I’ve decided to paint 20 or so layers of primer on the canvasses – sanding them down in between coats, so that eventually I will have a mirror-like surface. After that who knows what will evolve?
I started this afternoon, it was quite meditative and fitted into my normal day-to-day chores quite well: chopping wood, charging the fires, cooking leek and potato soup, making applications . . .
It occurred to me whilst methodically applying the primer that it is four years since I finished my course at the RCA in printmaking – and I started to reflect on how my work and outlook has moved on.
For me working in the printmaking dept was a revelation – the teaching, based on an ethos of working in multi-media, had a profound effect on me. Within the dept, as long as students included some element of printing in the process of making, anything was acceptable, from sculpture and performance to video.
Something Chris Orr said to me in a tutorial once has stayed with me as well, I’m not sure if it’s his catch-phrase though: “The work must be shit-hot!”. It is so true – every image I release into the world shouldn’t just be acceptable, it must succeed in every way.
Being there was such a buzz and such an inspirational environment in which to work.
I was invited to stay on for a three year course and was very tempted. I spoke to one of the tutors, who is coincidently a friend of my wife’s, and she persuaded me that it was not necessarily the only route for me to take. I have a young family and a great life here in the Pyrenees – it would have meant living in dodgy digs in London, being broke and missing my family all the time.
My work has moved on since my time there – I was stuck in a rut, now I feel free to create whatever I wish, be it sound-art, video, painting, collagraphs . . . it all co-exists and feeds into each other. The camp at Rivesaltes also acts as a powerful context for what are basically landscapes.
The exhibitions and screenings I’ve been part of since have been really exciting, but as my mother-in-law points out they don’t make much money. Sometimes it’s hard to understand it’s not about the money (even though I do earn a living from the sales of my paintings).
Back to the here and now . . . my video camera screen has broken, so I need to replace it, also I need a more powerful computer and faster hard-drive to enable me to continue creating videos without the added stress of technical problems. Four years ago I had a sale in my studio and sold over a hundred old paintings and prints for 50E each – I need to do that again.
