Firstly I would like to thank A-N for featuring my blog on their Twitter and Facebook pages, I am absolutely over the moon to think there are people to whom my writing is of some interest.
Back to business now, so I have been considering the future of my work/ practice and how I spend my time creatively speaking, I have asked myself questions as I consider myself a devotee of abstract art but have always dabbled in figuration on the off chance that I might at some point in the future decide to use figurative motifs within in my drawings, however I have decided this is akin to holding an umbrella above my head whilst the sun is out in the middle of summer. Pointless really unless I decided to pour a super focus onto really developing my skills in this area with a view to using them on a new project – as I have no such plans I feel this can only be detrimental to my current practice. On top of this I seem to remember Jake and Dino Chapman retiring to their studio for a year or more to learn to carve whilst doing nothing else so as to master what they needed to achieve, so what I am saying is anything is achievable with focused hard work – but in this area I think for me I would need to see an end goal to commit to a very different direction, especially when I find so much to explore in what I am already doing (I’m not for second comparing myself to these illustrious guys but perhaps you see my point).
Part of trying to fit any kind of practice around a full time day job requires some thought, in my case this comes in the form of carrying a tiny notebook that was bought for me as a present to record ideas, thoughts and possible solutions to current problems I might be having with a drawing, even helping with things like how to move forward with very rough and basic sketches recording colour ideas and drawings that will be scaled down and repeated in what I consider more developed and polished work.
Here’s an image giving a glimpse into how I go about my day, this little book is used if I’m stationary in traffic, lunch breaks, whilst eating dinner, or any other number of different points during the day, it allows me to capture small ideas that would – with the best will in the world normally quietly vanish whilst going about my day to day business (which hopefully one day will be making art). I feel this is extremely enriching to my work and helps me to add depth and meaning to what I am trying to do. Incidentally it is so small because it is easy to conceal whilst I’m not strictly meant to be thinking of such things…it is a tool for artistic cay burglary. I scrawl notes and things of any interest that could be used later.
Thank you as always for taking the time to read my meandering thoughts.
