Aims for 2015
- Have a dedicated studio space
- Build going to lectures and giving talks into year
- Go out of my area to see art twice a month (book ahead!)
Aims for January
- Train self to get up at 615am to add an hour to my working day
(my son used to be at school for 8 hours a day and now it’s 6, so I need to claim some back!) - Build momentum in my practice
- Develop PaperFields exhibition series
- Send 1st mailchimp email
- Write Framework Herefordshire timeplan
- Arrange dates for solo show with Jill at The Print Shed
I’ve dashed through summer and autumn since the degree show – carried on a wave of exhibitions to work towards in the autumn and artist residency at The Print Shed and the Meadow Arts graduate award (both continuing through this year).
Towards the end of the year I found myself overtaken by admin tasks and feeling time, rather than task orientated and the tasks I wanted to do just piling up and dividing my time until there was hardly any left to focus. I now want to keep up the fast pace, but be more discerning with what I take on/choose to do. I was running and stumbling last year…a bit of stumbling I equate to (momentary) failure, but largely adding to my experience and pushing me on. In this post-degree time, I feel a lot of two steps-forward, one step back going on, along with well-meaning friends, but especially family making what seem like helpful, yet unhelpful suggestions. I have a tender surety in the nature of my practice and I am being careful not to expose myself to too much criticism of the unhelpful kind.
The break over Christmas this time was full on and messy. Last year I worked through Christmas, keeping the momentum going I had built in the autumn term at college, plus the summer was high pressure with the h.Art Young Open Exhibition in Hereford in September and the PaperFields London Exhibition in October. This all involved huge organisation on my part ( I can do it, but it sets my mind to a different frequency to art making / writing). Having time at Christmas doing home things, seeing family and friends (last visitor left this Monday afternoon!) and having Christmas day on the Beach provided something that I needed. Perspective and space.
So – my next studio? This is something I have been trying to figure out for a while. To rent a studio nearby (Abergavenny) or to save up / apply for funding for a large shed in my back garden?
Having a studio to rent in Abergavenny would be good as studio / home can be more defined then.
Rent would be ongoing
Shed –Studio in garden
High initial cost in time and money to get it.
Could still use it in the evenings while husband working away.
Once it’s up only costs are electricity.
Pros and cons for both…feel quite indecisive…added to which my husband is, as of this week, working from home.
Working at home without a shed-studio takes and insane amount of organisation to work (and it can’t work most of the time as the biggest space is right where you step into the cottage!)
I was lucky to get a book called ‘Sanctuary- Britain’s artists and their studios’ recently and am considering carefully what exactly it is that I need.
So – to the title of my post – the first day of practical this year has involved priming a large square piece of canvas on the floor and marking out a grid of squares and then beginning to fill these with tones of grey and burnt sienna.
Why? Well, there’s a couple of threads coming together here. 1st the stone writing I did back in March and displayed in my degree show and the paving I saw while visiting the opening of the John Moores Painting Prize in Liverpool in June/July, which involves similar stone colouring to the stones I’ve used from the Gavenny river in Stone Writing. 2nd My writing about chaos/order and art/maths (all the same subject) and which I did a first talk on in November at Hereford College of Arts is making me consider my PaintWrite series in a different way.
My painting has often been the chaotic element in these pairings and the writing the more orderly…so I am trying it the other way around – the painting element applied in order (squares) and the writing being messy (er). This orderliness in my painting goes against the grain, but I need to see what it does to the work.
One way I am considering my PaintWrite series is by way of an aural equivalent; the Opera, combining the libretto which may or may not be understood and the musical score, which has an abstract nature.
