doing. action. verb. l’herbe.

I am trying to take myself less seriously – I get all involved in my subject matter and forget to laugh at myself.  And now I am diving in to my current concerns…  The rhythm of making calico boards for my 254 painting project, and painting the larger works is giving good contrast to the nature of my lost library work.  The Lost Library project is the work that is most scary right now.  It is pushing me to the edge of what’s possible. And I am scared.  To enable this project to really go full throttle I need to be very careful what I say Yes to.  I have to remember that people certainly don’t always say yes to me.  I have a tendency to want to help others without thinking through the implications to my own practice.  But before I say no to others I need to figure out when I am saying no to myself.  What are my own self-imposed limitations?  (There are many)  There are some project I’ll have to say no to – or at least no for now…perhaps put on the back burner to allow me to focus on Lost Library.  For the 254 paintings I can clearly see progress just in the making of the boards – a simple counting and I have a grid format to check off every 10 that I make and put in my studio cupboard.  With the Lost library it is much harder to track progress.  I have a ‘done’ book where I note what I’ve done as I go along each day.  There are distractions I need to get rid of…I faff, I watch a little tv late in the evening, I can take ages to switch from one task to another…perhaps I should switch less often?  I find it horribly difficult to get tasks done in the time I set.  Finding a way to be realistic without limiting myself….  I need a lot of quiet time, i.e. reading and writing.  A balance of working up the road, going out to meetings and quietly working in my shed and on the computer is hard to get just right.  On non-commitment days I spend my time between my shed (painting and making mini-canvas boards) and inside (can’t get internet out there) communicating (often via email) about the Lost Library project and currently writing a news sheet about it. This news sheet is the most urgent thing now, I must get it done as it’ll help bring the whole project together and be something to encourage participation – I’m planning to hold drawing, text and printing workshops at Abergavenny Library and in the Abergavenny Community centre and possibly one further venue. I would also like to invite local schools to be involved and make prints of the subject of the value of libraries, with the work potentially being shown at the Eisteddfod, either in original form or displayed on a screen (in a grid).  Now I have decided this news sheet is the most important thing to do I have started on it – got a plan, have begun drafting different sections out, I know I have to get it translated, find a printer..etc, but just the getting the draft ready and with the importance I’m giving it is paralysing me!  This is idiotic!  I just need to bite the bullet and do it. And it is not going to be perfect, maybe not anywhere near. I think the problem is I have a vision in my head of a clean lay out, on FT light salmon pink (hex value #fff1e0 – when the FT originally changed from white to salmon it was apparently partly to do with it being cheaper because it involved less bleaching) square paper with information about the projects clearly laid out.  And understandable. Also – clarity in what the project is and what it stands for.  I am hugely fearful I can’t do this one thing.  Oh – and another thing, I want it done by the end of the week!  Really –do I need to choose between quality and timing? Is it even possible to get the quality in the time frame I’ve given myself?

(Also I am working up the road 7 hours today, Friday and Sunday, with a meeting on Saturday of the Friends of Abergavenny Library – I would like this ready for then. Plus I have an interview on Monday!)

Why am I blogging at a time like this?  Well, it is helping me think it through.  It is no good all this rumbling around in my head and sometimes even on the old typewriter or pen and pencil just doesn’t cut it, I want to put it out there.  A modern thing?  How I have grown to function?  Something like that.  Right, now let’s see what I can do in my time left today.

Right, my Lost Libraries project is going up a gear now.  I have spent almost 3 weeks of the past month with this dreadful cough-flu that is going around. Though not ideal or welcome it has provided unforced time of less activity to reconsider ways of working.  I am forever needing a way to monitor my progress.  Things I am focussing on now are: the lost library project – work involved emailing people, going to meetings (the friends of Abergavenny library and the Eisteddfod committee, artists making the mobile library, musician composing a piece to be played from it, and anything else necessary), I have a risk assessment hanging over me, need to contact the police re permission, and find ways of publicising this as I’d like the community to be involved in the performance and to get involved before the event by making drawings, prints and writing about how they value their library.  I am currently working on a news sheet on the project because there are so many elements to it that I imagine it is hard for others to grasp exactly what the project is.

I am also steadily m

aking 254 business card sized mini canvas’ made out of thick card and calico.  I have 140 out of 254 made.  Although I have now bought some new canvas, it will not be enough to finish the 254 at the sizes I tend to work.   Also, working on larger canvas, I tend to vary the size.  Working at such a small scale might give me a better rhythm of working.  I describe the practical way I work musically, with my painting, drawing and printing being the rhythm and my other projects – such as Lost Library, Portrait Tachbrook and Little Museum of Ludlow as being the vocals.

I am writing as I am thinking and am considering how I might take this further and consider my art output in more musical terms:

Melody -or pitch(vocals) pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale,[1] or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as “higher” and “lower” in the sense associated with musical melodies.[2] Pitch can be determined only in sounds that have a frequency that is clear and stable enough to distinguish from noise

Rhythm (beat and meter)

Dynamics In music, dynamics are instructions in musical notation to the performer about hearing the loudness of a note or phrase. More generally, dynamics may also include other aspects of the execution of a given piece.

harmony… Different aspects of my practice together – harmonious?

Key—(context? ) A musical key is a song’s home. The key tells you several things about a song: the sharps and flats used, the scale the song is based on, the scale note that serves as is the song’s home note, and much more.

Texture (number of layers, and type of layers in composition) In music, texture is how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition. Texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices. Affected by how many parts are playing at once.

Timbre (quality of sound that distinguishes one voice or instrument from another)

Tempo (different for each piece of music, or work)

Order  In music, order is the specific arrangement of a set of discrete entities, or parameters, such as pitch, dynamics, or timbre.

I am painting (large canvas’) following my interest in foliage and growth forms, settling on trees, or at least parts of trees, braches with leaves.  Willow has featured and I am using my Grandfathers Readers Digest ‘Gardening year’ book for reference material for shapes of leaves and some of the text.  For these paintings I am simply doing what I feel like doing, following my nose.  I am enjoying productivity in my streams of practice.   I have made a small (so far unsuccessfully printed) etching of willow on plastic.  Even tried running it over with the car to print, but I only have water based inks, so need to book myself into the Print Shed to do properly.  I am currently reading about ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ by Colin Tudge.

Looking at the musical analogy I am wondering what my timbre / quality of sound I am making through my work?  Hmmm.

And, something I have been really trying to figure – where is my works home?  I am gently looking for places to show my work where it sits well.  I have also wondered what might happen if I painted on tarpaulin and hung the work outside.  I suppose one thing I could try is simply to take some existing work and photograph outside (for some reason I picture woods).  But this would in no way be the same as what would happen with tarp – for a start the type of paint would change – vinyl inks and I’d lose the texture of the canvas…

I have some of the larger 254 paintings currently on show at The Apple Store Gallery in Hereford as part of the Framework Now! Exhibition (Framework being a group supporting emerging artists in the area) – we had a great private viewing evening last week, great attendance and plenty of new faces.