Nice? Writing my previous post I began to see more clearly the way in which I was using the term as a pejorative. I have used ‘nice’ as an unqualified shorthand confirmation of my prejudices, partly class based. The distinction between taking a stand and parroting preconceptions is obfuscated by thoughtless use of terms. Elena Thomas opened up this issue with her comment re ‘nice’ and ‘satisfactory’. It is about the politicising of terms. And in that sense it is about power and ideological hegemony. I use the term in part to defend myself from threat. What I describe as nice, I imply is not nice in a manner that lacks (or exposes) the (lack of) courage of my convictions. Using terms in this way enables me to avoid what I know may be true, a transference as I endow something other with my shortcomings. That’s what has concerned me recently, that my ‘art’ is an avoidance strategy held in place by appropriate values and language. This painting was made, and is still being made, alongside the dotty bird. In both I decided to allow what might be nice to emerge, and to be at ease with it. That may simply be surrender. Referring to Anthony’s post, I wonder if there is a kind of nice that is so because it lacks the courage to be beautiful, ugly, truthful, an anxious stopping short, and a diversion of life- painting-art, into deferential ritual. My previous post made mention of ‘..my six year old…’ and what should happen but a nearly-six-year-old arrived at my workshop to continue with her painting. It is true that a six year old can do it. The language of infantilising is another instance of ideology disguised as judgement. Having put both images on the post, comparison is both necessary and inevitable.
Still maybe unfinished or should it be incomplete? I decided to make ‘marks’ on this referring back to stuff from the past, little echoes of Abstract Expressionism. I told myself that I would follow my inclinations, do what I felt I would do and if it turned out to be a nice piece of visual pot-pourri, or even some of that Garden Centre scented woodchip and dead flowers stuff in a wooden bowl then so be it. Placing ‘marks’ on a surface is just a compositional exercise – that the marks have ‘meaning’ is unavoidable, some describable, others, perhaps the most powerful, just beyond the reach of words. Meaning in marks maybe relies too much upon a conventional sense of literal meaning, whereas the visual is to do with the a kind of gravitational attraction. It is too a function of personality to be concerned about such issues. As with the hypochondriac, the fear of some chronic artistic disease may be debilitating in itself. Monkey-typerwriter syndrome is a worry. ‘I do this and then I do this and this dribbles down here and produces this effect.’ Amongst all the monkeys with all the typewriters, some of us will develop a disposition for certain keys and rhythms, and do nice things.
The experience of the nice is like experience in general, ordered in our schemes of things by the processes of taste. Reading a work and experiencing it are neither the same thing nor mutually exclusive. I went to the Towner recently (New Eyes, work from the Towner collection curated by six artists from Bluemonkeynet ) and was shocked by my experience of some of the work- colour field stuff , John Hoyland and others whose names of course escape me just as I need them. A sense of relief to just be there with it, stuff of the ‘my six year old could do that’ kind. How lovely to be such a six-year-old. Perhaps it is a matter of choosing your guns and sticking to them? But which gun? Some of this one is nice.
My blogging has all but disappeared. I have a strange feeling of losing all energy and motivation, in and out of a painter’s limbo. This painting is a reflection of that state. Whenever I don’t know what to do, I tend to MAKE DOTS. (I just hit the caps button by mistake and ‘make dots’ emerged as ‘MAKE DOTS.’ And it seemed appropriate.) That’s what I do when I am painting. I do something unintentionally that acts as a suggestion. Dots seem to have a life, they buzz and colour comes alive. Repetition is the essence of limbo. It leads to weariness and then a kind of becalmed exhaustion. I think I might be a Modernist. It worries me. This picture will be/is titled, ‘Who’s a Pretty Boy Then?’ But the dead creature doesn’t speak, rather, ‘Who Was a Pretty Boy Then?’ I have the feeling that the dots and colour are somehow restorative of the life of the bird, as painting hopefully restores life to the painter. I have a self-destruct switch which drifts into sight sometimes. I can see it now. It controls my feelings of ambivalence to what I am doing – on-off-on-off. I place a colour, love it immediately and then recoil from its shallow prettiness. What I do is what I am. The painting looks at me, is an accusation. If it can somehow ‘work’ the accusation is refuted, one truth deflected by another. But what nonsense it all seems as the switch flicks on and off.
