Rob and Jane, thank you, why use a small knot when a big one will suffice? When painting goes well for me it seems to settle into a rhythm that simply needs following; when it goes badly it a disproportionate amount of energy is needed to overcome it. I carried on with this to see where it would lead. As I was working, the sun shone briefly through a blind in my studio, casting a shadow across one of the images. It gave the impression of the bars of a cage. For a moment I was back, a child in my Grandmother’s front room, light flowing through the bars of her budgerigar cage. A possibility flickered in the ‘shadow cage’. The reason that I disliked the painting was to do in part with the spaces in it. They lacked tension. The cage offered an approach to the problem. And the juxtapositions seemed resonant. I was trying to introduce some kind of dynamic through the use of several images, and through the juxtaposition of flat with descriptive painting. I think I know what you mean about the singular image.
As regards working theories, questions and answers, the work is the only theory I have. (The answer frames the question?) It is a bringing to the surface of something through the business of looking and feeling, around subject and materials? There is no theory in it beyond an accumulation of experience and reflection. There is an important sense in which I don’t know anything about anything.
Over the past month or so I have been revisiting this difficulty of meaning and relevance, mainly because as I have noted, I frequently find myself uncomfortably at odds with the judgements of others, and wonder why this should be. And it must have a bearing on my painting.
I like the idea of being ‘tied in knots and coming out back to front!!!’ Writing this stuff is a tangling experience! I do find my predicament perversely amusing.
We have lots of fatballs and seeds out for the birds in our garden . Wood pigeons, collared doves, sparrows, blackbirds, and starlings, feed. Bluetits dart back and forth. The robins have stayed away. Occasionally a squirrel competes. I watch them as I work. I guess my birds have had lives like the ones you see from your kitchen. My mother-in-law’s cremation took place on Friday. People and birds.
When recently I wrote reviews of exhibitions, I did so in part to engage with work with which I did not feel intuitively aligned. I wanted to examine the possibility that my prejudices might be set aside. It was a taxing experience. Judgemental statements can insinuate themselves into what might appear an innocuous observation. And could I engage with the work, and move from my intuitive position to one which was arguably more objective? There is a sense in which all objective positions become intuitive with experience. The path from one intuition to another is the educative bit.
I came across a mathematical equation the other day. It was created by Leonard Euler. It contains plus and minus signs, exclamation marks an arrow sign, letters and numbers. I haven’t a clue what it means. But I can assign a limited meaning to its components simply from my experience. The most interesting is the exclamation mark. From my position of complete mathematical ignorance, the presence of this mark of surprise, surprising mark is a pleasure. Its poetry replaces my incomprehension. The plus sign is welcoming,its implications are of inclusiveness, the equal sign democracy. A Greek letter put me in the presence of gravity of intellect and tradition.
My visit to the Whitechapel Gallery was similar. I understand my incomprehension of Euler’s equation, and what I must do to rectify the situation. And it seems to follow from that, that my problems with art are ones of learning. I assume that as there are people for whom Euler’s work is not a mystery, who can respond to it in a properly intuitive sense, such people exist also who stand before sculpture at the Whitechapel. Do I therefore deceive myself upon entering the galley into thinking that I have a place in it?
I wonder if the historical connectedness of art is analogous to that of mathematics? To understand Euler is a matter of one kind of learning. To not understand a piece of art can be (dis)regarded as a matter of taste.
Amongst all this stuff in my navel is the matter of doubt and personality. A person, who is inclined, disposed, toward a particular kind of doubting, takes that disposition to every experience.
I have been painting today. It has gone a little better. It seems that my technical capability is carried in the pocket of my mental state. I am at my clumsiest when I have most doubt.
I kind of ‘know’ that all the technical capacity in the world does not guarantee artistic success – it might even disguise failure. But the ‘work’ somehow has to ‘work’. It has to be believable. But belief and truth are often at odds. What I believe I experience may be a necessary myth, created out of incomprehension.
Overcast weather and downcast thoughts. This painting was previously ‘Yes, But What Is It About?’ Ambivalence seems to intensify during grey days. The quality of light has the power to direct thinking. I dislike this painting like I dislike the mood of the weather. But like the weather it will not go away. I see it as a challenge to me. To accept defeat is to be defeated. If the sun comes out I might see things differently. I’ll hang on. I happened to be passing the Whitechapel Gallery last week and popped in. I haven’t been there for years it seems. Not an appropriate confession for an artist with pretensions. I went in at the door by the Restaurant, all shiny and posh with immaculately dressed staff. My heart sank, then on to a large gallery with sculptural work. My heart sank again – work to match the Restaurant! The gallery walls are stripped to reveal the gentle tastefulness of brickwork and (I think) lime mortar, bricklayers long gone, so genteel. I look at the work. Coffee and a chocolate muffin in the caff upstairs. And then on to Atlantis to look around and buy some brushes. Later, at home I researched the sculptor whose work I had seen. Quite unlike the work. I felt in the gallery a sense that something small was being written up to proportions that it could not sustain. But the artist in an online interview was not at all like that. This threw me again. I must be missing something. Perhaps some work would be more accessible if it were left alone. Alternately I might be happier in a cocoon of ignorance. Next day, out on my bike, I wondered about the Whitechapel. Whilst writing a previous post, it had occurred to me that we can use the connections between words to disguise their differences, in that case between panic and impatience. My cross reaction to what I saw as pretentiousness, both in the Art and the Gallery, might have been a disguise for what it really was, envy of the rich and successful. There’s nothing like rejection for denying what you really want.
My brain has had a difficult couple of days. I got myself into a bit of critical difficulty via a review of ‘Scopos the Watcher’. Martin Lang (see his blog below) drew my attention to some salient aspects of his work that I had entirely missed. And today I read Anthony Boswell’s latest post. Whilst not directly connected to my reviewing experience his post echoes my ongoing and no doubt by now tedious insecurities. Encounters such as these serve to reinforce my pathetic capacity for self doubt. My child recoils automatically from slaps from the grownups. But these things are of a piece. Aaron Jell in his Forum post ‘Art is (content to be) Quite Useless (?)’, suggests of Art that ‘The more elusive and indecipherable it is the more it is presumed to be poignantly penetrating and real in an artistic sense…’ Another month until the sun comes out?
I have started about half a dozen posts since the end of last year, all of which have remained in a folder. Some even said ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year!’ My blog to, date has maybe come to an end. I am wondering how to continue. My stuff has largely been about my difficulties, fears, questions, and that has not changed. My experiences over the last year via the blogs have been immensely useful. It is in my nature to feel something of an outsider, and to be ambivalent in my attachments. Through writing as I have done, I have been able to stand outside myself to an extent, (to be an outsider to myself?) to describe and look. Jon Bowen in a comment on one of my posts referred to (his) possibly appearing ‘contrarian’. It was a term in which I immediately saw myself reflected. Apart from a little discomfort the question that arises, is ‘how does this occur’? How am I as I am? The blog and my paintings have worked with me in a trialogue in which each tests the possibilities of the other. I need to continue this in some form. There is in publishing it, however, something of the little boy on the fringe of a group of grown-ups.
I cringe when there is a surfeit of ‘wonderful’; it is slapped onto all sorts of stuff, but at the same time I have moved toward more enjoyment of things for what they are. I wonder sometimes though about the feelings that accompany words, especially superlatives. Often when conversation gets a little sharp, the notion of ‘…well art is subjective…’ pulls the rug. I recall sitting in a library when I came across the idea that aesthetic judgements had ‘universal subjective validity’. It formalised what I had long felt. It was a pleasant moment of affirmation, and I sat and smiled. Phil Illingworth’s recent post in which he refers to age set me thinking too. Having missed a lot for one reason or another, I need to catch up with the present.
I have followed up references from fellow bloggers , to reading. and to a wide range of artists’ websites.
My reading is disjointed and irregular. I pick up crumbs from the big table and chew . Some melt, some grind. I am currently preoccupied with Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming. (Ho Ho!That sounds grander than it is.) It’s still all crumbs, the loaf remains out of sight on the table. I present the crumbs to my painting. Some resonate. Word association. It’s quite exciting, ‘Becoming’ seems optimistic. Becoming is a perpetually pregnant present?Do I see it in the conjunction of two colours?
