Painting to Some Purpose

The week started well. I found some direction with my work and now feel as if I know where I am going. It was good to take a step back and read through my blog and my sketchbooks to find where I’d gone wrong and confused myself. I’m putting the plastic away for a bit as it’s not the way I want to work, and feels all too cold. I’ve been spending the week painting and drawing, not because I feel safe in doing so, but because that is where my work has taken me. I’m letting each piece of work I’ve done recently to inform the others, and have been making models of parts of these drawings and paintings. I think these things could become something on their own, and could get quite delicate.

It goes back to what I was doing a few months ago, with the box the I built and allowed to fall apart, and from this produced a series of drawings. I am following this idea further as I think the idea of building something and letting it fall apart has the potential to say many things and lead me in any direction. And that’s what I want, my work to lead me.

I’ve been meaning to write a post on this for a while, and now seems as good a time as any. Before Christmas I fortunate enough to tag along to Art Live in London. It was aimed at ‘A’ Level and BTEC students and their teachers from what I could gather. It was an interesting day of talks by Martin Creed, Quentin Blake, Germaine Greer and Gary Hume. Some of the things these guys said really struck a chord with me, so I’m glad I went along. The theme of the day was ‘What is Art?’

Martin Creed was an interesting character. I don’t think many of the students knew who he was or what was going on. He didn’t have any slides or imagery, instead he decided on somekind of performance. He had a dancer shadowing his every move, and seemed to be intentionally stuttering and umming his way awkwardly through the 30 minute or so talk. He was also filming it. He said that he didn’t know what his work was about, and when asked why he makes his work, came back with the answer “because I want to make my life better”, and his work is what he does to help him live. He also said that artists are attention seekers. Feeling bad inspires him because he wants to feel better. He went on to say that it is impossible to know what you’re doing with your work because you’re inside yourself, and you can’t know what it is like to experience the work as anyone else, I found that point interesting as I often feel that way about my practice. I think I got a lot from what he said, but maybe that’s becuase I was familiar with his work, maybe some of the kids were just confused.

Gary Hume was the final speaker, he was a last minute replacement for Anthony Gormley. Once again, it was a presentation without any imagery. He said he’d spoken alongside a slide show before and it hadn’t worked which is fair enough. Once again, as I was familiar with his work I got a lot from what he said, and I guess with what he said, images of his work weren’t that important, although it did spawn the question “what kind of art do you do?” from a student at the end of the talk. Anyway, Gary Hume was saying how thought and excitement runs out, maybe he’s referring to motivation and dry spells here, so it’s always re-assuring to know that established artists have the same problems as me. He seemed to say a lot of one liners, so I’ll just list them as I did in my sketchbook that day, I quite like them: be willing to fail, out of step, create your own world, be embarrassed and embrace that – it’s crucial, make bad work – as worse as you can, when you make something beautiful you experience real pain, beauty becomes the goal, allow yourself to become deluded, the love of moving stuff about, if you have very little, use every little bit of it, you get nagging ideas in your head while you’re doing other things, if you’re low about your work, you’re probably right’. He also said “be unemployed and make things” which i didn’t like, especially coming from someone who found success straight from their degree show, but then kind of made up for it by saying that he can’t stop painting as it just gives him too much pleasure.

Overall I found the day really useful, and got a lot out of it, maybe more than the students who it was actually aimed at.

I think I started the new year in a bit of a panic, thinking that I had to finish stuff and start lots of new stuff and finish that off, all immediately. I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure that is why I have been second guessing everything I’ve been doing and over-complicating things. I am tempted to almost start again with my work and try to forget what I’ve been doing for these last few months.

I spent the end of last week looking back at a painting I did on a large canvas a short while back. I took two shapes from this and used this as a starting point for a new piece, so I have some large floaty pigment marks on some see through canvas. I feel the need to keep it simple. I like the way that an older piece of work has directly informed something new, but this now seems to have little to do with what my work is about. I think I just need to put my ideas to the back of my head for a week or two and just make stuff, and then I can begin to piece it all back together.

I was working quite small for a while too, and I think that was a bad move. Everything was looking a bit stale and samey. This happened before though, and it’s almost as if going through this process is echoed in my ideas, which is about movement through layers.

Happy New Year/decade. I’ve spent the last few weeks in reflective mode. I was starting to find it hard to concentrate on my work in December, so decided to have a studio clear up which would give me a nice clear space to come back to after the Christmas period. It was a nice feeling to come back on Monday morning. I’d hidden away most of the work that I had deemed unsuccessful or irrelevant to my current ideas and feelings. I was left with my most recent stuff on the walls, and most of it is pretty small stuff.

My first thought when I returned to the studio was ‘oh dear, I’ve been overcomplicating things here’. It looks too busy, and in that respect unresolved and messy. Nothing wrong with that at such, these are just test pieces, and it’s all an important part of the journey. I’d been thinking about this over the Christmas, about reducing things down, making things really simple, just one mark, just one shape. I’d began to touch on this a couple of posts back when I posted a few images that seemed quite empty. Last night, I was thinking about the work that isn’t seen. All the backup stuff that lead to the piece of work in the gallery. An artist could spend months/years making tons of work, each one becoming more refined until the end result is something really simple. Maybe that’s where I’m heading. I don’t want an ‘end’ result though, because what comes after the end?

I need to learn how to stop myself doing too much to a piece of work. I’ve always struggled with this, i find it the hardest bit, but it’s great when you finally nail it, although I’m not sure I ever have. Is it a confidence thing. Does it go back to the artist statement?

My work always seemed to have a rawness, agressive mark making kind of look/feel. It was very drawing-like. i was inspired by the neo-expressionists. I was encouraged in this direction during the 3rd year of my degree, and then I kept going with it. I guess I got bored of working in that way and everything was looking the same. The more work I did, the more interesting it seemed, but I think I maybe ended up going down the wrong road for a while. A friend of mine once said that, with regards to his work, he was becoming his own worst enemy, and I think I was maybe heading in that direction. The final few small pieces of work that I was playing around with before the end of the year seem to offer me some kind of clue as to where my work will go from here.

Firstly, thanks to Clare and Rebecca for their recent comments.

I find it amazing how much my feelings about my work change on a weekly/daily/hourly basis. Last week, I was feeling positive about it. I felt I had some sort of vague direction with regards to what I was doing and that my ideas were going someway to matching up with what I was making.

Then Monday came about and the first thing that came into my head when I looked through my recent work was the word ‘no’. I’m normally quite good at working through these moments by just making work and seeing what happens, but I’ve found myself disagreeing with everything that I’ve done and written this week and it’s starting to do my head in a little. I think I’m contradicting myself with what I’m writing in my notebook about my work and what I’m actually putting onto canvas and paper. It’s a bit like cheating myself by saying that through the layers in my work I’m reducing the content and simplifying things, and then I go and overcomplicate my work with too many brushstrokes. I think I got to this stage by trying to write a statement about my work, but that’s another matter, and has been a good process.