10th June 2013.
Weather; Sunny.
A break in the cloud of being busy.
Time to put thought into words.
I am at one of those crossroads in life. My daughters have left home, my 91 year old mother has finally given up the increasing struggle of living independently and I’m looking at a pensionless future. So I have been thinking about time and how we measure it.
For some of my year I live within sound of the bells of a country church in France. They peel three times a day; at seven in the morning, at midday and at seven in the evening. The Angelus Bell is a call to prayer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus in the Catholic tradition, but in this quiet corner of the World it also regulates a pattern of life that suits my temperament.
I like getting up at the morning bell to work in the garden before the Sun gets too hot and then be reminded at noon to break, rest and prepare and share food. The evening bell is again a call to rest and eat together.
I find I can make a healthy balance between physical work, creativity, and down-time spent in the company of my family and friends in this environment which is, of course, presently an oasis of holiday in the hard realities of life as an artist back here in England.
It gives a glimpse though of what I am aiming for in re-making my creative practice in response to the new landscape emerging from the wreckage of the great banking crash.
The time to create is what we need to function as artists, but this time is so easily lost to administration in general and my computer in particular, which while being a powerful and liberating tool I enjoy using, is also a demanding presence that sucks whole mornings dry in an endless stream of over-communication via email.
It is too easy to kid oneself that, by being at the keyboard, something useful and productive is happening, when in fact giving myself permission to quit the screen and play in my workshop instead would be far more productive in the long term.
Which is why I have felt that life was too short to add another digital task to my day, especially when I am not sure if what I have to say will truly add much to the Babel of voices already blogging.
I am open to persuasion however, and I want to honour the work that AN and AIR are doing as supporters and advocates for us as a community of artists, so I will offer here my reflections on conversations with interesting people I have while using the bursary.
12th June 2013
Weather: Like November; high wind and driving rain.
Lighting a fire tonight to drive away the damp and broken van blues.
It seems to me that the time has come when there is a need for me to cease expecting to get work through invitation or application and instead to find confidence in the experience bottled in my 30 year back catalogue to be a catalyst in creating change in the wider world. I want to use this experience making a living through my art to make a better mode of living for myself and family whilst adding to the pool of good work by artists around the globe making positive change in communities.
This blog will be a record of a small part of that journey.
