? In this BONUS EPISODE Stevie and Tessa talk to artist/comedian/podcaster Annie McGrath about how they can sound more cultured in art galleries, what classicism is and if it’s OK to think Picasso is “a bit too much”. You’ll come out of it feeling very reminiscent of the 16th century (just one of the examples of things you can say to sound clever). Follow Annie McGrath on Twitter: @AnnieMcTweet and Instagram: @mcgrath.annieListen to the Secret Artists Podcast with Annie McGrath: play.acast.com/s/secretartists and follow on Twitter:@secretartpodAnnie's Online Recommendations:Isolation Arts School: https://www.instagram.com/isolationartschool/?hl=enArtists Support Pledge: https://www.instagram.com/artistsupportpledge/?hl=enRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive Productions.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true. Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. Welcome to Nobody Panic with me, Stevie Martin. And me, Tessa Coates. And today, so excited. And today we've also joining us in the isolation studio.

We've got Annie McGrath. Hello, Annie. Hello. I think for having me. Thank you for coming in. Annie is currently on lockdown on a potato farm. So we're very excited that she's here. We wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Terrible Wi-Fi, but lots of potatoes. So good. So we wanted to do an episode about, I don't know if anybody listened, and if you didn't, go back and listen to it. We did over how to understand wine a few, like about a month ago. It feels like 17 years ago, before lockdown. And it was really, really fun.

And then we thought, well, we're in this lockdown situation. Why don't we do a couple of bonus episodes about, like, fun hobbies, like things that you can, like, look out of the ordinary, a little bit niche. And one of the things that we've always, I do not understand is art. Very broad to say that. but like any art art galleries they make me feel like

I can't say anything because I'll say the wrong thing I can't confident me and Tessa went to the affordable art fair I saw you both there didn't I at the private view oh we saw you yes bumped into you at the cloakroom

classic of course it was meant to be just three artists just like browsing looking for art and you bought some art Tessa

that was amazing yes well there was a free bar so once you Sorry, we bought a drink. Sorry, what I bought was a drink. It was a drink, if not art. Well, exactly. As I kept saying to the bartender, as they asked me to leave the free bar,

this is art, I screamed. No, I'd been there about three hours. Even Stevie had been like, this is, I'm out, mate. This is, we've been here alone. This is too long. Annie, you were leaving as we came in the door. So I was really, they started playing this, in and out. In and out, done.

They started playing this country and western music to make people leave, which had the opposite effect on me. I was like, I'm loving it. And then I bought, me and my mum were there, and we bought some art together. It's the sort of thing you browse around, and I think everyone has felt this, and everyone's going, mm, mm, and very, very serious people with, you know, very serious glasses and a cardigan are saying, well, quite at each other. And you, and you, and you don't, and sometimes things look like absolute shit.

And then some things, you know, something, you're like, and that's a lot of money, is it? And then you keep pointing the drunker we got, the more Stevie Kato shouting, like, that's 20,000 pounds across the room. And it was like a small crumpled bit of like wire. I don't think that ever goes away. I've been to quite a lot of art fairs now. And still, I'm like, how much? Okay. So I'm not sure that goes away.

That's good. That is heartening to know. And also the thing as well is like, there's only so many times I can say, I quite like that. I don't know why. I want to be able to say why I like something, you know, like be able to say something so I'd sound like I've seen art before. I'm using the first so I've left my house. Yeah, I think what we're desperate to get from you, Annie, to give up.

To extract from you is to have any of the right language to be able to express ourselves and to have any of the sort of confident, at least one little tiny nugget of confidence. I want one noun, one noun, one noun that we can just. just keep saying. You don't have to think of it just a second. But like just one thing... What about an adjective? That's fine. We'll take it.

We'll take anything. Like, just so when you're in those situations, you aren't just like, oh, I mustn't say anything in case I reveal myself to be an absolute moron, you know? Well, one of the things I think Stevie mentioned before was if you're on a date and you're looking for sort of ways of not sounding stupid in a gallery. Oh, my God. That's what we're desperate for.

I always think less is more. An art cliche. So I always think the people. that sound the most stupid are the people who are just constantly talking. And you're like, you don't know what you're... Everyone sounds stupid in an art gallery, I think. Oh, okay. Good. So a lot of pausing and a lot of like...

Or maybe just like turning it into a question or like making yourself sound like you don't know very much. Like, God, I didn't realize he was working as early as that or something that implies that you didn't know. Immediately. Like you didn't know about the artist. God, I hadn't realized that was the 16th century. then it's like, oh, she may... This is absolutely perfect. I was immediately...

I felt both confident and aroused at the same time. I was like, yes. I was like, I'm going to smash this date. Oh, yeah, okay. That's perfect. And then there's, like, words that are quite vague as well. Yeah, go on. So, um, that make you sound informed without actually saying anything because no one

will question words like, um, evocative. Mm. Because what does that really mean? Gosh, it's a bit derivative. This is good. But then don't you have to say who it's derivative of? Like, that's derivative of the test. I think sometimes you can leave it open.

Who's going to question derivative of whom? Like, then you don't want to be on a date with that person. No. It's a real litmus test. And I suppose then, the less you say, the more they... So if I was with someone, I think the panic is, if I was with someone and they went, and that's very derivative, I'd be like,

I should say who it's derivative of. If you're saying that, then it's a derivative of. If you're saying that, then it's... other person can be like, yes, it reminds me of an early, some artist, and you can be like, that's what I thought. That's the one I was thinking of. You passed the baton back to them. So, it's like, it's like tennis. It's like tennis, but you want them to just hold the ball the whole time. Like, you don't want to have the ball. And before we get too deep into it, I do want to ask you first, what the most adult thing you've done this, this week is. Yeah.

Um, well, Monday morning in lockdown, 9.30 a.m. I made a coffee and walnut cake. That's not the adult thing. That's part of it. But I did, when, you know, when you bake a cake, you have to transfer it from the cake tin to the cooling rack. No. No. Okay, great, that could be my... I'll be absolutely honest. No, I didn't know. It's very difficult to do, and I managed to do it without the help of my mum. And the cake maintained its shape. This is great. Oh, I see what you're talking about. You're talking about the bit that I know as the Great Crumbling.

which is when between oven and plate is on the floor. Yeah, but there's a bit in between, so it doesn't get soggy bottom. You have to put it on a cooling rack, like an oven tray that's cold. Oh, I have no idea. I'd further cake from the tin that it's been in to the cooling rack so that it cools without any... Is that why they have the detachable bottom? So you push up the bottom? But then you still have to sort of...

Put it on something cold. I'm also on the bottom. you have to slide it onto the cooling rack. Yeah, which is stressful. Oh, bloody hell. Well, done. Was it delicious? It was delicious.

Yeah, really good at it. Wow. That's well, look. Well, look. That's really great. Well done. That's excellent. I don't even know what a cooling rack is.

Now I know. But I want to go immediately back to art. Just quickly, before we delve into more sort of things to say, because I'm basically champing at the bit, chomping at the bit, chomping at the bite to talk about more about that. I feel. You've got, Annie is a writer, actor, comedian, podcaster. Is that right?

Yeah. That's right, yeah. Baker and Cooling rack, enthusiast. Cooler. She's cool things. And also, like, please do listen to her podcast, Secret Artist, which is excellent. And basically, she gets comedians on, funny people on. And you paint something, you make something with them.

And then you learn about them. You learn about, like, what they feel about painting. It's like, it's like, it's one of the most lovely things to, like, pop on when, when, when you're like cooking or when i mean i've never cooked but like when you're you know like it's it's really relaxing is what i mean to say it's really nice and like really funny and i think that um yeah anyone listening as like the you don't have to know anything about art to like really enjoy it but you did you study i did an art foundation course at camberwell so i did painting for a year and then i went to leeds and did english and theatre did you okay cool all the useless subjects

yeah the holy triumpha of absolute dross yeah So you did do a year of an art foundation. You are really, really into it. You do paintings. You do commissions, don't you? Yeah, I do commissions. I do sort of landscape and figurative painting. Figitive means it's got a figure in it?

Things with a figure or a landscape. That one I had on, I got a grass. You know that, Tessa. But figurative, I was like, I'll just check. But also very quickly, just to move it away from me, but that was very nice of you. Thank you. Tessie, you're also an artist. Let's be honest.

Oh, well, I knew that was coming, of course, of course. Stevie, I think you are too. And I'd love you both to be on the podcast as well. That's very kind. Well, you both love to be on the podcast. I'm not, but I was going to say why Annie thinks that is that at Christmas, Annie ran an amazing charity art fair, would we call it, art gallery? Exhibition, yeah.

Exhibition, that's the correct word, thank you. You're going to have to really come in with a lot of the nouns for me. Art, art in the room. Yeah, I love it. big art in the room. And it was for, it was a charity thing that people, comedians submitted an art piece and then they could, they were sold, bought by the general public. Tessa was wonderful and she did not have any faith in it to the extent where she tried to get me to buy it. And I was like, I don't want to in case someone else buys it.

And then I've taken away what could be a real genuine pleasure. Next day. And lo and behold, my cousin bought it. It got bought it. She absolutely loves it. I couldn't believe it. I did this piece of the moon, everyone, and I took the lessons that me and Stevie learned at the Battersea Art Fair

while we were getting drunker and drunker and bellowing things across the room, which was I did this painting of the moon. I did it on an old French magazine. Man. An old French man. He just stood in the corner of the exhibition for me. No, so I was like, so at least people will say like, oh, that's on an interesting bit of paper, I thought people would say.

And then I did the frame, and I sort of flicked a bit of white, paint at it so the frame looked like space. Basically, I was trying to like detract away from my lack of skill as much as possible with a lot of like fath. That was great. You were really playing it down, but it was beautiful. It looked beautiful and also like she got me to take a photo and like a video so we could see like if it stuck out badly among everything.

I was so worried. Tried to have played with it. It absolutely didn't. If anything, it was one of the best ones. Like so it was like, it was so lovely. So that's why. But look, isn't everyone on that? artist in a way in a way in a way the only two moon paintings in the exhibition mine and yours wow

love the moon we love the moon well that's exactly what you're saying see i was going to say like you don't when you walk into like playgroup as i regularly do you don't see children saying like oh i'm not i can't do this you know i'm not an artist i'm not an artist but i will like oh like i'm not a sculptorist you'll do it but i will like have a go at that play like they're just like i'm going to make my father in clay. Yeah. Isn't it great? Yeah.

So it's not like we aren't naturally good. We're born with the confidence. We just somehow along the way, we just, we lose all of that, you know. So, Anna, right. I want to ask you, and it's a very big question, it's probably too much. But imagine you're talking to someone who, I mean, genuinely did not know what figurative means. I don't know what any of the words are other than that is a painting.

What would you say, for someone like me, I like the broad sort of, categories of art. I'm not talking, I can tell a sculpture from a painting, but I mean like, oh, that's, look, I don't even know. What was it, like, the National Portrait Gallery and like a Jackson Pollock, only two pieces of art, I know. They're very different. They are different things, yeah.

One's a sort of museum. So what I've done is I thought I'd summarise five different periods of art for you. A yawn. The screen. I want to preface this by saying I'm not an expert on art history by any means. So hopefully... You're the most expert in this current room, so... Thank you.

So I thought I'd just give you a few little tip bits about some art history periods. I'll gobble them up. Okay, so the medieval is a period from 500 AD to 400 AD. Earlier than I was expecting, let me tell you. And that's like loads of church stuff. So anything you see that's sort of very religious, like crucifixes, basically you're looking for Jesus, you're looking for gold and like medieval. And who among us is not looking for Jesus and gold, you know, day to day? Especially in lockdown.

That's all I'm after. A lot of demons and devils and things? I'd say more sort of saints and things like that. Okay. So you can say like, regardless of whether it is actually medieval or not, you can say this has real medieval. undertones here, you know, of this like... Yeah, you could say... Yeah, it's very reminiscent of the sort of medieval period.

Reminiscent of? Okay, taking notes of people. Reminiscent of is good, yeah. Then the next one I thought I'd summarise is the Renaissance period. Very sexy. I thought a good way of remembering some of the key artists is because the teenage mutant

Ninja Turtles are all named after Renaissance artists. Raphael. Mike Landlope, Donod. Teller. Yeah. David? Yes.

Leonardo. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello. Raphael. Raphael. And somebody... That's your Renaissance, guys. Mm-hmm. Perfect.

So they're sort of really into like very attention to detail stuff, like human form, lots of sort of strong men, like touching each other. Are they the ones that, are they, they're the ones that, where there's like, big, strong men and they have, like, tiny little penises? Because there is a real, There is a very, it's like noticeably tiny, I would say. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it used to be a sign of, did it used to be a sign of strength? Tiny little bit.

Yeah, and then it's. That was a real PR job by somebody with a small dick. It was like, actually, guys, it's a, I think you'll find. It's actually a symbol of power. I think it was a meme, so maybe it wasn't. But it was something about like how, when you, when you see those like sculptures and they've got like tiny little pieces, it makes their size and their muscles. and their muscles look so much bigger.

So maybe that's a thing. You want a man with big old thighs, apparently. So the next period I thought I'd mention is impressionism, which my mum recently described as a load of old shite. She's Irish, so she can sort of get away with shite. But you'll recognise that. That's like your monets, your mannays, your pizarro. Ringing any bells?

Yeah, I'm already stressed that there's a man called Monet and Manet, and they're two different men. That's deeply unsatisfactory. It is stressful. And one, you'd think that they should have got together and been like, listen, one of us is going to have to change, you know? Yeah, and so somebody's doing the lilies? Yeah, Monnet is the lilies. What do impressions do?

The whole idea is that they create like an impression of a picture rather than like a realistic depiction. Of course. Delicious, of course, yes. Little, little brushstrokes. Almost quite childlike and. Finger painting. Finger painting. like focused on colour and lights, lots of like pastels and they're sort of quite sketchy looking.

I'm doing a lot of movement with my hand that won't come across to the listener. What was the thinking behind the impressionism? Like, why were they suddenly like, we should try this? Were they like boards of all the realistic stuff? Is it like, in literature and it's like, whenever it goes one way, it always swings back the other way, the next period is always completely different to the one before. I think that's exactly right. Before that was like realism.

so everything was very sort of photographic and it was like people were trying to create the most accurate depictions of real life and then suddenly they were like fuck this let's just make it like the idea of what the landscape is lovely i think i like that because then if you're an impressionist you can be like you can draw say a bridge and it'd be wrong and you'd be like well that's an impression of a bridge isn't it so um go on what's what's what's the next okay the next one i've written down is cubism oh which is 1907 to 1914 and this is the sort of art that I think you'd get a lot of people being like, well, my four-year-old could do that. It's quite like abstract. Picasso is one of our main guys. Lots of distorted shapes and again,

not at all realistic. I think I think I did cubism for GCSE art, I think, and I struggled very much with that because it was like, I didn't know how to, you know, we had to like do a still life, you had to do like a proper still life realism reminiscent of the of the renaissance i'm so happy and then we had to do a cubist version and i it was just like well i don't like i don't know how i don't know what you want you just chop it all up and stick it on top of each other in the wrong places yeah i went to i'm going to say i went to Picasso's house but as i say that that can't be right But I think at some point, I've definitely been to either a Picasso exhibition or a museum or something. In the Picasso Museum, there was some drawings that he did when he was 11.

And they were the most beautiful things you've ever seen. Like, some were of his mom, some were of a beautiful, I think of a christening. They were just like outrageously beautiful. And you sort of thought, and then when you, the later and later you got into his life, the more it was just this like chaos, the stuff that you're like, well, my four-year-old could do that. and I think that's why people find it so sort of hard to get their heads around because it's not as nice to look at as his early stuff and that's a sort of done.

Yeah, I could kind of agree. I saw a lot. I think it was in Malaga. I went to a Picasso museum and loads. I was so impressed by his early stuff and how actually good at drawing was. And it's really, really hard to come away, not sounding like a total dunce by being like whispering under your breath, why doesn't you just do the good stuff, you know? widely bother with this weird, this weird shit, you know.

Perhaps you could say, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, than, than, than, than, than, then, then, and then, love very powerful, Steve. I don't, I don't have the words, like, I don't have the in-between words, now I've got the nouns and now, and he's given me reminiscent of, that's all, I can only put it in that format. But I think that's good. Everything he said has been great, great. Um, oh yeah, one more period I was going to just quickly mention is op-art. Pop-art. That's, no, oh, art art. Which is pre-pop.

Okay. So this is like 50s and 60s, and this is when technology is all ago, and this is people like Bridget Riley who do lots of like pattern, color, shape type things. But you stare at a page and then it like becomes a shape. Optical illusion. Basically anything that makes you feel dizzy. Is it? That's off-art.

And if I saw it. And if I saw something and someone was like, well, it's very contemporary, what's the cut off? Is it like, is 90s not contemporary? Do you know what does contemporary mean? Contemporary means now. And then before contemporary was modern. That's confusing because you would think that modern is now, but modern, we've had modern. When was it?

When was modern? Modern was in the past. Modern is from like the 1860s to the 1970. That checks out because I remember. doing English Lick degree and taking Modern as a module because I was like, yeah, I want to read some books from now, please. And it was all like, yeah, which was fine, but that wasn't what I wanted. No, so we've had modern and we're currently in the contemporary era. What's going to happen when we get to beyond contemporary? Because we've got to come up with another

name for now. Yeah, it's so confusing. I don't know who decides on the names. Neo-classical, neo-contemporary. Oh, okay. That's good. Options, just offering the art world some ideas for the next era. Wait, we've had neoclassical. We've had it. Well, what about we have neo-contemporary? Oh, neo-contemporary

is good. Neoclassical is like 18th century. Okay. Okay, so we touched on this at the start, but what are some other things you can say, good, valid things to say and do at the gallery? We've got, say,

less. We've got say that's very reminiscent of. We say, oh gosh, I didn't realize he was working that early. Yeah. Gosh, 16th century. Gosh. Much later than I thought. Gosh. You just keep saying gosh and then just saying like gosh. And then someone says what? And you say, well, quiet. And then just move on. You can also detract from your conversation by just laughing at what other people are saying. That's the most fun thing to do at galleries. Do you hear what they said? Ah. Well, so mean. I'm the person that people be laughing at. No, you're not. So other things you can focus on, I guess, colour. It's simple. It seems obvious, but... So what do we say, what do we,

what do we say about the colour? You could say something like, again, gosh, real depth, isn't it? Depth. I think the struggle is that like, you just want to say, like, I like that. And it's very hard to be like, well, and then someone will be like, oh, why, and you'd be like, nice. Depth. But I also don't think you should have to justify why. I mean, there's a lot of pretension in the art world isn't there but I think it's valid to just say I like I like that I like that I think if I may that I think a lot of this how we express ourselves in there or how you people you folk express yourself I think a lot of it seems to be about the artist's creation as opposed to just your own personal interpretation of it so it seems to be a lot

of like his use of detail his you know or their use of the abstract brushstrokes the use of color rather than just like the color. So it seems very much about interpreting it as a process. The process. Exactly right. Process also a good word. Process quite gosh. Should we go to the gift shop? I know.

We went on a French trip once and everybody, we once in an art gallery, I saw a woman just go, oh, got, card postal? Like, can we go and buy a postcard? Please love this now. I was like, yes, that's how it feels all the time being like, to the gift shop. That's all anyone wants. All we used to want is. to buy a postcard to prove that we've been to an exhibition and now it's just take a photo

for Instagram. Yeah, that's true. What's the, what that's interesting? Can you take photo? Are you allowed to take photos of art? I think some, some galleries like people taking photos because it creates a buzz and then more people go to the exhibition. But then sometimes because the paintings are so old, they worry that photography will, with the flash on, will damage the painting. Yeah, sure. Now, who are your favourite artists? Like, who do you love? I really like, there's a woman called Genev Figues, who's an Irish artist, and she paints quite sort of distorted figures within landscapes, and they hope, again, her use of colour. Now I'm worried about using any... No, no, please use them, so we know to use, we want them. We want the bars.

They're just quite sort of magical and a bit grotesque as well. So I love her. Again, I like a man called Peter Doig, who similarly does like sort of magical landscape, so the colour is really vibrant and the scenes look quite realistic, but there's like an edge to them. Yeah. Nice. So I like that kind of thing.

That's nice. Tom de Fresden, he's an artist who I know who's brilliant, I love his stuff. Figitive. Figratiff. So you're very into figurative. I'm into figurative, yeah. There's a woman on Instagram who is called Sarah Shaquille, you might have seen her stuff

she uses like crystals so she's been doing a lot of stuff recently taking photos of doctors wearing PPE but then she like digitally adds crystals to make them look sort of supernatural I think I'm going to love her

she's great I mean some of it I'm like that's the tackiest thing I've ever seen but I love it yeah one more my friend my friend Hoss Edenbrow is amazing she does like floral prints so she's great. Jenny Saville, you probably recognise her stuff. Again, she does quite grotesque figures.

So some of them are quite crude, like nude paintings, but with really like thick paint. And it's grotesque what it sounds like, as in like it's sort of slightly mutated formed. A bit like, not shocking, but a bit more like, oh, I can even do it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.

Oh, okay. Like not sure you're grounded. Annie would like it. Oh. A thick brush, isn't it? I like Daegar. Yeah, he's great. That's all I've come up with.

Who's Degar? The one with the ballerinas. Who do you like, Stevie? I don't, I actually genuinely don't have... I know that when we went to the art fair, I really liked kind of slightly odd landscape. So there's one that was like of all these like black trees and then white, almost like, whiteed out figures.

And it was like black and red and white. quite like bold. I quite like bold print type things and I really like I'm a sucker for something painted on some newspaper. That's why I love Tess's moon. I think Stevie you really like bold, contemporary mixed medium. Yeah. Oh. That's great. Great stuff. Things on things. That's things. Things on things. That's, that's the next genre in art history. It's contemporary. There's things on thing. What I think? Talk of that.

Do you know any current trends in art? Like, as in, is there like a movement happening at the moment that we see a lot of that maybe maybe Instagram is affecting or, I don't know. Yeah, I was trying to think about this. Definitely technology in art has become a trend. And with the lockdown, there's been loads of different trends. And exhibitions are now being put online. There's like online auctions.

There's definitely, I don't know if this is because of the lockdown, but there seems to be a lot of like behind the scenes as in artists showing how they work in their own homes and posting out like videos of them teaching art to make it more accessible. I'm a sucker for a time lapse, you know, when you see how someone's drawn up and watched that all day. Yeah, another trend I've noticed recently is like tweed pictures but with something crude written on them. So I don't know if you remember at the exhibition that I curated Rose Matafayo did a sort of beautiful floral embroidery and then it had never-ending dread

sewn onto it. Yes. Yes. I think that kind of contrast is becoming popular. So my question was, I guess if you wanted to sort of tiptoe yourself into art and you were ready to do a bit of beginner learning or whatever, if there was either any great online resources or anything that people could learn more about, a bit more of a history of these amazing periods of art.

And the second phase was if anyone's looking to buy art and start sort of building themselves a collection if there was any affordable places that do lots of good things or if you just recommend sort of going to, I don't know, I don't even know where you begin on your art journey. In terms of learning how to do art, at the moment, there's an Instagram account called Isolation Art School. So they're getting well-known artists to do sort of lessons

so anyone can take part in those on Instagram. Then in terms of building a collection, I mean, it is hard to know where to start. I think art fairs are useful because you can get an idea of what you like. Art fairs are where there's like hundreds of dealers. I know you know that, but just in case people don't. And the affordable art fair is a good one to start at because, I mean, affordable, the word can be misleading because it's not affordable for lots of people,

but that's the sort of cheaper end of the scale in terms of buying art. There's London Art Fair as well, which is, I guess, one up. from the affordable art fair in terms of how it's perceived, but again, a good place for looking at what sort of art you might like to start collecting. And then there's loads of stuff online. I think Instagram is a great place to find art in terms of online exhibitions like the Royal Academy are doing all of their exhibitions online at the moment. So it's quite weird. You can visit the galleries and there's no people there. You just look around the art. That's quite nice. And also probably probably be quite like quick as well because you're often like cueing or you're often like, just

Get in, have a look around. And also it takes the pressure of having to say anything about the art. Oh, so true. In the comfort of your own mood. You're so right. And you can just whisper your special phrases to yourself. Yeah, you can just go quite the depth. There's also, the National Portrait Gallery are also,

they've really got involved on Twitter, and they're tweeting out famous works of art and asking people to recreate them. Oh, I love that, yeah. So sometimes that people are doing really beautiful paintings and replicas and things, and sometimes people are making it in fruit and like making it out of pasture shapes and it's really lovely and sometimes they'll see things like well the other day they did do draw a bat and it was felt like slightly misjudged under the circumstances not now guys it not now guys it really felt like they hadn't as though someone was like oh fuck like they really

hadn't thought oh yeah maybe a bat isn't the ideal thing well they scheduled it like a year yeah yeah how could they ever have known but that's been a really lovely thing of seeing just how creative people are and what lovely bat drawings they did indeed come up with. Yeah. And also the rainbows in support of the NHS. That's been a nice sort of trend. That is lovely. Mainly kids, but that's been a nice thing. Have you done a rainbow, Annie? I haven't done one, not because I don't want to, but because I'm on a potato farm in the middle of nowhere. No one would see it. You could do potato prints. I could do potato print. That'd be very good, wouldn't it? I haven't done one of those for ages. That's such a good idea. Her use of potato print in this piece is really reminiscent of the medieval period

and also evocative of her time on the potato farm during her blue period in lockdown of course. Yeah, of course. I'm going to start doing some potato prints. Please do. Thanks, guys. I'm inspired. I'm inspired. Look, what I think is so nice is the idea that you don't have to be a special person

or to like a piece of work. Like on Instagram as well, they're always, you know, like, even my, like, my sister does these, like, ink paintings, ink drawings. And they're really, really different. She wouldn't ever describe herself as an artist. But it's like, if you're on Instagram and you see something that you think is really nice and someone's selling it for like $0.30, like,

like, there's no reason to be like, oh, well, it's not money. So it's like, it's all very democratized. And it's quite, it's a lot easier now to get access to, like, a nice affordable print, isn't it? was just going to mention that I've done some work with an art charity called Kursler Arts. So they do an awards scheme in prisons. So they get prisoners to create artworks and enter them into an award scheme. And then they hold an exhibition at the South Bank Centre each year.

So that's quite a nice way of making art accessible to everyone. And I think it also just shows how art can be like a therapeutic process rather than, like it doesn't have to be for someone to view necessarily. It can be a release. definitely. Absolutely. Our friend Ellie's mum runs a charity called The Art Room, which the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate, chose as her patron to be the charity of. Oh, really? It's just this lovely small charity. Yeah, it's amazing.

But it's for, yeah, it's offering art as therapy, you know, for children who might otherwise have, like, nowhere else to be able to express themselves and do creative, you know, things. I think it's such an amazing, restorative thing to be able to do to create art. Well, I thought we've got quite a few friends, like, who are not artists, they would describe themselves like directors or actors or whatever,

and they just, but they just really like painting and they'll like pop some things upon their Instagram and, but they're not necessarily selling them. It's just obviously like a thing that it's like, they just wanted to do it.

They've got a little easel that they got off eBay and they get some, they buy canvases, they buy paints and then they just like have a go. And I think there's something is a really good skill in just letting yourself go and not worrying about,

worrying about where other people will like it. Because look, we're like, Picasso was a bit. bit shit like so if we're thinking that then whatever you do whatever anyone does it's like it's Quentin Blake in his banana hands isn't it like my boyfriend being like I can't draw I can't do this like anything that you create is it's great because you've created it's yours and you've done it and also it was what's so nice about like lots of these like galleries like the Tate and like

you're like whenever you go into there are some galleries which make you feel like oh god I should really know these things and then there are something a lot more friendly and a lot more accessible. Even things like the Turner where you're like, what's that? It opens you up to just kind of either like it or not like it rather than go like, oh, I know this is reminiscent of or like, ah, this reminds, this is the depth of colour. You can literally just be like, that's nice. And to not feel, you know, to not feel bad for just like liking things or not liking things. Yeah, I think with art in a similar way to like wine or classical music or anything that sort of feels like it's of a, you know, you have to, you know, really know, before you're allowed to,

you know, have an opinion. Whereas really, I think what this is teaching has is like, oh, anyone's, you've got pair of eyes in which case, you can enjoy it, you know? Absolutely. Definitely. I think art has the perception of being quite a niche, like elitist form, but I think definitely the lockdown has proven that everyone can do it. And yes, you need to have like a certain amount of materials, but if you've got, like, a piece of paper and a pencil, you've, you've can order some coffee. I've seen art made out of coffee. That's cool. There was something on the Grayson Perry show where someone made a portrait of him out of soy sauce sauce and spaghetti. So we're all bloody artists for God's sake. There we go. We're all bloody artists for God's sake. That's a nice

thing to leave on, isn't it? Annie, what's your, how can people follow you? How can people find you? I'm on the potato find. Right, yes. I'm on Twitter at Annie McTweet and the podcast is Secret artists and it's on acasts Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the handle for that is secret art pod. And your artist Instagram is McGrath. Yeah, and I've actually just built a website. Oh yes, please. What's your website? I think it's amagra dot art.

Are you accepting commissions and things during lockdown? I am. I am indeed. Yeah. So there's examples of my work on there. And I'm inspired. There's quite a few people on Instagram that I, you know, have always like, oh, that's lovely.

And I just think that's lovely from a distance. And I'm going to actually get in touch to them and say, like, can I buy you a nice thing? Yeah. Yeah, dude. Now's the time. And then they say, 600 pounds. There you go. Yeah.

And then they'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm working to £8,000 of commission. I'm like, well, very good luck and goodbye. So yeah, please do as well follow us. We're at Nobody PanicPod. And if you have any suggestions for future episodes, nobody panicpod at gmail.com. I'm at Stevie M, the S's a 5. At Teser Coates.

There she is. There she blows. Thank you so much, Annie. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoy that both me and Stevie kept trying to outdo each other with impressing you. Yeah. Well, perhaps we could say this, mother. I'm very impressed by both of you.

Thank you, a Gold Star. But if you had to choose who was best in it. I couldn't grade you. It's actually subjective. Yeah. That's a good word. Subjective. Yeah.

Everything is subjective. That's it. Everything's subjective. Don't let anybody make you feel that you're a, opinion is doesn't count because it's literally subjective. Absolutely. But do subjectively download and subscribe to our podcast and just subjectively like podcast. And review it because it is. Objectively five stars. Yeah. 100%. Excellent. But yeah, see you next week, guys. Have a lovely week and maybe maybe have a little paint. Buy some art. Make some art. Have it gone on

Instagram. Fill your Instagram feed with lovely art. Art for all. Bye. Goodbye.