Pictures at an Exhibition – how the outsider artist in me is making things harder than they need to be.
‘Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?’ James Thurber
As the time for my exhibition draws near my dear ones have approached me in various roundabout ways, but all with a similar concern. It is always the people closest to you who can sniff out fear and indecision…
‘So how are you doing it then, your exhibition? Will it be chronological, showing your art through the ages, or by medium, subject matter?’
This question causes a sharp jolt to my heart as my mind leaps anxiously between the mental rooms in my head, soon to become the real ones in my exhibition, Four Rooms. I respond with flights of fancy to shield them (and me) from the vagueness of (less fancy) ideas while my voice gets higher and my heart beats so fast that I run out of steam and stumble to a lame finish, ‘but it will all be fine because I have so much work.’ – Of course it will…
‘The art of children, psychiatric patients and prisoners who create art outside conventional structures of art training and art production is often categorised as outsider art.’ Tate website
The problem is I have changed subject and medium a dizzying amount of times making any categorical organisation of my restless body of work almost impossible. Originally, I just wanted to be a ‘proper’ artist, the traditional kind, mainly portraiture and still life, and the occasional dead pet. I spent most of the1980s trying to master the techniques of the old masters and chasing open competitions of art institutions, especially if they had ‘Royal’ in their name, collecting their acceptances like Brownie points.
Soon I was feeding London galleries which set up a supply and demand. This went well until one day a gallery owner, looking askance at a selection of my works said, “Oh no too much yellow, I’m afraid lemon is just so unpopular at the moment.”
It brought home to me just how arbitrary the whole art scene was and without the back up of a proper education, it had begun to feel a bit like blagging.
‘I had wanted to be a sculptor throughout life, but to do so, I had to stop painting.’ Fernando Botero
One happy day I thought my ship had come in when I received an invitation to apply for membership of the Royal Watercolour Society, however I was stumped by the first question on the form,
‘Where did you complete your art degree?’
Big life events meant that I had only ever completed a foundation course, but now I was determined to get the necessary degree, joining the second year of a BA Hons degree course at UCA, where I stayed on to complete an MA in Contemporary Fine Art and sculpture.
I know, sculpture… I can still pinpoint the exact moment of that transition. I had been drawing portraits in a women’s prison for a university project and was horrified to find while researching that the practice of shackling women prisoners during labour was only abolished in 1996! Responding with my usual medium of artistic expression, felt inadequate, so I vented my anger and frustration by painting directly on to a doll. I had crossed mediums. I always cross mediums when I get stuck.
Untitled – painted doll – vintage doll, acrylic paint – label 2009.
‘At the dinner table when I was very little, I would hear people bickering… To escape the bickering, I started modelling the soft bread with my fingers. With the dough of the French bread – sometimes it was still warm – I would make little figures. And I would line them up on the table and this was really my first sculpture.’ Louise Bourgeois
Sculpture opened a rich sensory door in my head allowing through, texture in the round, and new ways of looking. In this new medium with no personal history, I could abandon myself to experimental play and more easily assimilate the rigour of critical thinking as well as being allowed to make unholy alchemical, (sometimes explosive) messes.
‘If you don’t like the road youre walking on pave another one.’ Dolly Parton
Post MA, I tried hard to be a proper, bona fide even, academic artist but fortunately at the interview to determine my suitability for PHD study, fate intervened by giving me a cold, which caused me to accidently overdose on perfume. I had no way of knowing that the interviewing professor was an allergy sufferer, until he responded with an impressive sneezing fit, so violent it blew me backwards on my wheelie chair, ripping apart and damaging several stacked canvases behind me. The prof, by now hanging out of the window still mid-conniption, waived me away… Some things aren’t meant to be.
Post university I this time I tried to be a proper conceptual artist, and managed to exhibit new work in several London shows, but the work was too modern/young and didn’t go with my face, besides, at private views I stuck out like a sore thumb in my smart/casual dress amongst the cool, carefully deshabille young ones. It just wasn’t my time.
‘To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.’ Phillip Guston
With only intermittent exhibitions and limited success, after a ten-year painting abstinence it took serious illness to get me to finally pick up a brush. During a breath-holding chance painting in the sun, the muscle-memories of halcyon days spent painting directly anything I found beautiful or interesting, came flooding back! So too did memories of turbocharged, high-speed demonstrations with dangerously wet, spreading watercolour from my days as a demonstrator for Daler-Rowney. And that’s when I realised – am in a creative no man’s land, as weird hybrid artist, happy in the margins and border posts, crossing over and back at will – I claim this as my territory.
Just Like Starting Over – chance painting in the sun – Gouache on pastel paper 2023.
‘The medium bears the artist.’ Don Flavin
So, back to the Four Rooms exhibition which will necessarily be a mixed bag, a multi-faceted pick n’ mix. And now that I have mentally aired and rearranged the rooms, I can confidently say there will be conceptual sculpture, including a sprinkling of audacious new log pieces. There will also be some spontaneous figurative watercolour and gouache paintings made directly from the subject with some abstract mark-making from my demonstrating days. There will also be some oil paintings from the archive. The many musicians I have drawn over the years will be represented with a bespoke book and paintings.
And finally, there will be selected pieces to illustrate the transitional slippage between mediums, those prescient moments, often the forerunners of new work, hanging alongside new transpositional work that hovers between painting and textile wall hangings and assemblage.
The Four Rooms Exhibition may not be like anything else you have encountered before, but I am pretty sure you won’t be bored.
It will all be fine – it’s my time now. Looking forward to your visit.
To Cover – Log, glove leather, silk thread.
