My work has been in the Peter blake Gallery for three weeks now. I have had some favourable comment. I am working on the shed which will house the returned work. I lined it with glass fibre loft insulation and'Shed Boat Shed' mutated into a reference to the felt and fat installations of Joseph Beuys. Being in the unfinished shed transported me to a Beuys installation, which in turn had taken me back to my childhood, playing in haystacks on a farm near my home. The way in which sound and oneself was absorbed in each situation created a powerful sense of part suffocation and part protection.Of course I feel that I know the difference between an artwork and a'functional' artefact, but the possibilities of the everyday niggle away at my understanding. A criterion often quoted in defining a work of art is that it has a level of skill in its creation. But the notion of 'skill' as a qualitative criterion is misplaced. What we have is technique;skill is a measure of the command of technique; technique is applied in the pursuit of a further goal. To differentiate between art objects and other artefacts is in one sense unnecessary; the experience is the defining event. So why paint?
