Some years ago I wanted a dead bird for a painting. One morning I got into my car to go to the local shops. and drove out in the snow. I got about 100 yards from home, and in the middle of the road lay a bird, pristine black on white compacted snow. I got out, picked it up and took it home. Recently I painted two small studies of a dead female blackbird, and have been keeping my eye out for further specimens.Yesterday I went to a gallery, and on returning home I found a dead pigeon lying by my back door. My wife explained that it had flown into a window and had fallen where I found it. A delicate image created by the impact was left on my window. I felt that I must immediately start a painting as homage to the bird that unwittingly delivered itself to me. The advantage with the blackbird lay in the cold weather, which slowed down its decomposition, and there were no flies. The pigeon has chosen summer. I hope that whatever caused it to fly into a closed window is not contagious.
Andrew Bryant has published an article about the teaching of art/art teachers on Q-Art London. Also on Q-art, Fiona Flynn disparaged the idea of artists’ use of empty shops. (See Q-art/articles.)
Andrew’s response took Fiona to task for ‘siding with’ an un-named philistine. Having agreed with Fiona in the comments section I found myself a week ago installing my exhibition in a disused shop (building society actually)!!! It has been run by a group of volunteers, for the local community for 3 ½ years. Anyone can sell work there for £1 per work per week. There is as a matter of policy no selecting. If an artist wants to hang work to sell, £1 does it. The question of good/bad professional / ‘amateur’ is deliberately not an issue. This is immensely democratic and non-judgemental. (www.whatifgallery.co.uk) Andrew goes on to state that ‘even bad art (and who is to say what that is?) is preferable to shopping.’
I find the direction of Andrew’s debates interesting and provocative. The Q-art writing goes into more depth than is possible on a-n. My experience and understanding of psychoanalysis and modern philosophy is limited, so my response to his writing and my questions, are generated by curiosity. This question of ‘bad art’ for example; my favourite example of bad art is the work of Tretchikoff. I believe that a discussion can be had that would conclude that there is something amiss in his work. The notion of ‘bad’ is actually a term that follows analysis, and as such is not strictly necessary. Similarly with ‘good’; all that can be said to indicate quality of whatever level can be said without judgemental terms. The question ‘who is to say?’ what is bad art indicates a battle for dominance. The very use of the term ‘…even bad art…’ implies the existence of bad art. The problem might lie more in the concept of art. One view might be that the kind of work that Tretchikoff represents has no place in the concept; what is then said to be bad art is relieved of its status AS art. And that comes back to shopping. ‘Bad’ art is at its core exploitative, manipulative; ‘good’ art is at core simply honest. The gallery that my show is in is interesting in its illustration of the range of work that can attract positive judgements. The business of evaluating ties in with that of teaching as an element in the development of critical faculties (tastes vis-à-vis judgements) and further connects with capitalism (shopping). But is it simply that certain kinds of object commonly labelled art are just not art at all?
There are things and experiences that I enjoy such as line and colour, paper and paint. I am just searching. I have been working on some more photographs of sunsets at St Ives. There are hundreds of thousands of sunset pictures out there. Photographers’ websites sell them by the ton. Many are the product of high levels of technical expertise. They have a kind of clean-cut impact. At the same time much is cliché par excellence. It lives on a different continent to most of the work found on this site; it is a hollow distillation of visual good taste. My toes curl at the thought of my taking pictures of sunsets; but I cannot resist. I do want them to be simple and to avoid cliché. And it’s like eating a whole chocolate bar in one go. When they come out of my printer my mouth waters sometimes. The paper surface and the colours!!! But they might just be crass. And there’s the problem; what’s true is true. Just indulging in a pleasurable activity might be the extent of my practice! I think that as well as waffle a lot, what I do is to make images that I enjoy. I enjoy the making and the looking at them. I enjoy the movement and energy involved.
I am increasingly aware of the contradictions in my blogging, since I have previously stated that I am never really happy with what I do. The truth really consists of lots of little bits of truths, half truths and part truths, often contradictory. Contradictions are like tectonic plates, simultaneously destructive and creative. My problems are probably to do with guilt!
I used to suggest to kids to ‘feel with their eyes’ in a tactile sense and follow the sensation of surface qualities onto the paper. In a sense that is all that I do.
Have I found my practice?
I am rarely consistently happy with what I do. It is possible to see it one day with a degree of satisfaction, and the next with a degree of despair. The distance of objectivity is rarely achieved and hard won when it is. There is an over-riding need to do the work. Even if it is never shown, it nevertheless is a trace of a life; Breughel’s Icarus is the model, the world around him blissfully unaware of both his soaring and his demise. I feel for Icarus and identify with the ploughman. There is an urgency created by my lack of work. By now I should have a lifetime’s worth, and there isn’t a lifetime left in which to make up for what has not been done. The sense of mild panic that this generates can fuel a creative surge or frustrate it. Specific acts of looking are for me steps in a journey that has always a question mark in view. I have to confirm my practice anew with each piece that I make, through empathy with the qualities of subject-matter and physical satisfaction in materials. It is like setting out on a tightrope whilst being uncertain that the destination is securely tied.
Uncertainty is however never resolved, but passed ahead through the making of images, in the hope of finding some kind of equilibrium – a hope that if fulfilled might mean the end of the project; more important than the solution, is the next problem. One of my lecturers many years ago said to me that he could work all day, searching apparently in vain for something, and then at the end discover that he had been finding it all the time. The artist IS the consequence of practise and reflection. There is no choice. Whether there is homogeneity or fracture in the outcome, what happens has to be confronted. That is why the business of making art is so uncertain. But the only place an artist finds him/herself is in the work. I travel hopefully.
When I originally suscribed to a-n I had no real idea what it was about, except that there was some insurance in the package. I was hoping to show my work and felt that insurance would be useful. The consequent experience of blogging and commenting has opened up my thinking. I am a little afraid that my views are actually dated expressions of a comfortable middle class view of art –the opposite to what I hope is the case. ( Looking around the blogs, there do not seem to be many older geezers!) As a person who draws and paints figurative pictures, and who has arguably been out of the loop, it comes as a surprise to see what is out there. Maybe I should just get out more. Certainly it is possible for one’s lack of understanding to reveal itself through an attempt to ward off the threat of the new. And I find also that the more I try to articulate my thoughts, the less certainty I have about them.
Reading the blogs, there is an awful lot of funding going on. Is it possibly that the Blairite project of managerialism has appropriated the work of artists? Art and the municipal have settled down very nicely together. As a teacher I observed the rise and rise of officialspeak. Ofsted reports, comment banks and so on. Control the language and you control behaviour. It seems that there are echoes of it in many ‘artist statements’. Is it taught in Art Schools? It bothers me somewhat that I cannot become excited by much of what I see. The ideas contained in the work sometimes are interesting, but often there is a concern with social/ existential issues which seem to be more appropriate to theatre, sociology, writing; the work makes sense only through some mediating text. Otherwise it is often visually mundane. In my wilder dreams, my sunsets can be quite radical.
