It’s About Art
I needed a reminder really, as a way of redirecting and reordering my thinking.
My friend and fellow blogger Stuart Mayes has the sign “It’s About Art” written large and hung in his studio. This is a good idea and I might follow his example to remind myself. I might also print out the photo of myself at the Artist’s Talk afternoon for Five, Six, Pick Up Sticks at the RBSA. Approval and validation are hard to come by in the normal day-to-day run of things. They are important, not everything, but important. So while I am in the studio, away from the public side of my practice, away from exhibitions, performances, open studios and workshops, I think I need a little reminder that the way I go about things is ok. It’s not the way that other people do it, but I do need to be reminded that that is ok too. More than ok.
I keep plugging away. I have had a couple of rejections lately, since the exhibition came down, and I shrug them off with one shoulder, while they sit heavily on the other. I have another couple of submissions in. One is the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, of which I have no expectation, having been rejected by them several times… but if you draw, it is the one to go for really. I suppose. The next will be for the RBSA, external selectors, so that’s a risky thing too. All I can do is put it in and hope. I’m quite good at hope.
The reason I do these things though, I think, is to remind myself I am an artist, that these are the things that professional artists do. It’s a huge investment gamble though. I have spent a fortune on my art practice over the last couple of years, and to be honest, not got much back in terms of the cold hard cash. But I am still doing it. I don’t know that I know how to do much else now. If I sit in my studio drawing, I start to feel removed from everyone, everything. That’s ok for a while, but I feel it isn’t healthy to just lock myself away. So I reach out to other artists. Stuart and I are plotting together, so that feels good. It’s not got to the stage where we are doing anything, but we are talking about it. And it’s about art.
I can never seem to achieve a balance, more of a see-saw… up one minute, down the next. Balance would be good I think.
I am dissatisfied with my drawings at the moment. There’s something niggling at me, but I can’t quite capture it. The attempts frustrate me, and I end up chopping up the drawings, getting rid of the sections that offend… although the ones that offend are often the bits that are getting close, but are clumsy and uncomfortable.
I just need to keep at it… keep pushing at it till it breaks and becomes something else maybe?
