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Restriction > Dilemma > Problem Solving > Development?

I’ve occasionally pondered what my work would be like (or even if I’d make anything) if money was no object. I’d have a bigger studio for sure. I’d exhibit in “posh” galleries. I’d possibly employ someone young to trot up ladders and hang paper… 

Dream on! Haha! 

What actually happens is that restriction and limitation are the prompts for development. I have on my table at the moment a large drawing on the very last piece of expensive paper. I really enjoy working on this scale, and given the studio and the ladder-trotting assistant, I would probably go even bigger. (There are ways I can do this… so maybe I should explore those. But there would still be an inherent cost that at the moment I can’t afford.)

The knock-on dilemma with large drawings is what the hell do I do with them when they are finished? Pile them up in the corner until I’ve fallen out of love with them and chop them up to make a book? Possibly. Get them mounted or framed to exhibit? Costs an absolute fortune and then takes up space to store. In thinking about a price for these two drawings, I’m probably, for the first time, breaking into four figure sums. Which is completely hypothetical because who on earth would buy them? I’ve yet to sell any of these drawings larger than about A3 size. But then I do feel I should feel free to make without the pressure of having to make work that sells. This thinking is problematic as I know that I don’t have to make a living from this. I have the luxury of alternative income. That’s a whole different argument and blog post. Maybe I’ll tackle that one when I’m feeling a bit more robust.

So what happens then when I’ve finished this drawing? I’m probably a couple of sessions away from finishing this one… but my mind is already looking to the next, and alternative strategies.

The answer lies I think in drawing on alternative surfaces. If I drew on prepared board I wouldn’t need to frame… I could varnish and screw it straight to the wall… maybe that’s the answer…

… in terms of material, there’s a physical link to the work with twigs, possibly a surface for them to be mounted on and with. Food for thought, brought about by necessity that wouldn’t exist without financial restrictions..

I don’t know who that person in the USA is, or how they are choosing random blog posts, but I have taken to looking at what they have chosen, and re-reading what I wrote… sometimes it’s last month, sometimes it is six years ago, but they are choosing well! Thank you, whoever you are (I’d love to know if you would like to leave a comment)

https://elenathomas.co.uk/2019/03/17/why-i-am-drawing-and-why-i-stopped-stitching/

…and…

https://elenathomas.co.uk/2018/03/09/superconductor/

These two provide the rationale behind why I turned back to drawing after years of working with textiles, and why I have stuck with it. I have no idea if I will have another change in a few years time, but for now, THIS is why I draw…

I am still enamoured with the texture of the paper and how it feels under my fingers. I love how it responds to the graphite, or more recently the old fashioned dip pens, that don’t always deliver a pure line, and the nibs that react to small flaws or the texture of the paper. This exploration of materials and equipment, the connection of my brain through my hands to the surface is kind of exquisite. The using of old inks and watercolour is soft, responsive. It has a delicacy, but can also be bold and strong. It follows my mood, and also my physical state… it picks up on who and how I am at every given moment I am connected to the paper. I come to love the moments when I move from not being happy with a blotchy scratchy bit, to seeing that it is part of me. Without knowing it, my state of being has transferred itself to the paper. 

Sometimes I am seduced by the aesthetics, which is absolutely fine… but for me, the thing that takes it further and deeper are the times when it’s not that perfect execution of line… I needed to remember that at this very moment as I return to the studio after a busy time away from the work.

Thank you for the reminder, mystery reader!

I’m glad the experiment is over, so I can get back to what I do best.

It was useful to focus on some sound, it was interesting to explore my relationship with the music part of songwriting. It was humbling to accept I’m not very good at it, while trying to explore how it works.

I no longer feel “I have to” do this. I like collecting sounds, and I like manipulating them to make rhythms and create an ambience, a mood, a root for something else… but that’s it. I don’t have the education, or the time to get the education and experience, and possibly just don’t have it in my old brain to get where I would want to be if I did it.

So in terms of a personal research period, it was successful. I no longer need to go there again if I don’t want to. And I feel ok about that. But up until now, because I hadn’t dedicated any real time to it, I always had this nagging feeling that I should. 

So tomorrow I shall rope my husband into helping me shuffle all the furniture round, set everything back up how it needs to be to enable me to get on with the twigs work. That was a jolly little tangent, but I’m back on my main road now.

Things are happening with the twigs, I need to concentrate on that, and getting it all seen. When I am a little further forward with it I’ll let you know how it is going. At the moment it’s not much more than felt pen on big paper, and a few interesting conversations.

I know I’ve said before that I’m ok with lyrics. I feel confident that I can do them. Looking back at my notebook (one idea per double page spread, titled, dated and indexed) it averages out over the year at more than one a week, but how this works is in reality I will maybe spend a day or so writing, come up with a few then stop for a while, until I get another idea that kicks me off again. Having done the residential with Kathryn Williams and Michele Stodart at an Arvon course at Lumb Bank, I have more. I have a bundle of notes ready to trigger even more words. I’m systematically working through them. But what I think I need now is an equivalent residential to kick start the musical side. However… I can’t afford it. I’ve been saying I should just do it. I’ve got the gear. I don’t play an instrument properly but I have a small keyboard, things that make noises, my voice, and the technology to record. So why don’t I just do it?

When I walk into my studio, front and centre is my big drawing table, usually with a big drawing on it, or my drawing board with paper and pens… 

Behind the door on another table is all the aforementioned music gear. The idea being I can move from one table to the other as the mood strikes. But I don’t.

What happens is I walk in, the door hides the music table, I instantly see the drawing in progress and what needs to be done. So I flick the switch on the kettle, hang my bag up and start drawing.

So if I’m serious about playing musically I have to literally shift focus. I need to set up the music stuff on the big table. So today I’m going to finish the big drawing in progress, hang it up on the wall out of the way, and sort myself out. 

It will take a bit of time to shift everything… speakers especially as they are heavy and a bit unwieldy. I need to set up that spaghetti heap of wires and leads so I have my laptop and interface, keyboard and microphone all set up to go before I leave the studio. This way, it will be the thing I see first, all set up and ready to go. It will be too much hassle to shift it all back again, so hopefully I’ll flick the switch on the kettle and start making some noise. 

So now I’ve shifted it all I’m going home.

I’ll let you know if it works…

Sometimes, the studying of website stats leads down curious paths, and suddenly you find yourself on familiar ground again, five years later… (I wrote about the revisiting thing in a recent post further up the mountain, from a slightly different viewpoint…)

Someone had read this blog post, from 2017, I don’t know why, or how they found it, but it does seem odd to read a five year old blog post out of the blue, and I have no connection or context with which I can make it make sense. But, whoever you are, thank you for bringing it back into my sights.

I insert an excerpt of it here:

A piece of my work was handled in a way in which damage might have occurred. There’s a small mark, invisible to anyone but me, it will wash out. Catastrophe averted. Upon deeper thought and analysis I realised that said potential damage was more to do with my emotional attachment to the work and what it means to me, in its concept, and in its materiality.
The potential for damage felt like a brutal act. I drove home, feeling very on edge, so much so I pulled into a lay-by to get a grip. I stroked these pieces as if I was comforting a child, making her feel better. I had no hope of explaining these actions to anyone else in the moment. We are better now, but I feel it a cautionary tale, I will leave more explicit instructions next time.

I have been known to call the Nine Women bras “my girls”, and the Are You Listening?  pieces using children’s clothes “my babies”. I thought this was a joke. Clearly it’s not. It’s very serious. They are looked after, loved and cared for, stroked, twirled, talked to. Yes… Talked to.

The piece in question is a poor orphan of a thing, scrappy fabric fashioned into makeshift garments. The stitching is the only thing holding it in shape, take out even a quarter of the stitches and they would disintegrate.

I don’t expect people to know this, so I should tell them. I should be more explicit and not expect people to see them as I do. I should tell people, even if they think I’ve lost the plot, that this is a REAL CHILD, and should be treated as such.

My attitudes towards children are a huge part of my work. Not just my own children, and me as a child, and maybe even my parents as children… Deep waters… But children in our society, how the system is letting them down. The guilt I discovered I STILL feel at deserting them and leaving my school job. How we treat our children and those around us shows us up as human, either at our worst or our best…

My work then… My relationship with these pieces, guided by the personality and history of a garment, or piece of fabric, it has a reality difficult to explain. I don’t know that I’ve done it here really. But I have started to think more deeply. So the work I do now will be informed by that realisation of a relationship to childhood, it’s brutality, and beauty.

So here it is then, a real example of how my work circles round back to the child. I could say a general “children” or “childhood” but no, it’s one child. One at a time. Me as a child, a photo of my mother as a solitary child that I drew from a photograph as one of my first pieces of art college work, that I still have framed on my dining room wall. My own sons, born ten years apart, almost as two only children siblings. Both small and premature at birth, requiring love and care beyond the usual. When I was an artist working in a primary I taught children in groups, but the individuals that burned themselves into my memory are still there. The ones that needed the conversation more. They’re still with me.

And now I am wrapping twigs, caring for the individual child as I do so. I do want to make this particular body of work bigger and more visible than my work usually is, to draw attention to the issues. But really? I’m thinking that maybe I can do something to make one child’s life a little easier. I am wrapping hundreds of them up. But if one child’s life is made better in whatever way because of it, it will have been worth every second, every scrap of fabric, held together by very few stitches.

I guess we can’t escape ourselves.