Dead and dying flowers

I’ve been thinking about Jon Bowen’s letter in a-n magazine.

And sitting on this for days.

Making money is not sufficient cause for making art.

All materials are equal.

A cardboard box can equal a tube of paint.

Art is a product of technical process.

Art is a product of intellectual process.

Technical process and intellectual process constitute thought.

The distinction between technical and intellectual process is false.

‘Skill’ is an honorific term.

‘Skill’ is the form of intelligent reflective (reflexive?) action.

‘Skills’ are not discrete entities.

It is impossible to talk about skills as discrete entities.

‘Skills’ cannot be taught.

Techniques can be taught.

All disciplines are conceptually generated and technically realised.

The distinction between ‘conceptual’ and ‘skill’ based disciplines is false.

The distinction between conceptual and intellectual, technique and skill is false.

Forms are their content(s); form and content occur simultaneously.

The appropriation of technical process is a political act.

The proper response to an artwork is another artwork.

Teachers and lecturers are powerful people.

Teaching and lecturing (might) encourage pursuit of power.

Most artists disappear.

Many ‘artists’ live in a state of nostalgia.

Bad art is better than mindless art.

£50 is money misused for a dashed off seaside.

Occasionally I get to a position where I am drained. Motivation is limited. Sometimes it is simply tiredness. Or the imagination dries up. That itchy feeling in the fingertips that signifies a need to work subsides. This week I made myself draw. I have a thrush which will not last much longer. My mind goes in circles; circles are all that there are when problems are not resolved. Problems are never resolved; the circle buckles. Problems hang like old keys on a ring. I still have difficulties with my ‘artist’s statement’. What can I say? I paint and draw. Dead birds. Dead flowers. Some pretty pictures. I have a part in an exhibition next month, at the Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham – on – Sea. I have been framing photographs, about 25 in all. Funny thing framing. A statement of value. Frame is the boundary. Glass protects. Mount surrounds and enhances. The precious is protected. Art is contradicted by artifice. Taste satisfies its demands on the work. I invent a rationale for the rejection of ‘artists’ statements’, to make myself feel better. It is connected to our culture of management, control, and accountability. My irritability looks for subjects. Escape routes. Sometimes, anything but what might be true. My photographs are a sigh of relief and a reminder.

A little plus. Some time ago I entered a self portrait in an Ovendenarts online competition!! A book has been published of some of the entries, (compiled by Craig Kerrecoe), including this.

You can see a preview of the first 15 pages or so of the book on the publisher’s website:
http://beautifulcariadbooks.com/
or http://ovendenart.com/

Line and bird have met in the middle. I feel that these paintings resolve something. They retain uncertainty, but in the context of the images. Juxtaposition of bird and line creates for me a visual and felt dynamic. Found as they are lying where they died, the possible violence of their end is at odds with their continuing gentleness of form… I wonder if there is a sense of loss somewhere in still living birds?

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A little experiment with the bird and a bit(e) of Derrida.