ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [30 October 2011]

Endings and Beginnings

Have taken down 'VESSEL'  from the Canterbury churches today. It was a delicately subversive show that I'd like to take on elsewhere. Great artists - I look forward to collaborating with them again.

Tomorrow I take the initial work of Drawing in Four Dimensions to Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks to set up a placeholder for work that will build and develop in situ for the duration of the Exhibition: Beta  (and, of course, beyond that). The exhibition runs until January 7th: I wonder what it will look like at the end of that period, and where I will have 'travelled'!

PV 3rd Nov 6-8pm

# 2 [5 November 2011]

A frustrating week where I haven't had time to think. But my work is up, and Thursday I'm off to the west for a few days: time to re-think, and re-charge.

Great combination of work in the Beta show: I'm very pleased to be a part of it

# 3 [7 November 2011]

I found this comment by Paul Valery (1933), which seems so resonant today:

'Never has there been such a profound and rapid transformation...the whole world... appropriated, even the most distant events known instantly...'   

and

'The number and importance of innovations introduced in so few years in the human universe has almost abolished any possibility of comparison between the way things were fifty years ago and the way they are now'

He was speaking of the huge rift in intellectual thought between the old comfortable mechanistic view of the world, and the deep uncertainty caused by recent discoveries in physics, chemistry and mathematics.

Today we experience change as rapid, necessary (if we are to believe those who will benefit from it) and inevitable.

We didn't have to become digital. Yes - it has freed us to communicate, but at what price?

# 4 [20 November 2011]

Having been away for 10 days, and having kept a journal, of sorts, of my experiences, I would like to include some extracts here. But first to put my 'get-away' into context: I was offered a residency at *Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall, on the most rugged and beautiful north coast of Cornwall - a very different place from the flat, constantly busy landscape of East Kent.

10Nov - arrived at last after a long drive - completely exhausted! Not only by the drive, but by events of past few weeks, a couple of unexpected exhibitions, moving my studio, family stuff of one kind and another...

The house is quiet, but for the sound of the sea, powerful, below.

11Nov - this house was once part of the Cape Cornwall mine - it was originally the boiler house, now reconstructed into two dwellings. It stands at the very end of the Cape, facing the Brisons and the Atlantic.

A short walk to familiarise myself with new surroundings: the sea - large turquoise green waves that break spectacularly into white drifts, they have a relentless grace, and white horses streaming in.

12Nov - The sea has a different character today, greyer and more sluggish, it pulls back slowly from the cove, a thick white net of constant motion.

I have no desire to do much but watch the sea, but I set up my chargers, get out my laptop (that I look at with loathing!) check my cameras are ready. Found out that my camcorder, not having been used for a while, has decided to malfunction - all I have is my phone.

Later: explored the cove, now that the tide is out. The slipway is steep, the shore covered with rocks and rounded boulders - I wish I knew what I was looking at, there are so many different kinds of rocks, and of course the residue of the mining industry.

13Nov - Today the wind has moved round to a biting south-easterly (I think) and the sea is grey and  flatter, but constantly agitated, picked at by the wind. Later I drive up to Lanyon Quoit and take photographs - it's cold, windy and boggy, but still that wonderful quietness.

14 Nov - Each day more captivated with the sea, and bitterly regretting not having my video. I've made do with my SLR and phone video, not ideal. 
Wish I could step out onto that sea, if it were to stop, and become solid, so that I could peer down into its depths, like looking through a glass-bottle window. Its rhythm has lulled me into a lazy hypnotic state, I'm never tired of watching it. Made a small book of colour studies to send in to the Beta exhibition.

Took a wild and windy walk to the Botallack mines: over the hill, down into the valley and up again to Kenidjack Castle ruins. The wind was so strong I could lean on it, and I was grateful to my heavy backpack for weighing me down. On the other side the ground is flatter and walking easier - I

photographed the Crown Mine from  a distance, and then scrambled down to see it close up. All the time I was conscious of my age and physical condition in a way I wouldn't have been when I was young. I still take risks - but they're more cautious and considered.

'Brisons Veor is a wonderfully inspiring workspace, where creatives in any branch of the arts can take time out to work and think. It offers space and freedom in a peaceful setting with superb sea views and glorious sunsets.

'Brisons Veor is managed by a Charitable Trust, set up in 1992 to help practitioners in the arts with limited income, to pursue their creative activities. Previously only available to women, it is now adopting an equal opportunities policy, and from 2012 will be open to all applicants in the arts. It is available year-round for self-funded residencies at affordable rates for periods of up to four weeks'



# 5 [20 November 2011]

15 Nov - Woke later this morning - regretted briefly that I'd missed precious time. The house is so peaceful, the sea slow, flat, gentle, the waves the colour of old green glass. I was awake in the night, thinking about what kind of work would come out of this time.

Went to Tate to see The Indiscipline of Painting: abstraction and contemporary abstraction. Interesting to see the commonalities and the differences -  the same experimentation with contemporary painting media ; industrial paints, aluminium, expanded foam, but an added awareness of the complex, layered nature of our daily perception, borrowings from  the street, the everyday.

I unashamably love beautiful work,  and find most abstract work reductive - it doesn't engage me long enough .  I hadn't seen Andy Warhol's eggs before, and liked the tiny rough edges where the print met the flat paint. Tiny little points of interest.

Later - saw a Chough outside, on the wall. It croaks (if that is the word to describe it) in a squeaking, indignant way, as if begging attention. They were common all across Britain; Canterbury has three choughs on its coat of arms, we don't see them in Kent any more. There are plenty of Ravens along the cliffs, too.

16 Nov - time is getting shorter - I'm reluctant to go home to the mess of daily life, to other people's problems which are by extension, my own.

It rained all day, quietly and steadily, reminding me of when I was little, on the rare occasions when I was at home with just my mother, in the warm - maybe drawing or painting, watching the rain run down the windows. Feeling safe.

It was a good day to work, and to think about time, and dreams, and Henri Bergson, or at least, his ideas.

If our memories are stored in Time, a kind of 'soup', everything we've experienced of equal weight until we conjure it into the moment, what are dreams?  And if the 'Real' is duration, a 'continually-becoming', what happens when we dream? Are dreams more similar to 'intuition'? And what, for that matter is intuition?  It's not the sum of our remembered experience, so where does it come from?

I set up an experiment: what if I tried to make a series of sketches by simply making one mark in response to a previous one? Is it even possible? - I found my attention wandering, calculating the next mark, judging the last one...Resigned myself to an imperfect process.

In the evening the wind buffeted the house - the rain poured down.

17 Nov - two more days left.

The sea has returned to its powerful self, waves crashing in, covering the cove in skeins of white foam, smashing against the rocks in huge sprays. I shall miss its rhythm, which has slowed my heartbeat** and fills me with intense excitement when I try to get The Ultimate Shot, nearer and nearer, without getting soaked through. I never do, of course, it constantly eludes me.

Today I can see across to Sennen Cove again, and the lighthouse shows very clear in the dawn light.



# 6 [20 November 2011]

Final notes extracted from journal:

17 Nov,  later
 I walked to Porth Ledden (round the corner) where there are mine ruins at the beach.

It’s a rough sea and I hoped for good pictures. A small river, fuelled by yesterday’s downpour, rushed along the valley with me, and, after dithering about I finally found a way across so that I could walk home across the cove.  It was harder than I imagined – the cove was piled with rocks of all kinds and the sea

(which was supposed to be going out) was at times menacingly near.  The scramble took me an hour,

and when I finally gained the flatter beach and felt  safe again, I took more photos, and watched a lone seal, who watched me with a curious eye. He was in his element, he knew what the underneath was like when the waves curled and crashed – I envied him so much!  Not for the first time I wished

I’d learned to dive.

Today was a unique experience for me – it will settle like sediment into my store of memories to inform my work.

I downloaded all my videos onto my laptop, and all my SLR pics. I took 180 today.

18 Nov – Here I am, a week later. A week that has been more than interesting: hypnotic, at times, scary, stimulating, relaxing. I have loved being alone. I have only spoken to two shop assistants, the lovely receptionist in the Tate,  and a couple of people in coffee shops. That’s fine – I can’t small talk anyway, and it’s good to be silent. I have enjoyed this time.

I wonder why the sea is so important to me. Why do I dream it often, and in different forms?

Today I walked to Cot Valley, for my last day of shooting.  I’ve looked through the 100’s I’ve taken and can find only 2 or 3 that excite me, that I ‘want’  (what do I want though?)

Cot Valley has a river, similar to Porth Ledden, but its steeply banked sides are covered in brown bracken, and the river is pretty, shallow, and runs across a gravelly bed. It’s very peacefull, no sound of the sea until you are nearly there and once more hear the roar of the waves, which are very high today.  (I’m mindful that I don’t know this coastline, and the sea probably gets a lot higher and rougher than I’m seeing it now).

I take 400 pictures, many continuous shots – for the last few days I know I’ve been obsessed with the feeling that the ‘perfect shot’ escapes me, so I keep trying, nearer and nearer the edge, but I know it’s not near enough, that my equipment is inadequate to my aspirations. I climb up out of harm’s way onto a rock to capture more inadequate video. In the end I run out of memory and card space and have to retreat, beaten. (They don’t have this problem on Frozen Planet!)  I finally drag myself away, feeling that after all this I haven’t succeeded in capturing the perfect wave, and why did I hope to?

The walk back is easy – I stop briefly to fix a view in my mind, if that is possible, to feed on over the coming winter months.

19 Nov -  I pack up. Sorry to leave.  I feel that I was just beginning to get into my stride, just getting used to being alone, to being able to think only of my work.

As I eat breakfast I savour this last silence. There are only the little sounds, pouring coffee, stirring it round the thick white mug. The scraping of honey onto toast. My pen tapping across my notebook, my hand brushing its pages. It is as if I hold my breath to hear something more – the rocks being pulled across the ocean floor, the dark empty spaces cut out by miners, under our feet, under the sea. Spaces echoing with the movement of tides, dripping water, while up here the sea foams into an ice-blue mass and rushes to the shore, into the cove.

The waves are huge today, just a few more pictures should do it.

# 7 [22 November 2011]

Well I've come back down to earth now. The last days have been grey, wet and misty, like being at the bottom of a pond - what a contrast to last week!

I'm sorting through my photos, and now and again give myself a quick fix by looking at my videos.

Now trying to figure out how to upload video...

# 8 [29 November 2011]

Funny how Cornwall now seems a million miles away.

I was listening to a Radio 4 programme about Neuroscience, and how we may be 'nudged' into thinking a certain way because, apparently, it's not our conscious minds, but our 'automatic brain' that does most of the decision-making! 

Seems like the Emperor's new clothes again.

After spending a week on my own, and being able to filter out all the everyday stuff that we're constantly bombarded with, I think there's a lot to be said for listening to the conscious mind.

In opposition to the 'automatic brain', 'Mindfulness' is the term used to describe paying attention to one's resting physical state - for some reason they wanted to avoid the term 'meditation' as it sounded a bit 'weird'?!*

# 9 [8 December 2011]

8 December - I seem to be falling prey to the cold virus that's going round, that, and family responsibilities are keeping me from working. I was talking to a fellow-artist (what an interesting phrase!) about the choices we make, how we want to work but are constantly demanded to do other things by our family obligations. We could just say NO - but we never do - in the end family takes priority. That is why women artists, especially older women, find it so hard to develop their work. Virginia Woolf said (in A Room of One's Own, 1929)  ' a woman must have money and a room of her own, if she is to write...' or make art of any kind, it seems to me. I don't think it's very different today BUT of course there will be lots of exceptions.

All I know is that if I had time and space to myself, to work unheeded, I might actually really discover what it is that I'm about!

# 10 [8 January 2012]

It's now the 8 January - a month since I last posted - and I've been ill again, since the end of the old year: not able to work, not even able to think clearly.

Just looked into a forum on work/life balance - lots of 'cries de couer' and I feel for all the artists who believe they've lost their way. It's hard to keep going, especially if you have a family to divert your energy and talents. 

There are all kinds of myths around being an artist - I think in the end you have to create your own particular myth, live it through and enjoy it (even if sometimes you have to ask yourself hard questions!)

Meanwhile, my hard questions are:

where had I got to?

where/how do I start again?

how am I going to summon up the energy and enthusiasm to finish three funding applications before the end of January?

and when will I be able to taste and hear properly again!

Tasks always work to get me back on track:

Task no.1. get some work ready for a spur of the moment exhibition at end of January-

that should do it!

And looking through my photos - lots of reasons why Turner loved Margate: two of them here