Notes from an obsessive/compulsive butterfly

I have absolutely no idea how to go about making some of the things I want to make. B*gger. Challenge is supposed to be good for something or other, and I probably wouldn’t enjoy it if it was easy. Bring it on.

So, last night, sat as usual with a glass of wine, some music and my note book, working through a few ideas in my head (*put it to paper before I forget*). Scribbled down an idea, then bang! – that one idea led to another, and another, and another, and another, in a few short moments. Same thread, so exactly on the button, yet a whole new range of possibilities sparking a new level of excitement for me. Gives me butterflies.

Sometimes I wonder if I am slowly going mad, and other times I feel like the descent is gathering pace.

It seems I put myself under a lot of pressure; I think many artists do. Is there an alternative? I wonder how much of my conscious (and subconscious) thought is constantly preoccupied and searching. Hands up if you find yourself in the middle of a conversation, or doing something, and your eye (or your mind’s eye) suddenly gets completely distracted? Is this normal behaviour, or is it just me?

A lot on my mind at the moment.

Curiously, thinking about works as a body of work – before some of the individual pieces have even been conceived – is challenging, in an odd way. I’m not sure that I have ever gone down this road before. I have worked on what I knew beforehand to be a finite series, with a predetermined conclusion, but this is completely different.

I’m talking about a new series, which I fully expect to be a long term project, and specifically my own terms of reference for that. For a while I felt that I was struggling with rationalising the work, when in reality what I was doing was looking to define it in some way, and probably for the benefit of others. Of course I don’t need to do that, but what I did need to do is to order it in my own mind, to understand myself what I am leading to. With that in place I can therefore know what is evolution, and what is merely meandering. My parameters are not complex, in fact deliberately to the contrary. That’s sort of the point. I like the fact that the works will be carefully crafted and follow certain rigorous aesthetics, yet be based on an automatic response to a random thought. That’s it.

Workshop induction yesterday, sorting leaflets for distribution for 6by4 this morning, and currently trying to write a proposal for funding. My first time for this, and not quite sure where to start. There is a fair amount of guidance available (such as on A-N), but somehow I know it isn’t going to be a case of simply filling in the blanks if I want it to stand any chance of success. I’m off to Frieze tomorrow. I have seen a few photographs here and there, and I have a feeling I’m not going to be blown away. If I can I want to get to ‘Sunday’ as well. This sounds promising from what I have heard. Hmmm, something else: I have been very busy, but I don’t seem to have produced any work…..

I have a confession to make. I have been blogging elsewhere – I feel like I have been unfaithful, since it was here on Artists Talking that I made my first tentative steps into blogging. The problem was that I wanted to write about some things which felt very personal, and I was not sure that I wanted to air them here. In fact the ‘other’ blog is also public, and under my name, but, appearing in a less specific forum, it seems more anonymous somehow. It was a useful exercise for me, because I now have a much better perspective on exactly how much my life and my work are intertwined. I suppose I felt that I was obliged to talk about my work here (although looking back I see that I was starting to drift off-topic from time to time), whereas there are things that take place all the time which are inextricably linked to my work. Anyway, confession over, now you know.

I have been very busy whilst I have been away. An experimental painting was selected for John Moores 2010, and is currently on exhibition in Liverpool. I was also selected for Salon 2010 at Matt Roberts Arts, which I am very excited about. And I have been making work with dead flies. Barking mad as it may sound, for me it is one of the most exciting pieces I have made so far.