A Portrait of an Artist as a Very Late Starter

The exhibition in Manchester is very real now; thank you, thank you Jayne Lloyd, for setting up the website for W0budong. I am really looking forward to conversations about the project in the discussion section of the site and to meeting everyone in the real world. I feel honoured to be taking part; I only started back into serious practice and intentions about two years ago and although I constantly veer between elation, dogged determination to keep to my path of serious fine artist and complete self doubt, it is the opportunities that arise such as this show that bolsters my courage!

I have been reading information about the other artists with interest and just know that the experience of exhibiting and interacting with them is going to stimulate more responses through my own practice.

The title of the exhibition is a phonetic translation of “I don’t understand” in Mandarin. All the artists have some connection with calligraphy that has no meaning, or asemic text. Over the next few months the web site will host a discussion between we artists and any one who wishes to join in and will culminate in the exhibition. The whole project is a result of twelve months of study by Jayne that included a residency in Chongqing at the 501 Arts Space.

For information about the exhibition follow this link:

http://w0budong.wordpress.com/

The artists:

www.a-n.co.uk/p/3245703 .

www.a-n.co.uk/p/1650059/

http://wynnepatondotcom.wordpress.com/

http://www.juliebrixey-williams.co.uk/

http://suegough.blogspot.co.uk/

Here I am again, two posts in two days after a long absence. How strange, but I sort of need to put into words some reflection on my current situation and how it will probably feed into new work.

My current work deals with ideas to do with memory, loss and the passing of time. While I was preparing for my show last Easter thoughts of my mother in law kept intruding. We have a bit of a history as some people say, when alluding to a difficult relationship; she has never been very nice to me and although I tried for years to gain her approval, I finally realised it was pointless. This coincided with my finally getting to art college, no coincidence I am sure. Anyway, this woman who has made my life very difficult intruded once again because she needed to be brought back to the UK this summer, being alone and getting frail and forgetful.

So during the making of one drawing in particular I was thinking about her memory coming and going, a life lived. I found myself obliterating parts, re drawing, and washing out, re drawing and so on. The edges of the drawing, like the edges of other drawings in the series, resembled the edges of textiles, knitting in particular, before it has been blocked and pressed. Knitting is about the only practical activity I ever remember her doing. This drawing is an important part of the current work and now, with evidence that my difficult mother in law is becoming ever more confused and frail, I find my thoughts turning to it increasingly and needing to get it out of its stiffy bag protection, to have it near by so that I can make some new pieces that react/lead on from it.

At the moment I am stuck at home waiting for a new wood pellet boiler to arrive, (we are dedicated eco refurbishers), but I do have to hand some paper, emulsion paint and drawing mediums, I’ll try and start some more pieces that react to the drawing and the developing situation with my mother in law’s health, if I can concentrate amongst the chaos. If anyone is reading this, I would welcome any comments and especially encouragement; I am feeling a bit marooned at home, unable to get to the studio!

Wow! It seems ages since I wrote anything on here. My life has been very very busy with builders at home, which has prevented me from getting into the studio. I am not fretting too much, rather, I am quietly planning my return for the new year.

Lots has happened with Ryedale ArtWorks (RAW). Our creative commissioning programme has kicked off with a bang when Anamaria Wills of Cidaco came over and delivered training to our member mentors. I was anxious; I arranged the whole day and I knew Anamaria was the right person for the job having been on a course run by her before, but no one else from RAW knew her apart from one other artist who admitted to it afterwards. I cannot tell you how immenseley relieved I was when everyone let me know how inspirational they found the day. All we have to do now is work out which subjects can be delivered as workshops with 3 or more participants and who needs one to one sessions with their chosen mentor.

Meanwhile, we are cracking on with other plans for RAW, we are meeting William Tillyer at Mima in January and he is going to tour us round his retrospective show there. We are planning other exciting meetings and inviting interesting people to deliver these. A small but perfectly formed gallery in York, Priestleys at No. 36, Bootham have invited us to collaborate with them on an exhibition featuring two of our artists for their Christmas exhibition with further bi-monthly shows during 2014. This covers our remit to feature artists from RAW in exhibitions outside our region and we have some other tentative plans in other venues up our sleeves too.

New initiatives are being planned in readiness for our new bid for the Creative Commissioning Process for 2014 that I cannot divulge at the moment. Needless to say, all this is taking up lots of time.

Some members of RAW have huge difficulty with understanding how important and useful social media can be for their practice; I can only say that it is short sighted of them because I have had an opportunity offered me through the Artists Talking community no less, and I have not been blogging here for very long! Thank you to Jayne Lloyd for contacting me recently to invite me to participate in a show in Manchester next year. I had commented on Jayne’s blog after reading it and realising there were some similar threads running through our work. Jayne mentioned a couple of books written by Tim Ingold, Lines, a brief history and Being Alive, essays on movement, knowledge and description. I have almost finished Alive, and during the reading of it have constantly been sqealing out loud with recognition as the ideas Tim Ingold expresses are things I have been contemplating within my work and I had not even known about the book. It has given me a wonderful sense of affirmation, that my ideas belong to a serious train of thought and art practice. I need to find the time over Christmas to finish the book and begin the other one. I also need to do more research, but most of all, I need to get back into the studio! I am thrilled that Jayne wants one of my large canvases for the show.

I have been accepted onto the Art Connections web site and I have decided to enter the North Yorkshire Open Studios for the first time. Both these events are run by Chrysalis Arts. NYOS happens during 2 weekends in June, so it gives me time to develop the prints and artists books I have been planning. I’d like to get the other two large paintings of my seasons quartet made during the first half of next year too. I can’t wait to get back to more drawing.

I attended the Art Party Conference in Scarborough at the weekend; it was a fantastic day and has been written about really well by Jack Hutchinson among others, so I needn’t dwell on it other than to say that we artists need to agitate for arts education and artists; who else will if we don’t?

Ticking Over

Builders are back on site at home and cracking on. This means I need to be around a lot to answer queries and discuss best approach to problems that arise. They are brilliant and make me smile as they sing along to Minster fm – one of them sang along, word perfect to a Pink number the other day!

Meanwhile work for RAW http://www.ryedaleartworks.com/ has picked up pace: the mentor training with Annamaria Wills of CIDA has been booked, the venue sorted and lunches arranged.

http://cidaco.org/

The RAW group visit to MIMA has been rearranged for January; William Tillyer has very kindly agreed to give us a tour of this important show and talk to us about it. I am very excited about this and very grateful to MIMA for helping me to sort this out after the initial problems.

http://www.visitmima.com/index.php

We are also working hard on finding a space for our pop up flagship exhibition next year but nothing has been finalised for that.

My own work is not progressing much, but I am still scribbling away in my sketch book when the mood takes me. I have written a review of fellow artist Jennifer Tetlow’s solo show and this is unexpectedly going to be published in the December issue of a small local magazine called Valley News. I have also put the review on my blog: http://suegough.blogspot.co.uk/

Other committments will prevent me from making any work in the studio until after Christmas now, and I have decided not to get too stressed about this but to be realistic about how much work I can get done. I am in the process of filling in the application form for entry in North Yorkshire Open Studios for next June (my first time, if successful) and I was successful in my application to have a presence on the Art Connections data base. I am looking forward to seeing it once it goes live. There have also been some interesting workshops done in response to my activity on the Access Art web site.

http://www.art-connections.org.uk/

http://www.accessart.org.uk/

All being well, I’ll manage serious studio time after the Christmas and new year celebrations are out the way.