I got back to some painting. Just grey surfaces. Ultramarine blue and Burnt Siena make almost a black that becomes a beautifully soft grey with a little white. The grey can be nuanced with tints of other colours. The experience of putting these greys on a surface, nudging them gently in different directions with colour and touch is extremely satisfying.
Making delicate marks with the edge of a large brush, a physically understated coaxing of paint, engaged me with a visual and visceral gentleness that I had not anticipated when I started work. The surfaces seem as though they should work by themselves. (The voice from behind urges to me to do something useful!) They may identify a feeling but have no innate identity themselves. They are small areas cropped from an ocean of possibilities? They (or I) feel as though there is a need for need validation through a figurative element – something that can be pointed to and named, like a bird. So I shall have them around until I can trust them and the need subsides, or the object arrives. And having just photographed them to illustrate this post the void between word and image reasserts itself. It is possible to let both paint and words run away with you.
I have been away for a few days. I finished my sparrow paintings before I left. I say finished, but what I really do is gradually move away. Work finishes as my contact with it dies. (And the bird begins to decompose.) While I was away, I browsed in some antique markets. Their contents have some of the feel of the sparrow, things whose surfaces tantalisingly suggest a past. There is sadness attached to possessions whose life has brought them to the antique market, orphans waiting in limbo. A little like the souls that Andrew Bryant is trying to release. Hope is only a means to a temporary stay of execution?
Somebody once asked Barry John, one of Wales’s greatest rugby players, how he thought of the moves that he made in a game. John’s reply was that he didn’t think, he just did it. The questioner I believe was someone who saw thinking as an internalised verbal process which was applied to actions – actions premeditated by words. Rugby like all games is bound by rules which liberate its participants’ imaginations. The words that make up the rules are integral to the game but are not the game. One struggle that I have when working is to trust my actions and to forget (about) rules. ‘Sparrow 2’ was done in the light of yesterday’s image and blog post and comments.
In my garden is a swinging seat where I can sit quietly. This morning I found a sparrow lying dead in front of it. Like the pigeon before it, its arrival is timely. I have spent most of the day painting it. There is always a distance between intention and outcome, an expression of the distance between the problem and one’s ability to find solutions. I have wondered sometimes about the relationship between originality and forgery. It would be relatively easy to develop a ‘style’ which rendered subject matter in a manner which skirted around the problems. Often work reaches a point at which it ‘appears’ to be art – a stylistic integrity places the work within a ‘tradition’, and technique is all that is there. It is sometimes tempting to stop at that point. This is a kind of ‘forgery’ based upon self deception.
I cannot render the sparrow in all its intricate detail, because I do not have the technical competence, but work towards that end in order to avoid the seductions of style. That struggle and its discomforts then determine the outcome.
My exhibition comes down tomorrow. It has been an interesting experience. I have even sold a photograph! I spent the last two days clearing out my new shed to receive the returns. It had got to the state where nearly everything in it was leaning on the thing next to it. One thing falls down and the whole contents of the shed erupt. I have been working on my website, and it’s up and running – gathering momentum even, with thanks to Anthony Boswell who recommended Photium to me. I worked at my computer until my face ached! I find with my work that feelings of satisfaction compete with worries about technical qualities, relevance. There is a tension between being pleased with the results and an underlying fear of ridicule. And the same is true of blogging, once published it’s out there for better or worse.
Blogs are like conversations in one respect, but differ in that you can go back to the record and review it in a way that is difficult in face to face conversation. It is possible to see yourself from a distance. Rob Turner writes that ‘Time is the key to all this anxiety.’ Whilst tidying my shed, I found work that I had forgotten. It surprised me, as though I had found someone else’s work. And I quite liked it. To suddenly meet a work without your hang-ups in attendance is to see it more clearly. For me I know that my underlying insecurity is such a basic part of my makeup that I would probably be lost without it, but it’s reassuring to gain the perspective of time and to let the anxieties fall away (a little!). Rob writes that he believes that ‘…artists are made by the lives they live…’ Very true.
