i was at Marine Studios in Margate for their First Friday event, which on this occasion was about natural navigation, – navigating without maps basically and reading the natural world for signs – where I bumped into Rob Turner of “A walk with Cosmo” fame. We chatted a bit about dogs, of course, and then he said he thought my blog was a bit light. It’s quite interesting that and I suppose I’ve tried to keep these posts related to studio practice and since I haven’t really done alot of studio practice there’s not been much to write.
One of the first things I did when diagnosed was get my hair cut short in preparation for losing it all – and I mean all. I also decided I’d dress my way through it so tried to be stylish – got some nice hats – and got some outfits together, which isn’t to say there weren’t days of staying in and wearing the most depressing of tracksuits. Days of not doing anything much except sleep, but it was days not weeks, so I’ve been lucky. Everyone has said how well I’ve looked, all the way through; maybe it’s true but in some photos I definitely look ill and I definitely have been ill. Got some passport photos done yesterday in one of those booths and the result was pretty ghastly.
As I’m someone who lives very much in my head, I’ve just kept working – DAD stuff and my thesis which was a great chance to experiment with personal criticism: writing that weaves the personal into the theoretical. With that as with this blog, I’ve had to think about the issue of boundaries and limits: what do I choose to reveal, disclose, make public? What do I keep private? What is relevant in terms of my practice?
The body places limits: fatigue, stiffness, lack of strength, pain, all conspire to frustrate desire, ambition, plans. Drawing for me is where the body can be acknowledged in a non-heady way. My impossible heaps of lines are kind of growths and the final shape emerges as I draw; I think the process is close to the genesis that Klee refers to: “The work of art too is first of all, genesis: it is never experienced purely as result.”
This drawing is breast-like though I did not design it in advance to be like that. However, I quite like the fact that it is.
