What role does ‘place’ play in making art? Place could be the geography of subject matter, an artist’s heritage, or simply the shape of the room from which they work. 

Claude Monet’s garden-cum-studio in Giverny, the subject of hundreds of his paintings, is now a museum. The house on the Isle of Jura where George Orwell raced against tuberculosis to finish 1984 is now a holiday let; preserved as he left it, without electricity, tourists spend fortunes to experience the setting as he did. And Taylor Swift didn’t trek to the Lakes for a pint of Wainwright, she went to see “where the poets went to die”; two hundred years on and the Romantics are still inseparable from their landscape.

It is impossible to be both placeless and an artist, an idea that forms the backbone of my conversation with Xanthe Tilzey, Cumbrian-born artist now living, working and painting in Liverpool. Off the back of her first solo exhibition at The Royal Standard, I meet Xanthe at The Belvedere (after briefly crashing a wake at The Grapes) to talk about Lake District commercialism, ambition versus introversion, and boring arts jobs.

“To live as an artist in Cumbria is to commercialise your art,” Xanthe declares when I ask the difference between Liverpool and her home-town’s art scene. “I think landscapes are ugly and boring, but that’s what sells there.” A controversial stance, perhaps, but logical coming from an artist who moved away because she felt her work couldn’t be valued in an environment that sees “art as an extension of tourism.” In Keswick, every shop is either an outdoors store or a gallery flogging watercolour mementos of peaks ascended in the new walking boots you bought next door. I feel a little guilty in the face of Xanthe’s antipathy towards the “GCSE-esque painting technique” that dominates where she comes from: the house I grew up in is full of the sorts of artsy snaps of Derwentwater at sunset and Striding Edge that motivated her escape to Liverpool. 

What Xanthe alludes to is bigger than a difference in taste, and she is quick to tar Liverpool’s commercial art galleries with the same brush. The subject of the artworks isn’t really important, she explains, “In both places, the goal is to pander towards people who have money to spend.” Guilty by association, a surprising kinship forms - in opposite corners of the North West - between Scafell Pike and kitschy Abbey Road murals. Bugbears aired, Xanthe enthusiastically draws attention to Liverpool’s “indie galleries, artists and festivals (namely, the Biennial) who actively invest in original art.” She cannot help but add a final derisive footnote: “Art that’s interesting to look at.”

This directly corresponds with her own practice. “People are more engaging than landscapes,” she summarises. Figures were a recurring theme across the paintings displayed in her ‘Fearful Symmetry’ exhibition at the Royal Standard, from the ethereal puffed-out cheeks of Mouthful to Head Chop’s four severed namesakes, whose blonde-wigged death masks were evocative of Renaissance marble. “I’m inspired by film, often from the nichest snapshot,” she says, which can become a point of painful intrigue at her exhibitions. “People sometimes see my paintings and ask me ‘What is it?’,” she says, “I want to tell them ‘Just look at it’. It’s frustrating to be judged on an assumption of how I felt while painting something rather than on the painting itself.” Thankfully, other spectators provide more valuable commentary: her sister dubbed one of Xanthe’s works a “nostalgic dreamscape”; “She put into words what I’d only been able to put into painting.” 

In exhibitions prior to ‘Fearful Symmetry’, Xanthe admits to “theatrically dressing” what could/should have been a straightforward painting show, “using fabrics to subsidise self-perceived weaknesses in painting.” It’s easy to hide behind maximalist clutter, and ‘Fearful Symmetry’ was a conscious sidestep. “I wanted my paintings to speak for themselves. This time, I was actually worried the space would look empty, but I went for a refined, controlled aesthetic, inspired by ‘90s films.” In lieu of excess, Xanthe played with multiple light sources, choosing to highlight the exhibition’s focus rather than distract the viewer’s eye as she had previously. “I wanted my first solo show to be true to the way I view other people’s work - to give viewers the chance to take it at face value.” 

‘Fearful Symmetry’ was the culmination of a residency at The Royal Standard, and I’m curious whether she attributes the contents of the show to the space itself. “I like painting in my bedroom,” she laughs in response, “If I was a sculptor or a very active painter, I might have taken advantage of the studio more.” She’s also a self-confessed “control freak”, a useful trait for putting together a solo exhibition, but a hindrance when bombarded by the conversations of other artists and the constant thrum of Ryde’s coffee machine just outside her studio door. 

I expected Xanthe to have more to say on the subject. Artists often champion their studio neighbours as sources of inspiration, but she appears singularly focused, resistant to external distraction. She is far more animated when speaking about artistic specifics and we bounce easily between topics: the counterproductive analysis of brushstrokes; putting sculpting aside; still-life as the truest form of painting - discussions that come alive after four pints in The Belvedere but don’t make for great reading. That is, with the exception of one phrase, which I underline in my notebook while Xanthe is mid-flow: “I don’t want to sound cheesy, but art transcends everything else.”

Exhausting the philosophical, we turn to the unglamorous practicalities behind ‘Fearful Symmetry’. When Xanthe took over the space, the gallery walls were in a sorry state. “I literally had to paint over everything hole by hole before I could begin figuring out what would go where.” I’d seen works of Xanthe's before (and have since) in group exhibitions where the onus to promote the show belonged to a collective. On this occasion, Xanthe had the responsibility of filling the walls (and holes) as well as the room itself. I’m curious whether social media’s necessity in making contemporary art visible is something she tolerates, embraces, or abhors. 

“Beneath my introversion there’s an underbelly of ambition,” she says, “which overrides my hesitation to post on social media. It’s what I have to do right now. To achieve loneliness through success is a necessary sacrifice.” Xanthe acknowledges that any ‘Social Media Anxiety’ comes from herself, rather than being projected onto her by her peers: “Everyone at home is very supportive.” That doesn’t make it any less disheartening when “I get more likes for posting my face than my art. I can use it to my advantage - post myself to promote my work - but I hate that.” In the lead up to the show, Xanthe messaged me on Instagram with the details and an invite to the private view. On my calendar, the date of the exhibition opening had already been crossed off with a big, black X, but I sympathise with her difficulty to gauge the impact of plastering advertisements across social media. A heart-reaction to an Instagram story doesn’t guarantee attendance. It’s far less effort to be virtually supportive of someone’s art than to go and see it in person.

When Xanthe and I first met, we both worked at the Museum of Liverpool, Xanthe in the shop and I in the visitor services team. Since then, she’s moved to the Philharmonic as a box office assistant. Between us, we‘ve worked most entry level ‘arts jobs’ Liverpool has to offer. In the process, I’ve lost track of the times I’ve studied my paycheck and thought, “Should I retrain as an accountant and just do this writing thing as a hobby?” Trying not to project my doubts too much onto Xanthe, I ask, “How important is it that you work in the arts alongside making art?” “It’s a great way to fund my practice, even if it’s just sales,” she says, “but I’m ready to go up a level. I want to be a painter, but I want to work in a sector that enables other people to do that. Interesting people sometimes work in questionable industries, but if I can earn money from painting, I want to invest it in what I love: culture and heritage.”

I could fill this concluding paragraph with cliches - how I’ll apply Xanthe’s rosy perspective to dull mondays spent inside a closed museum - but the point of being “in conversation” with an artist isn’t to comb through pithy quotes for a convenient finale. But if it were, I’d repeat one of Xanthe’s earlier nuggets: “Art transcends everything else.”