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I’ve run out of the big beautiful paper, and can’t at the moment afford to get any more.

But that’s ok, I think… it gives a natural break in order to assess if that is in fact what I need.

In order to do this I’ve returned to some pieces…

I’ve returned to some larger pieces deemed unsuccessful, chopped them up a bit and then returned to the pieces as new. This has been moderately successful. I’ve learned some interesting things about composition by doing this, as some of the drawing falls off the edge of the paper. This prompts me to think about the unseen drawing in potentia… which sounds a bit pompous as I write it down. However, as my drawing is still concerned with touch, affect, relationship, it does have relevance, thinking about what might be, what could be… hmmm… to go back to…

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I have also been doing some smaller, very small drawings. Four inch squares. These tend to also be on old chopped up paper, as trials of materials and techniques in the beginning… or as a sort of warm up exercise. Useful. They also have me thinking about composition.

I think (as in a previous post about my tendency to go at things a bit frantically, to always hit for the six) that I have neglected the negative space and the empty spaces on some of these drawings. When I look at the ones I really like, as opposed to the ones that are merely ok, there is an imbalance of sorts in the composition. There are areas of the paper, more than 50% I’d say, where not a lot is happening, and then where I have drawn, it is heavy, at one end, falling off the edge again…

There’s something in this, I’m sure.

Brinkmanship.

How close can I get before I fall off too?

Who can I dare?

Who shall I take with me?

Having worked on these smaller pieces at least I have decided one thing.

I do need more big paper.

By working on big paper, I commit. I know that I will be working on a piece for more than a couple of hours. Some of the big drawings gave been a couple of weeks in the making. There are times when they are right, go wrong, then become right again. I go away, then come back into the room two or three days later, and know what needs to be done, that I didn’t know when I left. That simply does not happen with a small drawing. This isn’t about having a nice thing to hang on the wall at the end (although I do have lots of nice things you can have on your wall if you like). It is about that commitment to the paper. I need to feel the size of it, stretch across it on my table. I need to swipe my arms across the lumps and bumps made by the paint before deciding how to use the pencils.

So here I am again… I’ve got myself into a groove, literally and figuratively.

Music is important to my practice. I make it, sing it, listen to it, and sometimes very consciously DON’T listen to it.

I had a heavy admin and form filling day yesterday, so today I’m finding some joy.

Started with three times round The Little Unsaid’s ‘Imagined Hymns and Chaingang Mantras’ then on to Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘By The Way’… great stuff… and drawing the grooves the whole time until I get to ‘Don’t Stop’ at which point I always have to stop whatever I’m doing and dance.

“This life is more than ordinary…”

Despite the arthritis, which thankfully today is not too bad, I get up and madly throw myself about the studio. I don’t think anyone else is in the building, so when the track is finished I turn it up and put it on again. And again. And possibly again.

Then it occurs to me that my ability to dance while no one is watching is a rare and wonderful thing, so I attempt to video myself as a reminder that this is what good days look like.

“This life is more than just a read through…”

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8DyziWtkfBw

 

 

I suppose my work has always had women at its heart… mothers, daughters (I am one, but I haven’t got one), sisters (not that I have one) and so on…

Women as parents, carers, teachers, lovers, as wives, as people whose role as an individual can be subsumed. I have become more actively feminist as I have got older, more aware of unfairness. I don’t know if this is an age thing, a maturity, an ability to step back from it all a little perhaps, seeing the big nasty picture…

But if my work has ever been sexual, it is almost by accident, a sideways glance. And to be frank I have probably avoided it because I don’t know how to have those conversations really …I don’t think…

But, this morning, unexpectedly, my drawing has taken an alarming turn and I am beset by a string of connected vaginas.

This is the drawing I started after the gig on Sunday, that I wrote of in the last post. This drawing had a title before it started. ‘The Grey Women’. It was for them and for me. I lay down some paint yesterday and came back to it today and washed most of it away and gently dried it off. I had been thinking about hair, styled and dyed, and hair left naturally grey. But when I look at the remnants and stains of the lamp black paint, all I see are vaginas.

So I have to go with that don’t I?

I’ll figure out the conversations when they happen.

Stick with me… there is a point to all this rambling about the olden days… this kind of follows on from the previous post…

I remember a time when I didn’t think I could mix it all up.

And when I look back at that, I am proud of the growth I have made as an artist over the last ten years or so.

The biggest thing, obviously, is confidence. I now have inside me the KNOWLEDGE that in terms of my art practice I can do what I want because it’s MY art practice. I used to worry about what was acceptable, without even knowing who I was wanting to be accepted by.

I can remember thinking I had to be a painter. Thinking that quilts didn’t count. Thinking that I would never/could never do installations. And then when I did that, thinking that I could never do music. That it didn’t count. Then I remember coming to terms with yes, music does count, but only in the gallery as part of the aforementioned installation. Then thinking I’m not a performer. Performance art is something else, it’s not what I do. Then I sing with the band, but that’s not really part of the art is it?

Somewhere along the way, I really can’t pin it down, it being so gradual a process, I learned to trust myself. I learned to trust my thoughts, my processes, my skills: both long established and newly hatched.

Now… I trust that what goes on in my brain isn’t always shown to me consciously until it’s made and done. Sometimes, other people have pointed out to me connections that I hadn’t twigged. The thoughts join up, because they are all mine. And if I am true to my thoughts, those trains of ideas, principles, beliefs… then all will be part of the whole and one area enriches another.

So… I love writing and singing with the band so much it has just become a huge part of my life and my thinking, and I give no thought now to if it’s ‘allowed” or not.

But there it is you see, if you have faith, confidence, self belief, trust, or whatever you want to call it, the meaning arrives later. Make the work, sing the song…

We did a gig this weekend, the standard pub gig, but Sunday afternoon, so perhaps a different crowd to the post 9pm Friday night lot… we did about 6 songs all squished up into the bay window of the crowded pub. It was fun. It didn’t go perfectly, but then it never does! (you learn to trust that too).

Afterwards, as we packed up, and moved through the room, I was approached by four people… all of them women, and three of the four with grey hair, I suspect the fourth was dyed. All of them were so complimentary about the lyrics, my voice, and also the fact that I was up there doing it. One said I was “rocking it for the grey women”.

And there it is. That is my connector. If I had waited for someone else to give me permission, If I hadn’t gained the confidence to just do it, I would never have known the connection to all my other work was so very real.

The cross pollination continues. I have a drawing in my head that I want to do, dedicated to the grey women.

My own words come back to bite me…

Lately I’ve been banging on to a friend about “Authenticity”.

I’ve clearly been ignoring my own actions in this.

There’s a back story to why this is happening. It is to do with me thinking about The Artist I Ought To Be. It is a constant battle I find, being true to myself. I strive to be a better version of myself, of course. Sometimes. When I’m not being lazy and oblivious. But… I don’t need to strive to be a worse version of other artists out of a lack of self-esteem do I?

What I have discovered is that in weak moments I try to be a Serious Artist. As opposed to a serious artist. There’s a difference. I DO take my work seriously. I am trying to say something with it… but…I do try to not take myself too seriously. I try. When I try to do that “ought to be” thing everything fails miserably.

Thing is it’s not much fun being Serious.

Those who know me well will know that yes of course I’m not a miserable git all the time, nor am I a clown. But I do have a playful and mischievous nature perhaps… (do I still?) and although my work is sometimes macabre, sinister… it is also a bit naïve and child like.

Child like.

There is the thing you see.

Here is a tale of my son:

Cricket practice on a primary school playing field. Head Teacher is coach and he says:
“Now, I want you to just tap the ball to the ground, just there, ok?”
“Yes Sir”
Son lamps the ball across the field. 29 other children run to get it.
“Now, you’re not going to hit it hard again are you?”
“No Sir”
Son lamps the ball across the field. 29 other children run to get it.
(repeat until Head Teacher is shouting, son is crying and the 29 other children want a turn with the bat.)

What can I say? He is a Sixer…

It is in his nature to whack the ball as hard as he can. If you don’t want him to do that, don’t give him the bat.

Back to my drawings.

Every damn time I say to myself when I lay down the pre-drawing watercolour:

“Now, I just want one area of paint there, and one there, ok?”
“Yes”
“Now you’re not going to splash it everywhere are you?”
“No, not this time, I promise… this is a Serious Drawing”
“Ok, just there. Don’t blast it with the hairdryer like a five year old with a straw will you?”
“No”
(Blasts puddle of Alizarin Crimson across paper with hairdryer like five year old with a straw)

Here we are then.
My son will ALWAYS lamp the ball across the field.
I will ALWAYS blow hell out of the paint across the paper.

Authenticity.

I’d better learn to work with who I am.

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