Thank goodness for the internet!
I’ve so missed the conversations in my studio with my fellow General Office colleagues and friends. I’ve missed the prodding at my brain that makes me continue to question. Especially at the moment as I am trying out new ways of working and presenting my ideas.
But I do have the internet, the comments under the blog posts on a-n and on my website.
I’ve been “chatting” lately with fellow long-term a-n blogger Stuart Mayes. I “met” Stuart about 8 or 9 years ago, through the comments on blogs medium, and we have continued. We have met in real life just once, when I was visiting Sweden a few years ago. I cherish the memory of that afternoon in Stockholm. Oh boy, we talked a lot!
Our conversation continues, through the blog world. These last couple of weeks both Stuart and I are looking at our work, looking at what we consider of value in our methods, and should those methods be challenged after all these years. I’m a little older than Stuart, possibly a lot older? Who cares? My point being, we are both mature, established artists trying to keep ourselves going in difficult times. We are quite different people, with very different practices, living in different countries. Despite this we have common ground…
There is something about a conversation that is written under a blog that has real value. It can be referred to and examined, and revisited.
He said:
The other day I was looking at your wire drawings on Instagram, I really like them and what struck me was how different they are from, for example, ‘Nine Women’. Looking at your wire work and thinking about other aspects of your practice helped me formulate my own questions about my practice – its intention(s), ambition(s), form(s) and aesthetic(s). If it’s okay I will say something (the thing!) that really helped me – as you seem to have already made the leap that I am about to take – it struck me that Nine Women tells me something whereas the wire drawings invite me to think.
(He said lots of other lovely things I was tempted to paste over, but I must at least try to be modest! Ha!)
The thing is… the conversations we have with other people about our work, and particularly other artists, keep us fresh. Keep things relevant, and keep us checking that they are. By “us” I mean “me”
Thank you Stuart!
