I’d spread myself so thinly that holes were breaking through. By the end of last week I felt like I needed to sleep for an entire day. This can only ever occur during the half term break, when the young man departs for a week with his father. Whenever I have an extended period “off duty” I revert to minimal energy expenditure, and I can barely be bothered to eat, such is my joy in rare irresponsibility. My workload was weighing heavily on my mind, but I felt that I needed to enforce idleness upon myself for a day if I was ever going to recuperate and get anything done in the next week. My plan was to see how long I could sustain myself on unlimited tea and 2 giant Aero bars. (About a day and a half, in case you were wondering.) And on Monday, I enjoyed a controlled crumple. It was not entirely idle; I couldn’t bring myself to go that far, and sadly the kettle is downstairs so there was some traveling involved. I did the preparatory drawings for my first circular/oval paintings, but at least I could say I did them in bed.
The drawings are fairly detailed as I want to introduce grisaille underpainting to my working method. I was disappointed with the last two paintings I did, and although there are elements I don’t mind, they are rather soulless to me, and not what I’d intended. It may be partly due to feeling like I had to rush their completion in time for the last end of year show, and I know I’ll end up reworking them eventually. It’ll eat at me until I do. Fortunately I took lots of pictures of the work in progress, and I can see what steps didn’t work. Right now I’m trying to find the focal point from which to mark my ever-decreasing radii; maybe once the boundaries are tightened up I’ll come out of it with some pieces I can fall in love with.
It’s only in the last week that I’ve realised just how geometrical my mind is. When drawing I seem to find angles, polygons and formulae to rationalise the world without really knowing it. Obviously when drawing I’m paying attention; I wonder how much this affects me unconsciously. I didn’t exactly know why I was drawn to tondi and later, elliptical shapes; it was partially a way of referencing historical, perhaps unfashionable, methods of display, but thinking about it, circles are perfect shapes, single sided, self contained and redolent of all sorts of concepts – constriction, security, currency, divinity… Looking at the portraits I had drawn grouped together, they struck me as a diagram with their overlapping circles. I’d done something like that as an experiment with collaging circles cut out of watercolour paintings, but I think I’ll have to do much more of that in future.
This half term will also be given over to… fun. Really, I said fun. I’d agreed to play bass and sing in a friend’s amateur talent show on Saturday, and after rehearsals last Friday and Sunday night, the prep is pretty much over. It’s great to be able to perform with friends, with no stress, no repercussions and no reasons apart from having a go and having a laugh.
I haven’t done much in the way of reading for the dissertation and unit essays, but I feel confident that I’m on track. I’m already over halfway with the first essay due in December, and it won’t take me any more than two or three evenings’ work at a gentle pace to finish and polish it up. Once I feel more settled with the practical work I’ll be able to settle into writing mode over a few evenings.
Seeing Phil emerge out of the clay is very, very encouraging. I want to get the sculpture as resolved as possible before his next sitting next week, to make the most of the time for fine tuning. I need pressured to do as much as I can in the next few days with the sculpting and starting the paintings before real life starts again and I’m back to my full-time job as mummy, but there’s only so much I can realistically expect to do, and I’d better take it easy as I’ve used up my crumple time.
