Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs

Assesment is about to happen once more.  This year is passing far too quickly.  Too soon year zero will be over and the long summer break will begin.  I am not looking forward to it.  All those weeks away from the studio and the stimulus of shared interests.  I shall miss H too.  Both her friendship and her support.  Although I find the stress of dead lines, people, etc., difficult and at times impossible to cope with, university provides both focus and a structure to my daily life that helps me to get through it.

Then in September/October I shall have to begin all over again.  New people, new studio, new requirements.  Not only that but I will be beginning my degree proper.  This will be the time when I will have to face up to the reality of my dreams.  With largely self-directed study, the quality of my ideas, my work, will be tested.

There is no point in worrying about next year yet.  I still have one more project to get through to complete this course and more immediately, assessment.  For the first time we have had to write and artists statement.  Initially, I was puzzled by the amount of emphasis given to writing such things. As well as this short version, the contextual studies essay is the same think but extended.  Now I I think I am beginning to understand.

The intellectual, theorising functions of art are far more important than I had previously realised.  I knew it was part of art, but had not seriously considered that articulating ideas was an integral part of creativity.  Its value is not primarily for the reader but for the artist.

Making a piece of art is not just about doing it.  It is about developing an idea and finding the best way to communicate it.  It does not stop there.  In order to produce a body of work rather than what could be called random acts of creativity, there needs to be an underpinning of philosophy or purpose.  Such a purpose might be to produce beautiful objects or to make a political statement.  To explore a method, a material, an idea, emotion or belief. It could even be as straight forward as a desire to exploit the market and make money.  It doesn't matter.  What does matter is that the artist understands the purpose and is thus enabled to work with direction and to progress.  Like providing oneself with a map rather than wandering aimlessly.

My work looks less chaotic today. Intersting that it divides naturally into two parts, almost as though I have been working on two projects instead of one.

Time to step back and take stock of this current project.  I have reached the stage where I actively dislike each and every piece of work done this semester.  Looking around as I sat at ny desk yesterday, I longed for a sharp pair of scissors and a large black bin liner. 

I had spent the day working in oils.  The painting had begun life as a fairly quick paint sketch.Lots of dry brush work, not too much detail  There was some thing about it that I quite liked.  N suggested that it was a good 'beginning' and that I should work into it complete it.  What a disaster! The result is something flat and dead with no charm what so ever. I wish I had left it alone, grrrr.

I wish that I could rid myself of my preconceptions about art and artists and just focus. Feel pride in doing what comes naturally.

Chatting with V has helped.  She talked about drawing and how so many of us define it so narowlly.  About Jackson Pollock and the numer of classes he took trying to master the skill. I am as usual making things too difficult for myself.  It is not as though I want to use realistic drawing in my own work.  Colour and texture seem more amenable to carrying the ideas and meanings I want to communicate.  It is as though they were a language I understand.

I can see a common thread in this project, then every now and then I wonder off into territory that I find difficult and uncomfortable.  That undermines my confidence in the things that originally gave me satisfaction.  V likes the pieces that my obsession with drawing force me to dismiss.  I need to develop self-belief.  To trust the language that my instinct tells me to use.

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G and I had an interesting conversation last night about the status of painting in the contemporary art world.  He said that to dismiss it as something that has said all it has to say is like saying that music has said all it has to say.  Both stagger under the weight of history. They struggle to break new ground and to find a language relevant to contemporary culture. 

I wonder whether 'new' is as imprtant as we think it is and recall the saying'if it aint broke, dont fix it'.

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I love to paint.  The sheer, physical nature of it.  The endless colours.  Its versatility.  Paint can stain or sweep or demand to be touched.  It can be bold or subtle, shiny or matt, create illusions or mood.  Paint can record, suggest, give substance to our thoughts and memories, to our imaginings and to our emotions.  Paint is like the written language of colour and texture and shape.  Mobile and open ended in its ability to include other media and expand its vocabularly.  Its very familiariyt offers opportunity to shock or surprise.

I have completed yet another self portrait this evening.  That these could be interpruted as vanity (despite the fact that they are usually less than flattering), embaresses me.  The truth is that I have no other model and a complusion to learn how to create a human likeness.  An odd compulsion considering I have little desire to become a painter of portraits of to produce photo-realistic drawings.  I can only assume it has something to do with my fascination with issues of identity and my desire to underpin my work (however abstract) with a firm foundation.  My strengths are becoming more apparant, colour and perhaps texture, definately not drawing although that skill is improving.

There is something I have discovered by following this particular obsession.  It is far easier to draw with a brush than with a pen or pencil  My initial sketching is become more and more perfunctary - mainly measurement, positions and broad suggestions of shape.  Paint finds its own...correctness... in a way dry media does not.

In order to finish off my sketch book and to write this semester's essay I need to analyse what I have learned so far and to discover the threads that flowl thougth out my work.  I keep saying that I have a need to communicate.  It is time to unearth what it is exactly that I want to say and how I want to say it.

The more I look at them the more I dislike the water colours.  The colours are beautiful and the paintings have a delicate appeal.  But some how they are just not 'me'.  They do not feel authentic, some word like that.  I think that, although they say what I wanted them to say, they do so too softly and gently.  I am coming to realise that I am neither soft nor gentle.  I have sharp corners and slashes of harsh, dark colours.  I want to bite, not sooth.

The weight that I had lost is back. I am smoking more than ever.  Getting out of bed in the morning is a battle.  I dread each day.  Arguments with my children flare out of my short temper.  Self doubt is  a scab that I constantly pick.

I have been experimenting with water colours over the past few days.  The method and the feel of them is very different from other painting media.  I am finding them difficult, although practise is improving my control and I am slowly beginning to learn that they are far more versatile than I had thought.  I suppose that like most people I had associated them with sweet landscapes and Sunday morning painters.  With tiny, textureless paintings.  Chocolate box is the term that comes to mind.

Contrary to my expectations I am findind water colours very interesting.  The colours are beautiful and jewel like.  They do not lend themselves to my usual dark palette.  I really llike the marbling effect of dropping paint onto wet paper and the various techniques appear to make it fairly easy to  create a 3d illusion.  There is a strong temptation to try my hand at a still life, which might me a good thing.  It is one way of practising drawing and coming to a better undestanding of how lifht and shade models objects.

Meanwhile I have interpreted my themes in a totally new way.  At least new to me.  I am still using a strong element of abstaction but the images are lighter and more delicate.  I began by attempting to represent images and feelings about the seaside.  The beach and the sea are things that have strong associations with childhood for many people.  Personally, I did not go on holiday until I was around 14.  I did, however, spend days out at the seaside.  LIke most people from this area, Blackpool and Rhyl became familiar places, rich with memories. I remember longing to see the Blackpool Illuminations, but had to wait until I had my own children for that experience. 

We also spent many days  in Southport.  Miles of sand reaching out to a distant sea and a donkey named Shamrock.  Whenever we went to Southport I would ride 'my' donkey. I remember crying and crying when I was denied this special treat on one occasion.  We were some place other than Southport, but as the seaside was simply the seaside to me I could not understand, lol!

Interesting that there is no suggestion of a donkey or of people in my painting.  Only the sea, sand and bright colours that make me remember those days.

The second painting was created by dropping diluted paint onto a wet surface.  The shapes and colours that resulted brought to mind a kind of blending of all the times I have spent on beaches, as though looking back through a soft focus lens.  The image was completed by the addition of a solitary figure.  A little girl sitting alone with her back to the viewer.

Using the same method I attempted to control the positioning of the washes more consciously.  I wanted to see the man in the moon. To cpture the mixture of delight and unease a full moon would engender in me as a child.  I remember watching it through my bedroom window or from the car as we drove home.  My grandmother had lots of saying about the moon.  Sayings like turn a silver coin over in your pocket for good luck when looking at a full moon through glass.

Its presence, the way it would apparantly follow wherever I went was conforting.  At the same time the apparantly complicated supersitious rules that suggested the moon needed to be placated in some way and this mysterious man who lived up there were alarming, to say the least.

I am beginning to notice motifs? is that the correct word?  that keep cropping up. Isolation, loneliness, a girl facing away from the viewer, patches of red...interesting.

It is difficult not to attribute meaning to my paintings.  I am unable to seperate thoughts and the physical application of the paint, even when I begin with no more desire than to play.

There are two pints of milk sitting on the shelves under the window in the back yard.  How odd.