A comment on one of my posts, fantastic – thanks Laura! There is a world out there!
Isolation seems to be epidemic amongst artists. Although it’s a real peak experience when artists come together and join in a project, the very nature of creativity sends people spinning away again.
Artists find it impossible to plod along enjoying each others’ company for long, they soon get inspired and go off and do something whacky – often on their own.
Back in the early 90s I helped get a group of artists together – we all needed a break, and I’d found a community centre who wanted to help: free exhibition space and low cost room hire in return for publicity.
Our philosophy was to use the opportunity to help each other get where we wanted. We spent a lot of time talking about where we wanted to go. It was challenging, about raising expectations and not settling for second best. It started about us all wanting to get our work exhibited, then it got into gaining experience – teaching, administering, gathering practical skills. Then onto money, why we wanted it, and then how to raise money in ways other than selling paintings and running workshops.
Within a year, one was enrolled for a PGCE, another was running Yoga groups, another had decided that more than anything she wanted children, another joined an advertising agency, and I went off to start learning about ritual.
It was really fabulous … but doomed to disintegrate.
I’ve been in five such inspiring situations, and the years in between have been filled with the dark feeling of being surrounded by people, but still feeling lonely.
I was commissioned to write an article about it for the Artists Newsletter, which was really about heralding the innovation of the AXIS register (not online then), as a means of making contacts with artists. Ironically, 15 years on, searching the AXIS database, I don’t get a single hit on ritual – and the selection panel continue to reject my annual applications, so sadly never much use for me.
Having a family has been a great comfort. Children idolise their parents, and as much as being loved is good for children, it’s also good for grown-ups!
This morning I was consoling my daughter, who was in tears of frustration over drawing a glass. It was a genuine delight to sit down with her and a glass, and show that the glass is only visible by the way it distorts its background, and through its specularities.
Tonight, my son and I are sleeping in camp beds in my study/studio, ready for an early start hanging the Wolfson exhibition. He’s the official photographer for the private view, and will be videoing my performance … for the simple joy of being involved in something exciting.
When the kids leave home, I will miss them like my own limbs … back to the dark times of seeking out those chance encounters with others whose journeys briefly join the same track.
