Threads

I’ve been writing a lot in my sketch book lately, but not necessarily the sort of writing fora public consumption. Don’t get excited… that’s mostly because it’s boring.

As part of the preparatory work for the Study Days and Course I am delivering with Sarah Goudie I am trying to get myself “match fit” if you like to call it that… I can’t think of another phrase that puts it so succinctly!

So I am exploring through my writing the whys and wherefores of drawing from my own personal perspective. I have hung the drawings up in our studio’s ever improving gallery space (keep an eye out, exhibition soon!). And then I look and try to cast my mind back to where these strange and mythical beasts have come from. I’m calling them strange and mythical beasts, but they’re really not.

These drawings have grown from me and my life as naturally as a buddleia on the roof of a derelict pub. They are the portraits of long lost interactions with long lost lives and experiences. They are as familiar to me as my children. But, like my grown up children they still have the power to surprise me (Panama? Really? When? WHEN???!!!??)

So the content of the writing is not interesting to anyone but me, and of course some of it is deeply personal, as it should be when digging deep, but the reasons for doing it are ok to put out there…here…

It is important for me when asking others to dig deep and find out about their own creativity and where it might live, to know what happens when you do that. when I do that… Sarah and I have experience of these activities, and digging deep can be exposing, it can make one feel vulnerable for a while… it can reveal things to oneself that a part of the brain has kept hidden, probably for good reason. These study days can have a profound effect sometimes. Sometimes that happens on the day, sometimes a few months later. What I have found through doing it myself is that we are never really that far from ourselves. I don’t want this to sound like some ageing hippy nonsense, because I am not that sort of person. But I am the sort of person that likes my interactions to be real… whether that is with other people, or with myself.

https://sarahgoudie.com/drawing-your-space/

This post follows on from comments here and elsewhere, about self-hijacking, and rule breaking.

Sometimes we set ourselves up to fail.

We hijack our own progress by setting limits and rules:

“I’m going to write in my blog once a day/week/month”… in my brain rules like this are always doomed to failure because they become aligned with work, duty, obligation… I’ve never had much of a work ethic. I shirk responsibility wherever possible. I write when I feel like it. Sometimes this is twice a day. Sometimes two months goes by. But if I write and post you can be assured it is not out of duty, but interest, because I want to say something.

I have looked at when I blog, and more interestingly when I don’t. I don’t blog if I’m waiting, or in some sort of limbo… in a changing state. Unless it is a brief post to say just that – a sort of “Out of Office” post?

…………..

Sometimes we set ourselves up to succeed.

I do set rules for the way I work with others. These might be professional ways of engagement rules which I have discovered I break at my peril. I have seen others around me crumble too under the weight of the unprofessional “Lets just do it, it’ll be fine/great/amazing… this time next year we will be millionaires!” Because in my experience, unless you establish professional rules of engagement, and expectation, of who is doing what, and how payment (if any) happens, it ends in resentment, unkindness, and murderous levels of sarcasm. It does not end in people working to their best. Failure happens through a failure to set up how we care for each other, and ourselves. Self defeating.

……

I set the rules for my making too. I work to them. Then I look behind me to find I have broken them and something interesting has occurred!

I’m sure I’ve laid out such rules here. I remember some of them.

The 8B pencil. The flat layout of drawing like botanical specimens. No colour. Limited colour. No colour again. The 6H pencil. Watercolour paper. Not watercolour paper… and now again the watercolour. I set the boundaries and keep going. Prolific amounts of drawing and painting.

Each material throws up a new set of qualities, and therefore a different set of boundaries and possibilities. For example, I have been working on the large roll of paper, developing a sort of narrative across it. Then I made the decision to cut the paper, limit my colour choice to alizarin crimson for one piece. It worked well. I ran out of paint, so for the next couple I used single colours. This naturally drained my stock of particular colours, so off I went to buy new. I bought a few tubes of high quality watercolour paint. I loved the Payne’s grey. And the Indian red. And then I used the yellow ochre. I was initially annoyed that it didn’t work like the others. Of course it didn’t. In a good quality paint with real pigment, the colour isn’t just about colour, it is about a material quality. I am currently in love with yellow ochre. Yellow ochre is rough, and grinds down my pencils like sandpaper when I draw over it. Payne’s grey doesn’t. When I paint Payne’s grey over the ochre it resists… oh my that is exciting. The decisions then about what I draw and where I draw become very complex indeed. And HERE…. RIGHT HERE… is why I am drawing and not stitching at the moment (will I ever go back?)

My work themes for the last ten years, (probably longer than that, but less deliberately perhaps) concern touch. How we touch each other. Physical, emotional, social, intellectual… each person touches another, a reaction happens, explosive, or slow burn, passion, hatred, or as above, murderous sarcasm.

Now I have it in the materials. Yellow ochre has no time for Payne’s grey… shrugs him off… Payne’s grey is gentle on my pencils, allows the 6H to groove across it in a ghostly fashion. The ochre is violent and aggressive… but Indian red does the bleeding… runs hurriedly across the page, making panicky changes in direction under the threat of my hairdryer. Payne’s grey dries in a beautiful naturally occurring fractal patterned manner. So there. Spiteful and sarcastic? Am I really anthropomorphising the paint?

Hell yeah.

Rules?

Who needs them!?

It’s like learning a new language really… and there are levels of fluency to be achieved, from basic “one beer please” or “where is the toilet?”, to being able to express complex emotions, or write poetry.

I’m talking about the undertaking of a new artistic medium or method.

I can remember very clearly still (because it isn’t really that long ago) the day I actually said out loud “I am an artist” and actually believed it to be true, and didn’t hear the giggle of my internal critic.
I am fluent (enough) in certain things. I can draw. And I can stitch. I can’t draw like a photo-realist would draw. But I think I have a fairly high level of representational competence. I can draw a thing or a person that looks recognisable to another set of eyes.
I can stitch probably better than I can draw. I can manipulate fabric and thread to a high standard… I can make the “stuff” do what I want it to do. It’s taken many many years of drawing and stitching to gain these skills. Using them to communicate my thoughts is another thing, of course, but, in recent years I feel able to say I am an artist, with confidence. Yep. That’s what I am. It even says that in my passport now.

So… the new language… songwriting… singing… performance…

There is in this too, in each of those things (because although they are connected in my practice, you can do one without doing the other two) a hierarchy of fluency. I doubt that I have the time left in my life to become as good as I could have been in terms of technical ability as I might have been if I’d started earlier, but I’m  doing it.
I am at the point with these things where I can say “I write songs” and “I sing in a band”. But I’m also still at the point where I can’t quite bring myself to say “I’m a singer-singwriter” because I don’t feel worthy. I’ve not put the time in. I don’t have the … what is it I don’t have? Anyway… I still have the internal critic sniggering when I talk about it.

Last week however, I performed with the band, songs that I had written (co-written) in a “proper” live music venue where I have previously sat in the audience and watched bands and singers I admire. This time, the other side of the mic. It felt slightly surreal. Other than my usual pre-gig session of contemplation and meditation in the loo, I didn’t feel any more nervous. It was great to do.

But… we (and by we I really mean I) hijack ourselves don’t we?

The venue is small and intimate. Extraneous gear is a problem. I usually have my lyrics in front of me, because the terror of performance for me, lies in forgetting the words. About three years ago I bought a special clamp so that I could use my iPad on the mic stand. But I have persevered in carrying around a huge heavy music stand and a folder full of paper instead. It can be impractical in terms of space, and sometimes the light isn’t good enough for me to read them anyway. But I make a big deal of erecting it and hiding behind it. Because apparently the iPad clamp thing is too professional a device for idiots like me… Says the internal critic.

Anyway, at this performance I used the iPad. It worked well. I had my paper with me, just in case the technology failed, but it stayed at the back of the stage, untouched.
The gig went well. I loved it! We were received well, our songs enjoyed and commented upon after, and we sold some cds too.

I’m wondering what it will take… and if I will ever get there?
But here is the crux of the matter… I’m doing it regardless.

I think any blogger would agree that it is hard to remain permanently positive…

I always said I would be an honest blogger, but sometimes that means actually not posting anything, because no one wants to hear me moan all the time do they?

Quick moan, and then perhaps an explanation…

I’m in pain with my knee. Sometimes this is low-level, ever present but manageable and mostly ignorable in terms of what I can get done. Sometimes it is the sort of pain that is shouting in my ear, and rattling my brain, making it really difficult to listen, process and respond… I’ve had a few of the latter lately, and it grinds you down doesn’t it? I know there are a few who read this who put up with similar, and worse. It’s not a competition and I’m not really looking for sympathy here. I state it in order to put things into perspective. Some days I go to the studio to be distracted from it. Some days I feel I shouldn’t drive. Some days if I got there, I’d have trouble getting up the stairs. This has an effect on my thinking about how I work, and indeed what I work on. Content, context…

I am also fortunate in that there may soon be a solution to my problem, through surgery, medication or both. So I hang on by my fingernails, trying to stay positive. But it isn’t real life that, is it?

I have been having many conversations lately about the mental health of artists, how to sustain and how to build a life, and how it may or may not be possible to earn a living. Not many artists I know, for instance make enough money (from just their art) to pay tax. That is nowhere near a living wage if you have a home and children. There is always something else that has to be done in order to pay the bills. Whether this is shelf-stacking, bar work, teaching or caring, it takes a toll on the creative self. It is easy for the creative self to be subsumed, consumed… exhausted… forgotten?

And yet, I know to my cost that this has its perils, so I now choose to not do those extra things – or rather – not too many of them. (Because I am older, this is possible now, without going into personal details.)

I have built a tool kit of ways to maintain myself, and build myself. I also now try to surround myself with people who understand what it is to maintain this part of the creative self, and we help each other along. I find it helps to explore my own nature… to go with the flow and not worry too much about when things get done. Sod the dusting, washing… even the cooking… most things can wait… including the blog writing…

This bunch are keeping me afloat at the moment… they bring me so much joy!

(photo credit Simon Meddings)

Several people, astonished by the lack of textiles in my recent work have asked if the drawings would ever become sculptural/ textile. And the answer to that is “No”.  (At the moment?) The reason is that I started doing the drawings, or rather I discovered in the drawing process a way to join up my thinking and my doing in a way that the textiles couldn’t do. To make these drawings textile would be both a step backwards in terms of my thinking, and would also feel like I was merely illustrating the drawings, as if the drawings were not good enough, confirming that tenet that drawing is something you do BEFORE you do something else… Thank you Sarah Goudie for putting that string of words together for me… that is exactly what I feel… the drawings are not only enough on their own, they are exactly what they need to be for me.

Someone kindly pointed me to the work of Sonia Gomes:
http://www.pipaprize.com/pag/sonia-gomes

And it started or rather refocused a brain train….

You could possibly put one or two of my drawings next to these and make a connection visually… interesting… and, if I was going to render this work textile, this is probably pretty close to what I’d end up with. Contained in the text of the link are similar thoughts to mine too. I’m sure I’ve said those words, or at least something similar when talking about mine.

One pair of words however, stood out: Visceral and Sacred.

Visceral, yes. Obviously. Here in my drawings we definitely have the visceral. But sacred?

I’m possibly going to tread on dodgy ground here. But I think it’s the right time. Sacred. How do I go about this?

I am a Catholic Atheist. By which I mean that my upbringing was Irish Catholic from my mother, with a strong streak of Orthodox from my Serbian father. But I no longer have that faith. It has gone. I spent a while looking for it, but it just isn’t there. Thing is, I don’t even now know why it was ever there. But it was… and that has profound effects on the formation of a person. Having shaken off the formalised worship, dogma, ritual, seeing my performance and behaviour within it as hypocrisy at last… Having shaken off the job that tied me to it by the last strands… I see the world differently now.

Or do I?

Do I see different things as “sacred”.
Do I “worship” different things…?

But ritual is hard to lay down I have found. I think perhaps we humans have ritual hard-wired… we develop habits bound up in circumstance and coincidence in order to pretend we have control over the world. We don’t. We cross our fingers, we don’t walk under ladders or step on the cracks, we make gestures invented by man to ward off a devil invented by man. We pray to gods invented by man. Now I want to make a distinction here… a fine one perhaps… the way that god* and faith exists within some people is a true thing for them. It is definite part of who we are to take on this belief and it shapes our lives. I am fine with that. If that is a choice, or a vocation, or your own truth, I am a little bit envious of the certainty that god exists for those people, that he makes them feel that they belong in a place, belong with a way of life. I have seen people who exist with god on a daily basis, who breathe him and live life by him. The goodness of how they live is honourable and I respect that completely. But I don’t think it was ever that in me. It was a social habit that eventually fell away to make a place for a different way of operating for me.

So now…
I’m not sure what spiritual means.
I’m not sure why we are all here.
I’m coming down on the side of chaotic, coincidental chance probably, and that our extinction will be the same… so make the most of life and don’t worry about there being an after.

To me, art is the way I think about these things, the way I try to make sense of the world, my position in the world and my interactions with other people.

While I am making these drawings I am looking inwards. But also I’m looking for those threads of attachment to other people and other things and my own mind/being. I am deliberately trying to include animal/vegetable/mineral in these works. Our atoms form the same patterns and the maths is relevant to every cell…
When I am drawing all day I reach a state of mind. It feels like prayer and meditation should have felt, but never did. The connection I feel to the world and the people around me feels stronger**. Those cells that connect us all to the world? It’s almost like I can see them. Religion was never like this. Faith never reached this deep.

I think that because I am an artist, these feelings are tied very tightly to the haptic. The making, the repetitive nature of drawing or stitching or whatever I choose to use is where my ritual now lies. I perform these physical acts over and over in order to achieve this state of mind, in order to make the connections between myself and the world. To not be able to do this would be like cutting me adrift in space. It is no coincidence that in those times in my life when for a variety of reasons I have been unable to submit to this or commit to this, my mental health has suffered.

I know that some people I know will read the above post and possibly be scornful. Possibly offended. Might think I’m losing the plot. But to me the plot has never been clearer.
I am human.

*I am not going to capitalise god or he/him through this, as that also feels hypocritical and I am referring to god as a general concept not a specific or monotheistic being.

**I also predict that some will label this as god. That’s ok for you, but I’m not doing that any more.