I went to the Jerwood space yesterday, to hear a panel discussion focussing on opportunities for emerging artists. The panel consisted of Josh Lilley, a gallery owner; Julie Lomax, Head of Visual arts at Arts Council England; David Rayson, Professor of Painting at the RCA; and David Cotterrell, an artist.
I suppose I mainly wanted to know whether there was anything I ought to know/do that I didn’t already. In respect of that, there probably wasn’t much that came as a surprise. The fact that galleries like to feel they’ve spotted you, not the other way round – people have been telling me that for years! The fact that networking really matters – all the Private Views and stuff like that – ditto (unfortunately, for a shy soul like me).
But what I came away feeling generally encouraged, and glad I’d come all the way up from North Essex. I can’t remember why, but early on the audience was asked for a show of hands, to see how much of the audience would describe themselves as painters – and a large proportion did! I hadn’t expected that at all. I suppose my preconception is that the majority of artists would identify mainly with installation and photography. Does it matter? After all, you could say that if there are lots of other painters out there, it only adds to the competition. But I don’t feel that; I just feel some sense of camaraderie, of a shared endeavour.
All the panellists came across well, I thought. I particularly enjoyed what David Rayson had to say. Such as ‘Live in your own film – do it to such a degree that it becomes a reality’ (he elaborated more on this, but I can’t write that fast, so didn’t get it down on paper). The event was being filmed; we weren’t told what for, but I’m assuming it will go on YouTube or something via A-N.
I had a quick whisk round the Jerwood painting show again; I saw it a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to blog about it, but haven’t yet got around to it. I shall soon.
A sense of community with other artists is important to me. But I’ve never been someone who is comfortable networking in the traditional way: cosying up to the ‘right’ people at exhibition openings, for example. Which is part of the reason I began writing and reading artist blogs: to get a wider sense of engagement with other artists – especially painters – and an awareness of, and perhaps also dialogue with, what they are doing and who they are as people.
And I want more videos! Ones in which artists speak about their artistic practice and concerns, and which show them at work or at least in their working environment. Thanks to the website of the wonderful Millennium gallery in St Ives I discovered a beautiful little film by Stuart Lansdowne about Naomi Frears; really worth watching. If anyone reading this knows of other short films about contemporary artists, please let me know. Surely, there must be loads out there, but I can’t seem to find them.
http://www.millenniumgallery.co.uk/naomifrears/interview.htm
I had a wonderful day of gallery-hopping in London with a painter friend on Saturday. We went to a lot of shows; the ones that resonated most with me were Phyllida Barlow at the Serpentine, Angela de la Cruz at Camden Arts Centre, Jenny Saville’s ‘Reproduction Drawings’ series at Gagosian, and Audrey Reynolds at Arcade. I’d never even heard of Audrey Reynolds before. As my friend said, ‘she really is a painter’s painter’. I loved the work and I also loved the piece that Jonathan Griffin wrote accompany the show. He writes beautifully about stains: ‘there is something reassuring about the indelibility of a stain. It is an index of an event that refuses to budge, a memory that promises to hold fast until we choose to discard it, along with the surface it’s anchored in. It is also personal: a stain belongs, by and large, in private and indoors’. Reynolds’ work has a quiet, delicate lightness of touch that stays in the mind for a long time. She also makes me think again about trying different supports, such as wood (perversely, since I have so many fresh new canvases stacked up in the studio!), and different media, such as household paint.
http://www.arcadefinearts.com/
Have been doing boring admin stuff. Created a pdf for the first time yesterday (to attach to emails to advertise for portraits). Having had absolutely no training in graphic design or computer graphics it hasn’t come easily to me…
I have been advised to make a facebook page so I did that today as well. Phew. I have some reservations about this; for example, don’t facebook claim to have some sort of ownership over the images? But as they are on the web anyway maybe there’s no problem. Spoke to a friend at the weekend who’s a composer. He said that having made some of his music available to download free of charge on the internet has resulted in various paid commissions. Could it work that way for visual art, I wonder? Your thoughts please….
And by the way, if anybody reading this is on facebook, please feel free to ‘like’ my page, which is called ‘Emma Cameron Artist’.
Really, I just want to bury myself in primed linen and linseed oil – this digital stuff is all a pretence….
My students would often describe themselves as ‘passionate’ about making art. For some of them this had a ring of truth, and of course there are many ways of defining the term. I’m reflecting on today’s long, tiring and not entirely fruitful session in the studio, and I think: this must be what ‘passionate about painting’ is. Why else would I spend such inordinate amounts of time, money and energy wrestling with paint? (Not literally wrestling, obviously, though sometimes it gets close…) One of the paintings I was working on has been through several incarnations over the past year, of which at least three (as I recall) were actually pretty successful. It looks completely different now. Definitely not better (yet). I keep struggling on with it because – why? – because of the search for resolution, I suppose, resolution on my own terms. I’m tired. But I can’t let it go. I sometimes think I could make a piece of video art by setting up a camera in the studio to record my practice over a long period of time. (Being video, it might be seen as more ‘contemporary’ than painting – or perhaps that’s just me being cynical and simplistic…) Anyhow, it could play a part in the debate about what on earth painting is for. I wonder how many other people I could find who would agree that there was a point to all the working and re-working. And out of those, how many would see ‘resolution’ in a piece at the same point as I do – probably none! As a friend of mine says about her own artistic practice, ‘it’s as if I’m a scientist, devoting my life solely to studying the particular effects of frost on the left front hoof of a certain type of llama when above 1000 metres – how many other people are going to care about that?’
But it’s okay. Put the dinner on and get the kids to their swimming lesson.
