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Inspiration is a peculiar thing isn’t it?

Been thinking about it since my last post about recognising one’s own working habits and patterns.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never experienced the *flash* thing that comes from nowhere. Mine is sneakier.

I follow niggly little ideas, read things, listen to music, watch things on tv (nothing terribly mind blowingly intellectual) listen to the radio. I draw: people, life models, flowers, children working in the classroom, the cat, clothes. Actually, lots of clothes. Most of my working sketch book pages contain clothes, bits of clothes, snips of fabric. And I talk. A lot. And I listen. Probably not as much as I should. I like the words, my conversations, other people’s…. And I collect them…

“…had one of those inflatable bananas in his…”

“Tuesday, any day but Tuesday”

“take that out of your mouth, NOW! Yakky!”

“he fell in the canal and they never…”

“she’s a right…”

“that godawful christmas tree dress”

“Why the hell did they call him Sidney? His name was George!”

“shut up, you’re boring me now!” (Copyright my friend Helen, circa 1995, thank you!)

“They spell it with a Z! A Z for goodness sake!”

“bleach potatoes vinegar compost”

“it’s all my eye and Betty Martin”

Snips of conversations, like the snips of fabric, get stored away.

(what does a christmas tree dress look like? Who is Sidney/George?)

Some are mundane, some are bafflingly funny.

What happens is a sort of critical mass thing. When there is enough stuff: music, words, clothes, fabric, whatever, connections are made, tentative at first, then reinforced by additional stuff… drip drip drip, and then, it sort of coalesces into a soup and makes a sense, tells me a new story. It gets drawn into the book and I stew on it. Then one day, I say yes.

Then I stitch like a bloody maniac and it’s made within the week.

That’s how inspiration works in my head.

It’s a Happy Thing.

I have been way-laid somewhat with various non-art chores. I believe it’s called “Real Life”…But I’m back on track. I can see a clear path through the clunkiness I mentioned in the previous post. I don’t know how other artists work, I know we’re all different. But do you think it takes a while to discover yourself how you work? It seems to have taken me years to recognise these patterns of work: feast and fallow, rise and fall, to be aware of them, and not scared by the fallow periods, or horrified by the clunkiness. I like to find an elegance, a spareness. Two words have stuck with me since doing the MA… a wise tutor (lovely Henry Rogers) once suggested I “avoid tautology”. These two words have stood me in good stead. If I’ve said something, I’ve said it. I don’t need to paint a picture (haha artist joke).

So, the clunk and the clumsy and the obvious reside in my sketch book, the manic period of collection and gathering stuff around me is done. (Apart from the twin set: I NEEEED a twin set… preferably hand knitted, and a few years old.) I have words in my head and my note book, a strand of a song (one of Dan’s again, not one of mine)(www.dan-whitehouse.com) has inspired me to look from a slightly different direction. I have some sounds of my own to work on, they are very very rough, but I’m hearing something useful in there. I had hoped I might be able to do it by myself this time, and I shall get as far as I can, but suspect I am incapable of the level of competence, let alone elegance I require, without help. I am determined to try though, to get as far as I can, I may discover something new by doing it, also, by forging ahead, alone, I can try things that I would be self-conscious to dive into with Dan listening, for fear of being thought of as a blithering, squawking idiot. “Blithering, squawking idiot” = tautology. Just “Idiot” would have been fine.

A see-saw existence perhaps?

Teacher/~Artist~/Teacher/~Artist

I lurch from one to the other, never seemingly striking a balance. Perhaps a benevolent parasitic arrangement between the two? The Teacher/Host supports the greedy selfish artist wasp?

This week the teacher is fighting back:

Having had a really good day with Y1 and their printing, today I guided Y5 through the designing and making of new hangings for the school hall. They will be a permanent fixture in school, and the children are fascinated by the idea they could still be there when their own children start school. Consequently they are taking this task very seriously: they want to know about bondaweb and sewing machines and embroidery, and washability. They have each had their ideas considered, each hanging includes one idea from each child, they all have a real part in its making and its shared design process. They are cooperative and helpful. Today, they got all their individual choices of fabrics together to see if they worked as a whole. For the most part they did, but the children were critical, and a few changes were made, and on the whole without argument, merely a discussion of the benefits of the change. Tonally, the figure needs to stand out from the background, so which do they change, what possibilities are there? They did brilliantly, and apart from saying things like “Can we make a decision about this tree then?” or, “Is that fabric a little bit too flowery for this?” they made the decisions themselves. I think it’ll look great.

The artist this week is having a hard time:

I’ve started a new train of thought and it feels decidedly dodgy. At the moment I am making clumsy, clunky, blatant statements in words and pictures. Inspired by, but not totally autobiographical, before you start to worry, there are observational bits in there too, drawn from other people’s lives, whether they know it or not. I lurch from the obvious and crass to the secret and vaguely confessional. Have talked about obviousness and confessional work here before. I have come to the conclusion that this is how my work is born, this is the cycle it goes through… I crash about a bit, then the disparate ideas settle down with each other, then slowly, a subtlety is teased out, an ambiguity is found, a balance. Then it is worth showing, is fit to be seen, is respectable. And this is where I am at the moment, contemplating respectability and what lies beneath.

Last ones… don’t you just love ’em?

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