I’ve been in the Lake District all week, out walking in the hills every day, letting the richness of the landscape wash through me. The colours, the drama of ‘the Sublime’, the light (sun every single day!), but most of all it’s the textures that feed me. Mosses and lichens and rocks and glittering water. And never once do I feel that I want to ‘paint it’, or make any other kind of artwork around it. I often wonder why it is that for me, the urge to make art is so very particular in its focus. Am I unconsciously restricting myself, damming up some of the channels of creativity in favour of the one that primarily addresses the human form, and does so primarily in paint?
I’ve been offered a solo show for February 2012. I’m pleased by the timing because it gives a good length of time to gradually amass work for it. I work on some of my paintings, on and off, for years. It’s one of the deep joys and luxuries of not being a student!
Meanwhile I need to think about a show that’s coming up in June. I’d always planned this one as a chance to give some older work another airing. The trouble is that whenever I say that, I generally end up being unable to bear to show old work, because the new work is always what excites me most. What should I do with the old work? It gets stacked up, taking up space. Of course some can be painted over, some ripped up, but… what about the paintings that lots of people say they really like, and that I think are good. No-one has yet bought them, but they may well sell one day. Oh to be Marlene Dumas or Shani Rhys-James, wistfully I imagine that they probably have someone scuttling around removing finished work and either selling it straight away or putting it safe storage somewhere!
Space pressures in my little studio are intense at the moment, because I’m doing so many different things concurrently… Paintings (several at once) plus all the oil-painting equipment; large drawings, with a broad selection of pots of acrylic, ink, pastels, pencils, charcoal, etc; and then there’s the new portrait painting side of things, with a chair for the sitter etc.
Loads of artists live here in Wivenhoe. I walk the dog along the estuary most days, often with an artist friend, and generally bump into another one or two. One friend maintains that ‘when artists get together, all they talk about is money (or lack of it)’. Which has a grain of truth, but thankfully we do often talk about other stuff as well. I do appreciate this; it’s good to share thoughts, successes and moans with other people in a similar situation.
The other day I was told that Wivenhoe features in ‘Country Living’ magazine this month, as one of the ‘Top 10 best Artists’ Colonies’. I had a little look at the article in a shop yesterday and it’s true. No artists’ names mentioned, no photos of studios or work, just talk of the village being ‘attractive’ and arty and an easy commute into London, and ideas of house prices. (Yet again someone’s trying to make money out of artists, arguably with no benefit at all to us..!)
I’m getting into the studio a bit more than I expected to (given that it’s the school holidays). Hooray!
Silly really, but I feel compelled to add to my blog now, so that the portrait of my son won’t be the first work of mine that someone sees when they look at the Project Blogs page… This uneasiness about portraiture, I know a lot of artists and other arts professionals share it… I think for me it began the moment I first stepped through Central St Martins’ doors, aged 18. Thoughts, anyone? I’d love your comments. Now I’ll put up a different work to go with this post and probably feel more comfortable…
The fact that we artist-bloggers don’t just moan on and on endlessly about time and money is pretty incredible really. I know most of us (me included) have an ongoing battle with allowing ourselves any decent time in the studio to reflect and be really creative… I take my hat off to those artists who are the main wage-earner in the household, but there are also massive, complicated pressures on the rest of us (like me). This week I’ve actually managed very little time on what I think of as ‘my work’, though at least I’ve been in the studio a reasonable amount (working on a portrait commission, mainly – I’ve realised I’m going to have to start doing some portraits to make ends meet, until I have another show). Other than that there’s always the family to be looked-after (they’re cute and lovely but need time and care), the dog to be walked (ditto) and the house to be somehow managed (none of us are tidy and it all gets out of hand quite regularly). And the schools break up today for the Easter holidays…
Stop whingeing, Emma, and get into the studio! (At least I’ve got one…)
