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Is it possible to be both lazy and obsessive?

Is it possible to be lazy and ambitious?

Parents, teachers and employers have in turn told me I’m lazy. I would agree with them. Unless I am totally engaged I don’t give a fuck.

However… It would surprise some of them to see me these days I think. Well… some days…

It has taken me quite a lot of years (decades even) to find my work ethic.

I didn’t know I had one!

But over the last few years, when I’m doing MY OWN work I am anything but lazy. There it is. I am self-motivated, self-obsessed and self-interested. When I’m engaged in the things that interest me I  behave myself (ish); I learn; I work hard! The signs were always there: my teenage exam results read as if two distinct people sat them: A grades or ungraded. Can’t tear me away, or can’t be arsed!

So here I am, in my mid 50s… yes, I’m clinging on to the “mid” for at least another year… and I find I can’t stop working at this. This thing, whatever it is. This practice. I find I am obsessed with getting to grips with a “something”, but I don’t know what it is. In my dreams it is the thing beyond the locked door, the thing at the top of the hill I’m struggling to climb. Occasionally it is also the thing I am running away from, with my feet stuck in treacle/custard/cement… But I KNOW with a certainty it exists, and I pursue it relentlessly. I pursue it with pencil, stitch, eyes and ears and voice and hands… oh god don’t forget the hands… My friend~studio mate~colleague Sarah Goudie says that the brain is also in the fingers. This is a mote of hope for me… another mote… another mote… collect them and keep them safe. Everything could be significant… Everything… so it has to be done. If I have an idea then I must follow the line~thread~note~words…

Sometimes I can feel something between my thumb and fingers, something between and beneath the skins. I see it out of the corner of my eye. This morning I swear I could hear someone playing “Food Glorious Food” on a glockenspiel. What the fuck is that all about? This is my problem you see… is EVERYTHING significant, or is NOTHING significant?

I expect one of those dead French blokes has the answer here, if only I could be arsed to read more. Tell me if you know, and I’ll just read that bit. Add another mote for me.

I also fear that the pursuance of the motes might be seen by some to be some sort of mental health issue. I’ll keep an eye on that. And I think I have enough people around me to let me know if that’s the case. A small detour… not that I’m comparing myself to such a genius, but John Nash (in “A Beautiful Mind”) said that the maths and the madness felt like they came from the same place, so how could he know the difference?

Anyway… ambition… yes, I am ambitious but very specifically… to be in a position to continue the conversations at a high level, to keep challenging, to do the research of my own making: materially, conceptually, philosophically and in methodology. I need to make some money of course, but I’m only bothered about the amount of money that will enable this very specific ambition: to be in those places where those conversations happen. It might be about Art, but it might also be about music, education, health, science, philosophy… I might be too lazy to read it, but I want to hear about it, and think about it. I want the motes that float about in my brain to be electrified to an extent that they zoom out of my fingers into the work.

Why do I (we?) need permission to do things our own way?

Art research is a thorny, prickly, uncomfortable thing for me. I don’t really like reading other people’s thoughts and opinions… although I do like it when something is pointed out to me in conversation… I really don’t like to engage in what a bunch of old or dead French guys think.

I like my own personal discovery process.

I have been through periods of pretence here. I have hidden parts of myself over the years. And now, I fight against it, or at least try to be aware of the hiding, and try to make it a conscious choice.

If I hide parts of myself, my thinking, then the bits I don’t hide make no sense (I think?)… it is only in the total openness that it will make a coherent artist… a coherent human. Hiding the child-like; or the grief stricken; or the sexual being; or the deliriously happy from making lemon shortbread; or the fucking miserable… makes the picture skewed. The composition is wrong.

This is currently where my research is hovering. This is where my personal voyage of discovery lingers… this composition of my self… and my interaction with the world and those around me…

My drawings are emerging as that connection between the inside and the outside and the inside again. The interaction with materials is either satisfactory or not. I explore and try to push at things… Ink and brush is good, charcoal is not… pencil is good… pastels are not…

Gliding is good… scratchy is not… watercolour is good, acrylic is not… Gluten free sponge cake is good. Gluten free bread rolls are vile. We live and learn.

Performance is also part of this process… I put part of myself out to the audience, and get something back that provides another piece of the picture. The audience reaction to me (us) and my returned response is the research too. The breathing in and out here… the inside and outside and the connections between. It doesn’t matter that no one else can see the connections between me singing with the band, and these drawings.

I see it. This is all about me after all…

However…

It is a truth of mine, that the personal is the universal. If I make my work generic, no one relates, it is too bland and unrelatable. The closer my work is to myself, the more open and honest I am, the more people relate to the humanity of it.

In my research then, the research that happens in my daily art practice of life-living, if I dig deep into my place in the world and present these findings in the way that feels right, someone, somewhere, will relate, and find it useful… maybe?

Maybe there’s some sort of transition going on in my brain/body/life?

I’m a night owl. Or a sporadic insomniac. Have been for years. It can be useful, I’ve learned to live with it. I’ve developed a way of coping with free, alone, silent waking hours when it’s dark… I like it now. I get stuff done and get thoughts thought.
But recently there’s been a disturbing change. I’m in bed, but typing this into my phone at 6:45am. The birds are shouting at me. I do feel the impulse to ACTUALLY GET UP. This hasn’t happened before. When I had to get up at this time in the olden days I didn’t want to. I didn’t like it. It made me grumpy till 10:00.
Do you think my husband would think it weird if I just went to the studio now? I could possibly get three hours in before he noticed I was gone? Then come home and bring his tea and toast up to bed on a tray as if I’d just got up…

I want to get that list of things done. I’ve got stuff to… Write… Draw… Record… Make… Think…

The problem is the transition period… I can’t sustain going to bed at 2 and waking at 6. Not without napping during Pointless.

I feel I’m properly in now, which is surprising seeing as I haven’t got a door yet.

The shelves have nearly filled up. I do think I could probably bring some of the stuff in from the loft, so save us worrying about ten tons of fabric crashing through the bedroom ceiling, and it would make me sort it all out. Maybe.

It feels right. Home, but not home. The only space in the world that is totally mine. I have been without for eight months. People who follow this tale will know that in some ways, that’s worked out fine. But oh boy I was ready for it. It’s been on and off and on and off and on again for so long!

It can be an expense, yes, obviously. But the feeling you get from working in a studio is different. It is my professional space, not my hobby space. It is where I earn money – or at least initiate the process of earning money. It involves professionalism, validation, a seriousness of intent… That this thing I do here is legitimate. I find it hard to feel like the real thing at home. I know this sounds self indulgent and that many artists work at home, but I find I don’t think ”properly” at home. I pick at it. I write a bit, maybe for 15 minutes, then make a cup of tea. Then I might draw for an hour while someone is watching Pointless. Don’t get me wrong, I like watching Pointless as much as the next retired teacher or geography student, but that’s not where my head should be.

and I’ve just read that paragraph back and it annoys me…

If I was an accountant no one would think that having an office was self indulgent, so why the hell is an artist’s studio? It isnt! I have to stop saying these things, we have to stop each other saying such things. We all do it. I’ve heard you!

Anyway…

I’m getting to the point now where I have done most of the unpacking and sorting and shelf stacking and can get on with the task of actually working.

Today Ian my band-mate popped round for a nosey, a coffee and a cake, and a bit of a strum and a sing. So that was good – even without the door! (we were the only ones in the building).

I have a proposal to write, an ACE project application, someone else’s application to support, I have recordings to make, drawings to draw, songs to sing…

And now I have a place to do it.

(I’m going to try to post one of those panorama photo things… if it doesn’t work I’ll take some ordinary photos tomorrow.)

Conversations with certain people “bring me on”. By asking the right questions and not being afraid that they are difficult questions. They tell me their truth, and it encourages me to face my own.

I’ve been laughing at my “weird” works. By doing this I preempt any suggestion of weirdness from others. They have nowhere to go because I’ve already said it. I shut down any possibility of discussion . Other than by those awkward people who poke me with a stick to make it happen (thank you). I’m not yet prepared for the conversations that might ensue if I show that I take myself, and this work, seriously. Beneath the ridiculous bluster of “I’m a weirdo I am!” lies a vulnerability and a rawness I’m not yet ready to encounter in public. Two conversations with two people who know me, and my work, well, have brought me close to tears. Ok. Not just close. Over the edge. But they are both a safe place, so I’m ok. But I need to feel stronger before showing this work in a formal setting. Just in case someone astute asks the wrong/right questions. I need to prepare myself. Writing this post might form part of that preparation.

A discussion over dinner wandered all over the place, but touched on when and why we exhibit the work: do we exhibit when it is “finished”, done and dusted, safe, complete, and we feel we know everything about it? Or do we exhibit when it still feels raw and a little precarious, in the hope that exhibiting it will help us learn more from those who view it?

So… In forcing myself to encounter these drawings properly, by pinning them up to view, I look at materials, methods, meaning. It’s like REALLY looking at yourself in the mirror and accepting what you see. (No I can’t do that either.)
I don’t think I have REALLY looked at these drawings. I don’t think I have accepted fully what they are about. They scare me a little…. They are NOT weird to me you see? They’re not. They are a true thing. They are a true expression of what my brain is trying to process. To be honest the last few months have been a bit shit. I’m still coming to terms. I’m still trying to find my equilibrium here.

The methodology and the process of my drawing have rules. I extrapolate those rules from the patterns that emerge. I pursue them until they bore me, and then they mutate until I have a new rule. Materials, composition, technique, the colour palette all have a place within this rule-making.

Meaning then? Digging deeper, but also simplifying. Drawing I find is a purer, more straightforward way of working. It is more immediately connected – brain to paper… No filter…. No distraction…

Abstraction is attractive. Liberating.
I have lived a life filled with symbolism. The Catholic Church, Renaissance art history studies, and the occasional dip into semiotics. I see symbols and infer meaning all over the place. My brain seeks it out.
Abstraction could be my saviour then?
Abstraction is my secret confessional?
I can’t help myself.
Abstraction is a shouted whisper.