Threads

I’ve become obsessed with the humble twig.

So far, about a hundred humble twigs. Picked up from wherever they fell, in the park or on my way to and from the park.

I have an A3 sketchbook I am slowly filling. On average around six twigs per page. Drawn with ink. With fine line technical ink pens. Just black on white. The more I do the better they are! The sheer quantity of them a thing in itself. Like drawers of specimens.

Of course every one is different because they’ve come from different branches, different trees, they’re different sizes and shapes. To me, as I draw them, it’s like they have different personalities. Ridiculous I know, but there it is. I know I’m going to fill the sketchbook, all fifty pages. And then I will probably stop and do something different. This book has a hard black cover and crisp white pages with fine black lines. I can’t contaminate that by using colour or charcoal or pencils.

I’m driven by the self-imposed rules.

But yesterday, before leaving the studio, for the first time for ages, I unrolled some of the bockingford watercolour paper and sliced off three pieces. I mixed up some Payne’s grey wash, some yellow ochre, my old favourite combination. I sprayed the water to  relax the rolls, and got out my biggest brush and painted on some branches, and sprinkled on some salt. Then I walked out of the door and left it to do its thing. I don’t know what it will look like when I go back. I already know I’ve painted the wrong thing. The marks I’ve made aren’t twiggy enough. But I’m hoping the ink I use on top will change that.

It feels really good to do whatever I please.

Which brings me to the next thing….

As a freelance, self employed artist, there is often the temptation to say yes to things, because they have funding attached. A couple of things have arisen recently. One I said no to, one I said yes to. I’m already regretting the yes. So I’ve decided to pull back from it slightly, and not do quite as much of it as originally proposed. I don’t need the money at the moment, and I have other things I’d rather spend my time pursuing.

It is a luxury to be able to pursue the things I want to do, with interesting people in interesting places. Try things I’ve not done before… in the post-project slump, this is what is exciting me! To do things that are easy, just for the cash is not going to get me anywhere really.

I start with a nursery rhyme, and my dishevelled train of thought circles round to Deleuze and those very useful rhizomes…

The reason this bit of Deleuze thinking stuck with me while doing my MA is that it felt familiar. It felt like the way that I work. I collect seemingly unconnected ideas, they sit under the ground slowly growing… then the connection is made with another separate idea, it grows and starts to sprout into something bigger.

The nursery rhyme connects to all the collecting of sticks I have been doing, in order to draw them. I posted a photo of my husband on social media, he collected “an interesting stick” for me.

I think it is wonderful that he doesn’t buy me flowers because they make me sneeze, but he has started to look at sticks and bring them home. Hilarious, and lovely. My god daughter posted in response that her 2 year old daughter had brought back from nursery in her book bag a selection of good sticks to show. Excellent work!

My mind wandered back then to my Are You Listening? Work for my MA, ten years ago. It was all about childhood, the overprotection of children, the loss of childhood… and so on… This is a subject close to my heart, having worked with children, and also adults who work with children for most of my working life. Play and creativity are important to all humans. Adults as well as children.

Recently my work physically has changed. It is abstract, drawn, metaphorical. It speaks to the cellular and the heavens… But in my head the same thoughts ebb and flow. It is still all about connections, and still about relationships, childhood… the drawings and songs are informed by a lifetime, including my childhood, of drawing the world around me… flowers, trees, the Worcestershire landscape I grew up in. (a link here to the song Long Grass) I have a realistic respect for nature, the farming community, and where my food comes from. The abstractions right at this moment are being informed by the drawings of twigs I pick up around my garden and on walks to the park. So many more brought down by the storms. I pick up sticks, I don’t cut them down. We play to discover. The discovered knowledge and practice transfers itself to our lives in all sorts of ways. I draw closely to discover. Those discoveries spread to other works.

I watch with horror the unfolding of the life and work of olympic skater Kamila Valieva. The loss of her childhood: did she ever have the opportunity to wander and pick up good, interesting sticks? I am reminded of the book Reclaiming Childhood – Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear by Helene Guldberg. The balances between play and work and fear and courage and exploration and discovery of our world and ourselves. My heart broke for that child, left uncomforted, made to feel shame?

These thoughts swim and swirl in my head. They are separate, right up until the moment they connect, and then they are not.

The rhizomes grow, whether you are aware of them or not. I’m wondering whether these re-surfacing thoughts of childhood will start to make other connections? This is how my brain works.

In my recent Drawing Songs talk with sound artist Bill Laybourne, I explained how my songwriting works… and how I have these small ideas that sit there, until something else crashes into them, and then something emerges. The song Undertaker Bees is a perfect example of this, and lyrically relates yet again to the reclaiming of childhood…

1… 2… buckle my shoe

3… 4… knock at the door

5… 6… pick up sticks

7… 8… lay them straight…

I forget sometimes, how I work… I go down the rabbit hole, emerge, then have to learn all over again that this is how I am!

I bent down and picked up another…

“Haven’t you got enough bloody twigs?” Asked my husband.

“I haven’t got one like THIS!” I said as I straightened up with a groan.

And there it is. 

I’m collecting twigs from the park every time we go. I have a special bag to put them in.

I think he is a little disturbed by the associated creepy crawlies that inevitably end up on the dining table as they dry out, on kitchen roll on a tray. Twigs contained, creepy crawlies not so much.

I am doing some old fashioned observational drawings. I had originally intended to draw all sorts of natural forms: sea shells, leaves, feathers, flowers… but I seem to have got stuck at twigs (nearly but not quite a pun).

The idea is that I will use these closely observed drawings to feed my abstractions. A series of different marks, pulled from reality and re-used. I also have in my head that when the weather gets better I shall immerse myself in these drawings, and do them sat on the bench actually in the park. For maybe every day for a week. I am a big believer in immersion for all sorts of tasks that need doing. Songwriting works particularly well in the Immersion Method. 

Anyway, dear husband, no, I don’t have enough twigs. I have barely started!

Each twig I pick up has different characteristics, a personality… and this is why there won’t be any sea shells or feathers just yet. I’ve barely scratched the surface with the twigs!

At the moment I am drawing with very simple ink lines. I suspect I might start again, with the first twigs, but use graphite. Maybe watercolour? charcoal? But only when the inky lines have stopped satisfying me.

What is interesting is that I started with the thoughts that the observed will feed the abstracted, but as I do more, I find the abstract is feeding the observed…

So the task I have set myself, for it is indeed a task, is to play.

I know of the value of play. I can even give you theories if that is what you need to back up the reasons, the seriousness of the matter. For four decades or thereabouts, I have played with children, learned about children, taught other people about children and creativity and play…I can quote you all the famous ones: Piaget’s symbols, schemata and process; Montessori’s play being the work of the child; Erikson’s mastery; Vygostsky’s zones of proximal development; Froebel’s nature table and free expression… all trying to make sense of the world through the eyes of the child, and also, one might argue, the eyes of the artist.

After the Arts Council project, ending in the performance, exhibition, publication, recordings… all showing a level of mastery, I now find myself yet again, floundering around looking for the zone of proximal development. So I instruct myself to play, allow myself to play. INSIST I play!

At the moment it is frustrating to say the least. It appears I am no longer able to draw or sing. I need to find the place that is the point of balance… I need to have in my sights that which I was successful at, while simultaneously pushing ahead with something new. I need the confidence lent to me by previous success, while I also need the challenges of the new, to enable me to move forward and learn more. But that’s a very linear way of looking at things, and we all know that creative thinking doesn’t happen that way. I must trust the process that I’ve done before.

So today I play. I chop up old drawings, chuck a bit of ink around. I try some new materials: bamboo paper, walnut ink, masking fluid… and I sigh at the sight of it all. I’m not sure how long this period will last (if only I had a useful chart courtesy of one of those theorists). But I must let it happen and not worry about it too much. It’s a serious business, play. 

It is, and yet it’s not. I have to let go of all the theory, let go of the seriousness, just let it happen. I should not be worried about judging the quality of what I make. Indeed, maybe I should destroy all I make for a little while, so I actually DON’T take myself too seriously. 

Dammit woman, just relax a bit.

After my last post about the frantic activity of bid writing, things have turned around a little…

For some reason I always forget what it feels like, The Slump. I know it is coming and I predict it. But somehow I forget those nuances. It isn’t just that I don’t have the focus of the project, or that I don’t have Things To Do, it’s something to do with the work itself, and how I feel about it.

Over the last week I have been playing and experimenting with different paper, different colours and different marks even, but I don’t like any of it. I had forgotten this. The door has closed on Drawing Songs, I feel that was successful, and I’m proud of the work I did and how it was received. But despite having a list of ideas to work through, I had forgotten that this period of experimentation will feel rudderless, pointless, and that I won’t like anything I make.

It is impossible to feel successful and proud continuously. Part of me feels like I should push forward with bravado, and professional confidence, the job has been well done, so here I am… but that isn’t how it feels. There isn’t some smooth even-stepped art career ladder that starts at 22 and gradually climbs. Maybe for some it is. But for this 60 year old woman that feels like she’s only just started, the terrain is rugged. I stepped onto a rock that feels secure, but to move on from here? I’m not even talking about UP (whatever that means) just to move ON…

Over the last few weeks I have been talking to other mature artists (by which I mean over 50) and we all have a sense of weariness sometimes. I stare at the up-and-coming with a sense of scepticism and cynicism and wishing I had their energy, a little bit of that attitude. We are here though, still at it, because we are still at it. With this tenacity, determination and yes, bloody-mindedness, comes that world-weary sigh.

I am actually quite good at telling others to keep at it, that I think they’re great, their work is terrific – because it is! The artists I am talking about have made work that really means something to them and to me. It comes from a real place, their heart and their real lives, not some pretentious art-life. 

But I’m not very good at telling myself. It’s not a thing that’s easy to do once the slump has hit. Although I do have some tools. When people write to me, or send messages saying they liked something I made, I keep it. So that when I have trouble telling myself I can do this work, I can read those words and start to build again, post-project, mid-slump.

I also wondered if I should write this? Because there’s nothing less attractive than self-pity. Especially from someone like me who has had good fortune. Nothing more boring to listen to than moaning. But… this is real life as an artist. It is the only work I can do that makes me happy. Without it I would quickly go down.

I’m not sure it is self-pity really. Perhaps a self-awareness. This too shall pass. In amongst all the crappy work I will do over the next few months, will be little nuggets of loveliness I can build on. I am ever optimistic!

I suppose I write because it is my truth. I have just completed an Arts Council funded project to a great level of personal satisfaction. That’s true. It’s also true that it took me about seven attempts to get it funded.  And now it’s true that I feel that all the work spread out on my studio floor is rubbish. I’ve got out of the habit, over the last 18 months, of knowing this is mostly how it is. Hopefully the tenacity that kept me re-applying for the funding will stand me in good stead and I’ll keep playing, producing crap, until at some point, it’s not.