University of Kent

I’ll be honest: I’ve struggled with how to approach this week’s blog. I do have something to say, I’m just not sure whether I want to say it. Also I feel as though I haven’t made any work to show, although I’ve worked very hard in the studio. I dunno.

The crisis comes in how much of my personal life to include in my blog; the theme is, true to the name of the site, the degree course and the run-up to the final degree show. So I write about the work I make without going into what I had for breakfast, although for some that might make it all the more interesting. The thing is, my portraits of others are really a kind of self-portrait, products of the way I see other people; as Richard Taylor said to me, it seems that there is a lot of me in my work. So particularly regarding my investigation of men, there’s no doubt that my recent acquisition of a boyfriend is going to significantly affect the work I make. There, I told you. Aside from the obvious aspect of having a ready and hopefully willing model, and the wacky prospect of visually charting a relationship through paint, this will probably have some kind of effect on subsequent depictions of other subjects – possibly adding an element of distance, or perhaps bridging a gap. Maybe I won’t look quite so shifty now – “trust me, I’m an artist”… I don’t know. I do think it’ll add an interesting element – recurring models always hold a fascination for me, like Paul Rosano in Sylvia Sleigh’s paintings. Whilst I thought earlier that I’d met my Paul Rosano, it turned out I hadn’t. At the end of last year I ended up with three recurring subjects, and started this year with a list of four new candidates. So far I’ve done no paintings at all! Right now I have more to worry about than how/who to start with; I just have to start.

On to what I have started – the wooden sculpture has taken a back seat to the casting process, and I do feel pushed for time there as well. After last week’s disaster I did manage to claw back some success – the vinamold cast didn’t go as planned (it was a disaster) but it was salvageable in the end. This week with the help of Vicky, the country’s nicest art school technician, I successfully cast the back third of Phil’s head (here’s hoping that his ear stayed on after having to be superglued) and next week I’ll move on to his face. And after that? I don’t have a clue and I’m not ashamed to say it. There’s so much left to do that it’s starting to look daunting, but I’ll manage.

I did omit some of last week’s events regarding the actual show preparation in favour of nostalgia. In the intervening period there seemed to have arisen a faction standing in opposition to the fundraising ideas I’d put forward last year. Only two out of nine, but enough to take the wind out of the sails. I’m not saying mutiny… Nope, I’m not the captain and I don’t need to be. So I’ve decided to pull out and delegate the fundraising issue whilst I get on with my actual jobs and save my ideas to be realised as a stand-alone project, or whilst I’m doing my MA. See, no stress! Can this really be me? And this week we also had a talk about the exhibition catalogue, which was very productive; our tutor put forward a great idea that I’m determined to see through, and I’m on the hunt for someone to contribute an essay about the group.

So here’s the pitch: if you think that you’d like to take on the task of writing about the work of nine very different artists making up the B.A. year at K College, do get in touch. We’d love to have reviews of the show of course, but a brief foreword to the booklet is what I’m fishing for at the moment… And right now, I’m off to get ready to go to Derbyshire for the weekend, where I shall hike around the hills and swan about in a large and slightly smelly reproduction Georgian gown, although sadly not at the same time. But enough about my personal life.

Today’s post could be about the work in the studio, but that would be too depressing. An entire day preparing to make the first of 3 sections of the rubber mould of Phil’s sculpture gone to waste. All my smugness evaporated when the first dirty green leak sprang through the clay walls, and the rubber poured over the table. We stopped the hole and debated whether to carry on, but after a long, tiring day of preparation I wanted to give it another shot. Another leak put an end to that. So back I go tomorrow to do it all over again. Sigh.

Instead, I might as well share something a bit less depressing. I was thinking about the paintings and my new models, and remembered one friend I saw recently in Barbados who had sat for a drawing many years ago. In the intervening years we’d both gotten married, and haven’t had much contact. I thought I’d go looking for that drawing in my old sketchbook and see if it could come out with the other boys.

I struggle with the concept of keeping a sketchbook, especially one for an academic course. To me it’s like showing the working in the margins when you’ve already got the answer because of doing it in your head. I do do lots of preparation and experimenting, but I tend to scatter it here, there and everywhere … so I have to rethink that attitude and go about it properly, because I do feel like I’m missing a trick there, and apart from that, the powers that be want to see the work in the margins. Damned powers.

Looking through my A-Level sketchbook was partly funny and partly sad. After 15 years I could still remember how unhappy I was at times, and some of the stuff in there made me cringe at how melodramatic and overwrought I often was. The first pages seemed to be a totally artificial construction of a step by step sketchbook for the examiner, things stuck in to look like they were leading up to a final piece. Towards the middle the drawings got more personal as my home life unraveled and became complicated. Of course, I know the strange story behind the pictures but you all will have to buy the book. (Names will be changed to protect the guilty.)

I found the drawing of Garvin I was looking for, and no wonder I remembered it; it was the best thing in there. It’s my memory of him, precisely – not just the look, but the feel. I will admit that a lot of what was in the sketchbook was absolutely dire. The best was the work I did for myself; the worst was what I was doing for school. At least flicking through it I got to reconnect with my 17 year old self (what an awful thought), and reassess my current work through that. The subject of the work I make now has always been not just the model, but my relationship with him, and the idea was to have the relationship dictate the image. The paintings I’ve got planned for the next few weeks will probably be more successful at this than the last set.

So looking backwards for a bit, it’s been interesting to see just how much of my art has unconsciously been the same. And it’s interesting how the friends, boyfriends and exes, (they tend to merge, I suppose) have featured over the years. What was the most interesting was just how much I’ve changed, as well as how I haven’t. I’m just overjoyed that I wasn’t making art whilst getting divorced, good grief – I wouldn’t want to have to face a sketchbook with that much drama, not even after another 15 years.

Rip it up and start again.

Now I’m back at home after being back at home, and the clarity comes and goes as the fatigue goes and comes. I didn’t realise how much I needed to go until I was there, and now I am so glad I went for it. Having a different space and perspective was exactly what I needed, and its effects have stayed with me. As always happens when I spend time back home, I came away with many ideas, but now I’m glad to be back home. And now things are moving quickly: I’m getting rid of my old dreams and making space for new ones. In the very minute I arrived at my house, I had an offer on my camper van, and it was sold a few hours later. I’m going to take down all of the artwork on the walls, with all of its old memories, and store it. And I’m going to replace them with new faces. I’m going to give away the materials I’ve hoarded but know I can’t use any time soon. I like traveling light. There’s going to be a lot of starting over again this year, and a lot less baggage.

I did come back with a new model to add to the four I’d secured before leaving in December, so that was a helpful development. I need to sort out my interviews for the professional practice unit and get my head around preparing a presentation on my work and a portfolio. And of course there’s the ongoing work with the sculpture awaiting me, and the dissertation. But there’s no way I’ll be as stressed as I was before; I’ve rinsed it out of me now. I have a feeling now that I’ve reconciled two very different parts of myself, and that’s made it easier for everything to roll straight off my back.

Having this focus on gender studies and masculinities in my mind whilst out there led to some interesting observations on how firmly fixed the roles are in some cultures, and how these are promulgated. Of course I’ve noticed them in Britain and America, but in the West Indies the male is resolutely unreconstructed and the lines are more strongly defined. It’s clear in the song lyrics where predominantly male singers call instructions for the female dancers to obey, and female singers do the same. It appears in the tag lines for two brands of beer and stout I hadn’t seen before: “A Man’s Beer”, and, “Men Drink This”. It popped out of the screen one evening on a CBC tv call-in program on paternity and child support issues. I know I could go much further into an analysis of misogyny in Caribbean music and dancehall culture… but that’ll have to wait a while.

So while I will admit that Skinny Fabulous’s song is incredibly catchy, I’ll refrain from doing the “6:30” on the principal. I’m no kill-joy though – I love Lil Rick’s “Go Down” I still take note of the inherent power structures while I bus’ a wine. It has the instructor pattern but is fortunately more on the philogynist side of the soca spectrum. So much material in the music alone and so little time… but that can be a side-project after the final show, maybe a chapter in the extended version of my dissertation.

Oh, and I realised that in my last post I forgot to include a mention of ARC magazine, which I found whilst out there – I’m going to have to try to get hold of it in the UK. Have a look – http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/

Last week I settled down to a routine of working. I read and bookmarked during the day wherever I could, and made notes and wrote at night once everyone had given up and gone to bed. This seemed to work, as a bouncy 7-year old only has so much patience with being told “I have to work on my dissertation” when he wants attention, or more often to use my laptop.

The bad bit is that I just didn’t manage to get into this routine in time, and I missed out on the deadline to submit a draft to my art history lecturer. I might end up flying blind for most of this as a result. The good bit is that in only a few days of concentrated effort, I’ve written the dissertation – the first draft, of course. The bad bit about the good bit… I may have overstretched my outline; and there’s no way I can condense the various branches of research I’ve been following into the confines of a relatively short essay. It’s feeling more like social anthropology at the moment. Fascinating reading, but a niggling feeling that I should talk about the actual art in question first. Maybe I’ll have to get this done for the course, then write a longer version (if I should ever find myself with nothing to do). Now I can see how being concise can be more of a challenge than filling out the word count.

During a trip into town I finally got to visit the main library and yes, although it’s in a newer building than the old coralstone building that previously housed it, it feels remarkably like the branch library, only with air conditioning. I wanted to get some pictures of the drawers housing the old card catalogue but didn’t want to get into trouble… and my camera was in the bag I’d had to leave with the security attendant on entering. What I did get was an ancient copy of The Suffrage of Elvira, at last! I assure you that I’ll give it back.

There hasn’t been much in the way of drawing apart from some sketchbook doodles. But I don’t feel bad about that. Now that I’m facing the end of my time here I just want to enjoy it. Still, I always had plans to make this visit work for me: I made contact with Annalee Davis, an artist I thought would make an excellent subject for one of the case studies required for the impending Professional Practice unit. She agreed to do an interview, and I’m definitely looking forward to writing it up now – it’s very relevant to my particular experience for one of my case studies to include someone who’s had a similar background: coming from the Caribbean and training abroad. If I have time I’d like to visit Morningside Gallery at the Barbados Community College campus. I also found an excellent magazine on fine art in the region. It’s fantastic to know that there’s so much more going on here than what’s on the surface!

http://www.annaleedavis.com/

http://www.bcc.edu.bb/