Threads

A friend asked the other day, after I had posted a photo of my latest drawing on Instagram “What’s it for?” I knew what she meant, as I had mentioned submission dates. But instead of answering that, I chose to go for the gag and answered “It’s a drawing!” Yeah I know, daft.

But the answer really isn’t that easy is it? Yes, of course it’s a drawing. And it’s not “for” anything. It has no practical purpose. But why after all these years do I still find myself struggling to justify my primary occupation? It’s a drawing. I did it because I like drawing and felt compelled to do it. I have ideas about them, of course but not all of those ideas do I feel the need to make public. They have purpose for me. They are simultaneously stimulating and calming. I wrestle with composition, colour and texture… they have to work for me on an aesthetic level. They are like maps of ideas; stories about encounters; they are expressions of my trains of thought. They are also everything and nothing; personal and universal; they are huge and microscopic.

Over time, they change. I use different materials, the textures change, the marks morph over time, they pick up bits of reality as I go along, and absorb, abstract and reiterate.

But I don’t really know what they are for. They are drawings. The process of making it isn’t quite everything, because I am concerned with the aesthetics… but it is a lot.

Large scale drawing is somewhat of an endurance task.

And I’m not Match Fit for it. 

I’m back in the studio as full time as I can be now. I’ve done some explorations and exploratory drawings on smaller paper – about A3. I tried out some different materials and made different marks, and got obsessed with greens. The favourite currently is the one you get mixing my two old favourites, Payne’s grey and yellow ochre. Especially because sometimes they don’t mix, and if left in a jar for a couple of days you get a lovely sediment that sits beautifully on the paper. Anyway, after visiting Ian Andrews in his studio in Aston… he’s another drawer of large abstracts… I came away full of inspiration and a recommendation for a different sort of paper. Which of course I ordered as soon as I got home. It’s called giant size, because it’s 4’x5’ approx, and 400gsm, so is very heavy and robust and is taking whatever I throw at it, including leaving a large puddle sat on it over a couple of days. 

I have been trying to decide whether to use ink or graphite on this delicious ground. I am full of indecision about work lately, but in the end, came down to ink because that’s what I wanted to feel, sliding my old nibs over this glorious paper. I may well decide to use graphite too, but it does make me twitchy as I am a bit of a purist. I am not mixed media. I hummed and hawed over whether I should allow myself to use masking fluid, but then eventually did, because it becomes an absence, not a presence of something different.

I am not Match Fit… I said… the concentration required for a drawing this size is lacking, as is the physical strength to be at it for too long at a time. I’m coming away from it every 20 minutes or so. Which is good for my eyes and joints I’m sure, but I feel I need to immerse myself in it for longer periods to get the best from it. Also, I am full of doubts. From all sorts of directions. 

But I shall persevere… after lunch…

Nothing in one’s art practice is ever really separate is it?

As a sort of detour/tangent I find myself working with Bill and Helen again. Last time the project was called Radio Public, this time Radio Public Library, and with a heritage focus on the library of Brierley Hill in all its guises across a hundred years or so of history. We look at the nearly derelict Carnegie Library and Institute, ripe for redevelopment. We also look at the “modern” 1970s building on the high street currently undergoing refurbishment as part of the programme of investment in the town. While this library is closed, the staff and a few of the most popular shelves and resources have decamped to St Michael’s church on the top of the hill. A strange building to house a library, out of the way of the usual footfall, and burdened with an extra layer of respectful hush. And we work in a room with glass walls, witnessing, but so far not participating until we know the way forward.

In the last project I did find that bits of my practice leaked in, materially, and theoretically, and methodologically… and then it was unexpected. I had thought it would sit separately. This recent iteration, finds me thinking (maybe more appropriately this time?) About words and books and stories. About half way through the session I find myself, slightly tearfully, telling my father’s story/stories. We spoke about the maps of our families’ journeys. I told of how my knowledge of my family tree was  short and stubby, and that I couldn’t go back any further than my own grandparents on either side. Both of my parents were immigrants, my mother from Ireland and my father from Serbia. They had very different lives, but were brought together by circumstance, geography and love in post-war Worcestershire. In the group we talked about a sense of home and belonging. In recent times, after decades of feeling of myself as British, deeply English even… I find that the political attitude towards immigrants recently has made me feel vulnerable, and that my roots don’t go nearly deep enough to combat that feeling, even though I am “safe” here. I am white, I have a hybrid midlands accent, I only speak English, and I have a common culture with many of my peers. If I feel unsettled, how awful must those with darker skin, stranger accents, and a more recent traumatic journey feel? I am a generation removed from that, but still feel it. I wonder do my children feel any of that?

The library, as well as being a repository of stories, fulfils a social function that is difficult to quantify. There are shelves here containing books written in Romanian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian… feel at home… feel a little bit more that you belong…

As I wandered around the church yard, looking again at fallen twigs and trees that are hundreds of years old, and family graves of several generations, I think again of the roots and the rootless. This initially “separate” tangent of collaborative work has once again attached itself to me and my wider practice. 

Suddenly I can start to see the drawing on the scarily large paper… something rooted, or something rootless? A disembodied twig, crunched underfoot? Or one that is still pliable, attached to its tree, in bud, leaf, flower…?