“I have a piece of advice for any artist, certainly a young artist too … just do it. That’s what I’d say.”
American-born British painter Chantal Joffe shares her best advice for artists: Don’t wait for inspiration to strike, turn up and paint anyway.
“Even when you feel like you can’t, you go in, and you try, you try to paint, because only through the act of making something do you ever have the thoughts. When you’re not painting, you can’t think. You always think, ‘Oh, if I sit around long enough, I’ll get an idea,’ but that isn’t how it works. It’s through the act of doing it that you do the thinking,” she says in this short clip.
Chantal Joffe emphasises that struggling to work is not an exception but part of an artist’s life. Her advice is simple but insistent: turn up, have a go, and keep painting.
Chantal Joffe (b. 1969, St. Albans, Vermont, USA) is a painter known for her expressive and loosely gestural portraits. With bold brushstrokes and emotional depth, Chantal Joffe has spent a lifetime painting women, children, and the people in her life, often drawing inspiration from family photos, fashion magazines, and the work of other artists. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and completed her MA at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2006, she was awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Prize for the most distinguished work in the Summer Exhibition. Chantal Joffe’s works are included in several museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; the Detroit Institute of Arts, USA; the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.
Chantal Joffe was interviewed by Nanna Rebekka in her London studio in April 2023.
Camera: Kyle Stevenson
Edited and produced by: Nanna Rebekka
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
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