Not much work going on at the moment – but a lot of thinking, collecting materials and planning. I've taken a step back a bit to examine more objectively what it is I do, to be more transparent, to be more authentic in my approach – that's the tricky bit, to not fall into the trap of producing work within an acceptable range/subject matter/criteria that is seen as acceptable and 'now'. Retracing my steps to a portfolio crit with a well respected gallery, the conversation ran something like this.
Me – my work is a response to my experience and that of the women I have interviewed, to the quotidial, the insignificant, the worn and the less than perfect, the profound found in the minutiae of family life, the poetry glimpsed through the mundane.
Gallery people – I like your materials, I like the beef gelatine, how you draw on the repulsive, contrasted in butterfly forms. Can't you do more of that, more icky stuff, more yucky things? But you need to add a new angle, what about starving people, what about food issues across the globe, yeh, you need to be global – and more yucky stuff.
Not to be unfair, they gave me some really concrete good critical advice but I wonder – do they really just want more of the same? At a talk recently at Artsway, film maker Alistair Gentry said the further away from the traditional you go, the more avante garde the circles you move in, the more tight and restricted the work becomes until only a handful of artwork fits the grade. In attempting to be more liberal the galleries become more trapped in their own narrow constraints of what they expect artists to produce.
I'd be interested in others comments and to what extent this influences the work we produce.
It seems like a long time since I last wrote. Since then a whole heap of things have happened, on a very personal level. The thing about art though, it is so very personal, it's impossible, for me anyway, to extract one from the other. Hence the gap in communication. The things – right, well –
Within a fortnight I had left my four children for the aforesaid lavishly decadent four days in Marrakesh at my nieces wedding. As Jewish and Christian blessings were performed over the sound of the muslim call to prayer, a man with Buddhist leanings talked about the future of faith in a pluralist world. Within days I had left the luxury hotel and returned to the UK to pack and take the children to Butlins, Minehead to join 8000 others at the Christian conference, Spring Harvest (yes – I know I said that word – dont panic, I don't think anyone reads this anyway) to join some of the worlds greatest thinkers, talkers and theologians discussing, taking apart and looking at, social justice in an aching world.
Into the bargain, while this was going on, I was diagnosed with diabetes, which, added to my coeliac disease means all I can virtually eat for the rest of my days are leaves, Add on a husband whose having a mid life crisis on the career front and you can see I had a lot to process.
Back in the studio, I'm just about finished the hospital commission that has dragged on from last year – it has been so modified in order to adhere to the rigourous regulations avoiding vandalism, I'm not sure where I am in it. More time at last though, to concentrate on my ACE funded R&D.
On reflection, yesterdays post was a bit of a rant and not entirely helpful or informative to anyone so I shall try to redress that. Looking at the other contributing parents I quickly noted only one 'Dad' entry that I could see. It's a great read actually and refreshing amongst a heap of great 'Mummy' entries but I wont attempt to open that up now.
I am an entirely different person since my four children arrived and I'm happy about that. I took a step out of a very self obsessed world, always concerned with the next project or the following years exhibition, to find it was possible just to live, just to absorb life as it is.
After ten years though something stirred inside me. Plans to wait till they were all at school fell apart as my head filled with ideas and a drive to work just took over that I couldn't hold back. I struggled with the guilt of spending precious time furthering my own development but I was kidding myself that I could be anything other than what I am. And that's my conclusion. This is who I am and I shall try to be the best parent I can be within that.
I love sharing my work with my children. They comment on it, help make decisions, come to openings, are confident to enjoy their own making and creativity. I help teach and direct the art content in their local school which in turn affects many of the children in our village. It is my overall aim that they will all grow up feeling confident to walk into a gallery, to partake in an art event, to comment on and enjoy the work as a valid part of their life experience. And so far so good.
In writing this, I have been interupted countless times to break up fights, nurse sore knees, remove slippers from unruly puppies. And interwoven in all this is the ongoing development of my work, impossible to extract one from the other. Looking at the parent blogs together, there is clearly a substantial contribution evolving from this experience. It will be interesting to see it's affect in the work we see over the coming years.
How ironic is this? Andrew Bryant contacted me requesting I write about the struggle of mixing art and parenthood and I never got the email as I was in Marrakech, lying on a bed of rose petals, being scrubbed down, oiled and massaged, in a luxury Moroccan haman (spa) – completely child free!
Now, I know what you're thinking – but seriously, most of my life is spent at the Tesco check out or rummaging in the laundry basket for school uniforms while going through a thousand lists in my head. But this weekend my lovely niece was getting married in a lavishly decandent hotel in Morocco – and we could only afford for me to go!
But seriously, back to real life. At times trying to survive as a female artist with a large family is at the best, frustrating and at the worst, damn near impossible. I love my children to distraction – I need my art. The tension between both really wears me down. I can't be at the right openings, the London fairs – I do drag in friends to pick up from school, I pay more than I can afford in child care costs – and I get to a few. But I feel that I'm pushing a boulder uphill all the time. And then I get in the studio, for just an hour – and it feels right.
I will finish this research and development, I will exhibit this work, and then I will have to take a long, hard look at the future. But I am loathe to be beaten. I'm not ready for that yet.
