Bare Bones

After a fractious night, me awake panicking about having another hypo, my partner awake worrying about the proposed redundancies at work, I got up at 6am to grab a couple of hours in the studio before the children were awake.

It was fairly productive actually but I’m still at the experimental stage with lots of things, half the time I think that’s where I’m happiest existing as an artist. At the moment I’m working with drawings that ‘disappear’ after a day or so. Perhaps there’s some way to use stop gap photography, I really need a week entirely to myself to try things out.

This journey has been an emotional and creative roller coaster for me. Many artists have articulated the patches of insecurity we all go through but Andrew Bryant has touched on a particular one of mine.

‘Have I found my practice?’ he dropped into a recent email. Are we pressured to define our practice in order to make a win on the slot machine of grant funding, gallery exhibitions etc?

Mmm – the very questions that have been niggling uncomfortably away at me since returning to exhibiting in 2007. Can artists work authentically while ticking the boxes of the funding providers?

For me, returning to the system after a decade of raising family, I had to learn fast. I wanted to work, I needed to work, I had a cast iron background behind me of projects fulfilled and funding utilised effectively and I was confident I could make good use of this money. And so I set about getting the proposal right.

There’s no question about it, I honed and shaped and fashioned that proposal to fit the required criteria which in many cases I’m sure stifles and curtails the creative process. In all honesty though, for me, at that time, in that circumstance, it focused and informed my work in a way I could never have managed alone in my studio. Time and time again I relooked at the aims, the timings, the proposed outcomes etc of what I planned to do and reshaped and refocused them. I really feel this gave a structure to work to which has envigourated my practice and encouraged an even more deeply reflective attitude to what I do.

The danger is, however, that one approach cannot suit all. Narrowing the range of what’s acceptable and demanding that artists articulate their practice in such a way must mean many artists just fall off the radar. And I think that is a great loss.

The visual arts of today is a scary place to the one I left in the nineties. If you can’t fulfill the growing range of attributes that are asked of you, creatively, intellectually, socially, then you may be asked to step aside. If this had been the criteria in the past, how many of the great artists would be there. If we are not more flexible in our understanding of how and if an artist can ever ultimately define their practice in such a way, I think we’re in grave danger of the visual arts being the poorer because of it.

Prior to writing this I’ve been watching TV – a lot of it. Yesterday I had my first diabetic hypo, alone with my children – not something I ever wish to experience again, and today? Today I’m not going to lift a pencil to draw as planned, in fact art feels quite far away. I’m going to do nothing, and just concentrate on feeling safe, with my family around me.

Today, I know what I am and where I’m going. I have a show ahead in Geneva. I love to make art – these are my certainties. A curator from Geneva, over for a funeral (long story) came to look at my work and liked it. We talked, talked about advice I’d had from all sources, about how I spent so much time tracking what other artists were up to (and I’m afraid that includes blogs).

Turn the computer off, she said, get into the studio and stay there, stop listening to everyone around you, do what you do best and I will exhibit your work in 2010.

And so I have, and she was right, the ideas are coming and I feel on track again. So I’m not going to spend a day travelling to the discussion on art and motherhood at the Whitechapel on Friday. I know it’s a hugely worthwhile event and Id love to be involved (although it’s timed to fall right over school pick up) but right now I need to work, and no amount of networking comes before that. As a mother of four I can explore till the cows come home how hard it is to balance time for the children and studio time but when it comes down to it time spent discussing could be time spent working. Don’t get me wrong I think it’s vital these discussions take place and I believe good will come of them but for me, right now, with four children, no family and husband rarely around, studio time has to take precedence.

Life is continuing in overdrive at the moment with one set of relatives being replaced by another and two funerals this week. Workwise I’ve been putting together samples for a commission working with children in Swindon hospital. I emailed the photos which went down well, went out for an hour and came back to find the dog had taken the 3D samples off the noticeboard in the kitchen and eaten them. Also putting together a hanging sculpture for the local school with all the wishes of the children leaving for ‘big’ school written on decorated ribbons. So my head’s all over the place – as usual.

I’ve been working on this one piece, bit by bit, sewing the ‘stains’ from duvets, edging them with the words from a romantic novel ‘The business of Loving’ found in a jumble sale, part of a set with the original subscription details of the women who ordered them still pressed in the pages. The piece, I think, will be called ‘Bed time stories’.

I find the process so frustrating. With carpel tunnel syndrome in my wrists (don’t work with wire), I can only do a bit at a time. Like a lot of my work, I have no idea how successful the finished piece will be until all the elements are finally put together, it may be that the materials are entirely experimental and I’m not sure how they will evolve. That’s quite a gamble with a lot of invested time. I’m so hoping this will do what I want it to do. I wonder how other artists cope when an idea requires many months of time invested and an uncertain outcome. I look at Gormleys plinth and think, ‘Why can’t I be that sort of artist?’

Anyone interested in starting a crit group or something simiar?

If you live in and around Salisbury, Winchester, Swindon, S’Hampton etc. and would value some critical support and interaction, or just some professional contact with other visual artists, let me know!