What a difference 48 hours made – I started off the week on my feet, and now I’m on my head, folded like a paperclip, butt-end up.
After that undignified start, I might as well carry on. The new oil paintings I’ve been working on met with unanimous approval when I took them to the studio on Monday, but the mental mayhem began when I returned the next day with the full amount of paintings and drawings I’ve accumulated, ready to lay them out all together. After a long session of arranging and rearranging, our tutor suggested that the drawings and watercolours jarred with the oil paintings, and that we should try taking them out. Taking them out entirely. Cutting away 40% of the body of work I’ve been amassing since September, despite quantity being one of the piece’s major factors. Looking at the remains, I started to question the entire point of the brief I’d given myself. At this point I became desperate for a cup of tea and a darkened room in which to lie down.
To make things worse, I can see exactly what she means. The others who were present all agreed as well. The oil paintings are just so much beefier that they bully the other pieces, and seen on their own, it’s obvious that they’ve taken on their own unifying language. I can’t fight any of the logic in this pruning; I wholeheartedly embrace the value of editing in writing, so why shouldn’t I apply the same metaphor to visual communication? I guess the editor in me doesn’t want to be the edited, but tough. It would definitely be better to have fewer pieces, of higher quality. But dammit, that means a shedload of new work to get through, and probably taking time away from the sculpture. Speaking of which, I haven’t been able to get back to the carving yet because of the sudden development in my right arm of something like tennis elbow (that’s what people keep calling it, but I’d have preferred something more mysterious, although less painful). No swinging a mallet for me for a bit. I must have been visibly wilting under the weight of the work ahead, as the tutor suggested leaving the sculptures to two versions – the candle and the wooden carving. I haven’t come around to that yet – it feels too much like admitting defeat.
All of this is becoming very worrying, when I think about the amount of extra work I’ve given myself, writing for the Henwood 8 website. I do enjoy it, but now that I’ve got three blogs to maintain I think I might be a bit battier than I previously thought. Battiness is something I could use a little less of right now, after realising today that my MA plans have gone down the pan. My current coping strategy for dealing with the onslaught of post-graduation uncertainty that this brings, combined with the unforeseen redirection of my degree show, is to increase tea intake and consume large amounts of chocolate. Large amounts.
