I had this great idea for today’s piece. It was so good I thought I might do several versions of it and develop it into a larger work but the moment I began the second process I knew it was just rubbish. What was I thinking? How could it ever have worked? I hung on to the thought it was a good idea but that my realisation was poor, my physical technique was flawed. But I knew really that it was just plain crap. I still carried on for a few lame seconds but jacked it in and started on something fresh!
When I had it all finished I realised I had left my camera at home. Not quite with it, but then I had been Tweeting to a mad Swede about Latin, mushrooms and invading Northumberland!
After a period of popping my offerings in various mailboxes I posted today’s back at my local post box. I am just so tired I couldn’t be doing with breaking my journey and all that palaver. I really don’t want to be doing this blog, I didn’t want to do the envelope, I didn’t want to do the photography and if I am honest I didn’t want to do the artwork! I used up an idea I was wanting to develop elsewhere and in fact it worked pretty well and I was prompted to experiment a little so it was all pretty positive. But now I want to sleep. Well I have wanted to sleep since I got up at 7 this morning. Our poor cat is not eating and I am grieving. So that is all.
It is really satisfying when things go well. I was unable to get to the studio until this evening because we had the BT engineer coming to connect our fibre broadband (woo!) this morning and had to take our poor, sick cat to the vet for her steroid jab (boo!) this afternoon. So I didn’t have long and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do – and I think that is an important factor. I didn’t have a clue but was open to inspiration and confident that something would come. In a way it is not even confidence, well not in any bullish way. It is just a calm assumption that it will happen. Because time was limited I discarded the first couple of things that occurred to me on the basis they would take too long to dry. So still not having a clue what to do for #Letter365 I decided to work on a piece I had prepared a substrate for yesterday. It started well and then got twee and then I ballsed a bit up that looked ugly then tried to make a bad bit better and made it worse instead then altered the bit that went twee and it became one of the best bits and….and essentially it all went really well. When that piece needed drying time I did think I would do my #Letter365 but just thought I could play with something else while on a roll. In the end I just had to start from scratch and amazingly it all came together brilliantly for me. In a way it was even better than I hoped and has an element or aspect that I didn’t predict – a happy accident?
It’s not a big philosophical question that I allude to but today’s piece is a bit of an enigma for me. So I don’t mean what is the meaning of this artwork you can’t yet, or perhaps ever, see but what does it mean that I have created something that links work I was doing a year or more ago with work I am doing now! Does it mean that the ideas and issues that motivated me a year or so ago were unresolved; that there is more mileage in them? Are they bubbling under the surface wanting to get out again? As I wrote this I realise that is the case. The other option was that I was just a bit stuck and opted for a familiar path, but I see that was not the case. I see also that there is a continuum rather than separated ideas. I hope the reunion will be fecund.
As to the seal, well I used up the last little bit of that stick stuck on the end of a scalpel and heating it with a lighter. Of course it all melted and fell flaming onto the envelope. I was all for letting it burn a little but it went out of its own accord!
I keep doing things that I would like to see on a monumental size and today’s piece is one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I like what I have done today it’s just that I would like to explore the idea much, much bigger and in different media. I have never really been a painter and never before the last year or so wanted to create large-scale pieces so the idea is unsettling but exciting.
I am a bit pissed off because I lost all the next bit I wrote when my session expired and I want to go and spend time with my sick cat not rewrite this. Sorry.
Only to say that I forgot to take my camera to the studio today and had to record things in a rather ineffectual way and broke my desire to record the whole thing on that camera – not that it matters a jot really.
I couldn’t work out why I was finding it so difficult to do my #Letter365 piece. Despite all my worries and upset about our sick cat and other stuff taking my time, I have been able to get on well in the studio – so why not #Letter365? It got a lot easier when I stopped trying so hard
It quite often happens that I lose confidence on the piece I am doing or am happy enough but fear to take the next step in case bugger it up. Fortunately I mostly tell my self to stick to the plan or go with the flow as appropriate. Today was a stick-to-the-plan day. A few times I had to remind myself that the picture I had in my head would work just great and that I just had to keep on to the end. Of course it was fine, in fact I am more pleased with it that I expected, but I am interested in examining that process where doubt sticks a finger in! It appears as something negative, but it is probably based in a cautionary principle (“mind you don’t waste those materials” or “if it doesn’t work you will have wasted all that time”) coupled with a quality-control vector. If I can link more with that aesthetic quality control when those feelings arise it may be a very useful exercise.
I said above “the picture I had in my head” and yet I am not able to visualise as I understand some people can. I do not and really cannot see a picture in my head as if i were looking at something with my eyes. It is more a feeling that I get. I can feel my way round things and describe them but I don’t see anything. I never have done even though from all the tests I seem to be a visually-biased person. I have never been able to do those creative visualisation or NLP exercises because when I close my eyes I see black or after images mostly. There is a sort of visual process that goes with remembering and imagining but it’s not like a scene which I can view and move through; it’s more like a 3-dimensional diagrammatic feeling!
I am still struggling to come to terms with our cat being seriously ill, but I managed to get on at the studio for a while today and started a big drawing as well as preparing some substrates. I was a bit concerned that my #Letter365 piece was more device than content and didn’t commit to it fully straightaway and left it hanging around for a while before I was able to see it with objective eyes. Now looking at the photos Ii am happy all is well.
Basically as an artist you get to play around with all sorts of stuff and generally have a fun time until you remember that you have to sell stuff and pay bills and do admin and you realise that it’s just like any other job only less well paid.
It’s perhaps that I am still upset by our cat being unwell that it took me three goes to get a piece good enough. I think that I may have been over critical of one but the other was crap! Well perhaps that is not fair. The piece didn’t work as a finished artwork and I would not have been happy seeing it on my wall or anyone else’s, but It was useful to have tried it and understood why it didn’t work.
The piece I did complete for the project started a bit tentatively – not surprising after two false starts – but turned out well in the end.
Now I have reached the halfway point I need to crack on with all the things that will make the whole project come together: things like this blog’s design and additional content and being able to buy on-line and sponsorship perhaps.
Back of No183
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
