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'It' a Hiding to Nothing.
By: David Minton
‘It’ is ever-present. It does things whilst he watches and reflects. It visits places where he feels uncomfortable, a bull in what seems to be the fragile china shop of the mind. The bull has a habit of trampling on things that are as yet incomplete as well as causing further damage to pieces of this and that that clutter the floor, already hurt, underlining the point. It reveals weakness, threatens ridicule.
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'Crime Scene', Pencil.
# 18 [20 November 2012]
A different kind of day. He began with the intention of painting, but mind and muscles were reluctant. He was going to paint an outline image of a bird. Each time he put brush to surface, the result was clumsy. "Draw then," It suggested, "Loosen up." The line idea lasted a few seconds until the drawing took on a life of its own. He liked the first marks and followed them. The conversation played out between mind eye and mark is physically satisfying, a way of acting out, using an 'H'pencil. The lead offered resistance which had to be overcome in action. The dark outline with a 5B pencil was to an extent an admission of defeat. His 'artist' needed a little more contrast. Crime Scene popped into His mind.
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a pleasure David... I have my moments!
posted on 2012-11-21 by Elena Thomas
Thanks Elena, Seems strange when someone puts the obvious that hadn't occurred to you in a few words!!
posted on 2012-11-21 by David Minton
such an active drawing of the inactive subject. I like that contrast. The busy-ness around the still.
posted on 2012-11-20 by Elena Thomas
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'Catalogue of Intuitive Decisions', Oil.
# 17 [12 November 2012]
He got into a little difficulty recently. "What about?" It asked. He has this thing about taste, which exercises his brain like an itch. It was about intuition. How does an artist know when something is finished, or what to do next? "Not that again, you do go on a bit!" It accused. "That's the sort of question that people ask who have no real understanding of the way artists work." It continued. It's right, and the response of those with whom He was engaged in conversation was of a degree of shock that the notion of intuitive judgement should be so agnostically questioned, or at least as He put it distrusted.
"An intuitive act is not a matter of your choice. It chooses you. You fall into it. You give yourself to it or not." "But is an intuitive act still not a matter of taste?" He asked defensively. "Yes" It replied, "And taste can be a pretty crass thing." "Taste is everywhere the same in principle and everywhere individual in practice." I sit to one side and watch as the circles continue to turn. He decided following the conversation to paint as far as possible 'intuitively', just as He always does really but to stop worrying about it. This painting had been wandering around in circles. He looked at it, imagined things and painted. He did something and then decided to do something else, adding or removing as he went. If something appealed, he went with it. He had to make assumptions, such as what looked nice or otherwise, but were those intuitive as well? Meandering lines are nice. Colours meeting are nice. Contrasts are nice. Semi transparency is nice. Thick paint is nice. "Are some better than others?" It asked, "How do you know when to stop?" "Be quiet!" was his response.
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Love it!! The Professor will build another great team. Jack Wilshire is wonderful. Santi is magic. Olivier is a clever footballer. And the rest aren't bad!!! Benitez at Chelsea?
posted on 2012-11-22 by David Minton
2-0 against Montpellier and The Arsenal through to the knockout stages! Giroud is he turning out to be good after all? Benitez in at Chelsea may top is 4 is looking achievable again?...
posted on 2012-11-22 by Rob Turner
Common sense agrees – He makes decisions. He also has this feeling that being Himself is a strange and puzzling thing, in which He has no choice, and the rest follows.
posted on 2012-11-20 by David Minton
Being at a "crossroads" implies being at a stage at which an important decision has to be made... (singular). I was suggesting there were a number of options available, conscious and sub-conscious, and that intuition (plural) could still determine the outcome if we perceived/sensed it to be correct. No ego in that... No choice... Just being...
posted on 2012-11-20 by Bo Jones
He had one of those days yesterday when He despairs. He thinks about His work and despairs. ‘It’ points to elaborate nonsense, sentimental images and toe-curling words. Get a proper job - do something useful! One facet of envy is to do with regret for what He is not. “Do we make choices, have intentions at the crossroads?” It enquires, “Maybe, or maybe our intentions are determined; we can have no other choice. Intuitions, however we dress them may be the only option. They arrive ‘intuitively’ as we egotistically misread them as our choice?”
posted on 2012-11-19 by David Minton
I'm tempted to mention Richard Bach here and "Jonathan Seagull"... Parallel dimensions... I dip in and out of different consciousness', dream world, real world, parallel world, felt world. When I stand at a crossroads, all four directions are available to me, so I take all four simultaneously... Some intentionally, some intuitively, some by accident. Some are based on what I know, others on what I remember, others still on what I feel... All have different outcomes yet exist - are accessible - at the same moment, so hindsight determines my feelings at the outcome. If I know my intention at the outset I stifle the possibility of intuition, yet it may still materialise. I compared it to " truth" initially... The truth of the intention...
posted on 2012-11-18 by Bo Jones
Hi David, is it true then....that the grass is always greener on the other side? I loose my way and can't see things as anything different from any other type of work. I look over to the green side and see people doing interesting things. I feel squeezed, wrung dry, and made responcible for social repair and unable to meander and look around and follow the intuition you guys talk about. I feel guilty saying saying these things, as I know on another day I cant wait to start work..............Intuition sounds then the safe option at a crossroads? When I thought it might take one to a unknown, but in fact it may well not if it references the past at the void.
posted on 2012-11-17 by Rob Turner
Thanks Rob, He leans on his gate, and watches your high-speed train go by. Envy is certainly on a two-way track!
posted on 2012-11-16 by David Minton
Beautifully put. That makes great sense.
posted on 2012-11-15 by Bo Jones
Bo, Hadn’t seen it as a trilogy. Elegant thought, ‘leaking memories’. Intuition, He thinks must be grounded in memory. Intuitive acts are at the leading edge of our past, if that makes sense, that presents itself to consciousness? They ‘leak,’ to borrow your thought, into the moment?
posted on 2012-11-15 by David Minton
I've been mulling over this idea of intuition for a while now. I can't fathom it out really. Dictionaries, thesaurus' haven't really helped so I'm still at a bit of a loss. In terms of painting I guess for me it's akin to Zen, Meditation, Spirituality,God given?... I don't know what I know! When I paint I enter an alternative dimension, the canvas perhaps... I start to exist in the image I'm creating and it flows out of me at times unconsciously. My ego resists the idea of playing God but that's what it feels like. I don't know what these worlds look like until I pick up the brush and paint. Seldom are they planned or considered. Francis Bacon stated "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." I guess that's what you've done for me here...
posted on 2012-11-15 by Bo Jones
Is this built on intuition or leaking memories? My favourite yet, but I read this differently to the description you offer. I read a trilogy. Traces in each picture of what came before, gradually being sculpted and remoulded. The red, strong in "Bits and Pieces," feathered out in "Less Bits and Pieces" and then reformed and shaped to challenge the authors position in "Catalogue of Intuitive Decisions." What does the "nice" hide? The power of the mind by which it immediately perceives the truth of things without reasoning or analysis? The truth of things? The author remains static in each image. Is he/she dead? Does the title translate to "Catalogue of Truth?" If so, my intuition reads this as the author in the below spirit world that bubbles above him, violently erupting into the fading, flutter of remaining feathers that still offer up hope..... And for me, that is the beauty of this image, complemented by its two peers. The journey,the memories that pervade all three... The hope and radiance in defeat and future..... I love this image!
posted on 2012-11-13 by Bo Jones
Is art a gateway? I think he has nailed it in a short line..... Yes it is, and as the audience I like to be beckoned over to the gateway, have a chat, exchange of views and then invited across to see whats on the other side........ His destinations may be serendipitous and involve a lot of journey.... and mine are no stopping express trains on high speed lines to the terminal and I'm very often rushing to get to the station in time before the train has even left. And I envy him very much.
posted on 2012-11-13 by Rob Turner
Hello Rob, He has a sneaky feeling that He ought to do something with a bit of discipline to it – develop a proposal, research it, experiment, research materials, make something that means something. All this arty journeying and never really arriving, if that’s what it is, might smack of the non-committal. Maybe He’s avoiding something. Is the ‘art’ the gate in the fence?
posted on 2012-11-13 by David Minton
Does it ever help him?..... Are all his journeys of the type where he has to set off and never know whether he has reached the destination yet, or does it ever ask him to travel to a place it can see and then trys to help him navigate towards it? Does it collect data for him, which he can then re-arrange or merge with other data. Does it live on one side of the fence and he on the other and are there any gates or styles where they can exchange things?
posted on 2012-11-13 by Rob Turner
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'Less Bits and Pieces', Oil.
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'The Nice Bit'.
# 16 [25 October 2012]
"So what has all this achieved?" It demands. "That last painting - is it your last painting? It was something of a mess, wasn't it?" He had to agree. He had pressed on with it in despite misgivings. The one piece of painting that He enjoyed was the descriptive piece. As He painted the legs, they actually stood out from the bird- it pleased Him, made Him smile. It was worth the mess to get to that. A lot of the doodling is half-buried now. "You just won't admit that all you really want is to paint and draw pictures of things, will you?" What a question! He does feel that there ought to be more to what He is doing than that; He wants there to be more to it than that. Otherwise, what is it? Just copying things? How can all this blogging and being on a-n be justified if there is no real purpose to it all? Some dead birds, a bit of composition, a touch of the mysterious, and appearing a little odd, is that what it is, for this identity thing, a portrait of identity where there is none. It pokes fun. "Maybe it's a proposal!! Painting as Proposal for the absent Self?"
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Hello Bo, Image has moved on, above. Intruiging, the notion of the bird as symbolic author.
posted on 2012-11-13 by David Minton
It reads to me as though the interesting bit..... The bird.... Is dead. With the accompanying commentary I link the two and the bird becomes the symbolic author. The abstraction isn't actually abstraction.... The feathers of the bird, as though it were plucked, rich as the wispiness of the thoughts..... I like very much, and apologies for only concentrating on my own blog.... I have been missing out here. Autobiographical through third person. Nice. Don't get disillusioned.... Why make art eh?
posted on 2012-11-11 by Bo Jones
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'Bits and Pieces', Oil.
# 15 [11 October 2012]
The need to paint is a physical thing that hangs around the nerve endings.. He always wanted to be an 'artist'. He learned the physicality of painting from 'Archie' Campbell, his teacher at school. Archie showed slides of his work, smelled of turpentine, painted in a lovely physical way, no 'filling in', no neatness: the way Archie applied paint was formative for 'Him'. And Lawrence Self, at Art School, whose paintings made His fingers itch to paint, and His mouth water.
A life lived contentedly with itchy fingers and mouth-watering paint ought to suffice and be immensely rewarding. But there are other motivations, love of praise, desire for recognition, status, all the selfish longings, the wish to be bigger, in a bigger world. He is no doubt, (or hopefully?) not alone in living a life that almost wilfully avoids the truth, misses the point. Misplaced modesty too plays its part in mis-shaping ambition. This painting is a kind of doodle on a canvas that went nowhere. It is a scattering of things from His pockets, stuff that He carries around and forgets, a counting of change whilst waiting for the bus. 'It' pokes at the sore, "You're not really an artist. You just want to be seen as one, to have an identity. It's a romantic idea. You don't know who you are." He knows all this. 'It' is not telling Him anything that He has not suspected. But His salvation might still lay with the paint.
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Hello Franny, Thank you.The image has become 'A Catalogue of Intuitive Decisions'!!
posted on 2012-11-13 by David Minton
Hi David you know me....I get weary of the endless circle I get myself into if I get subverted into introspection on the 'Why' of my art- so I never feel very equipped to comment on any one elses journey.....but I am once again struck by the religiousity of your blog language...'He/salvation'? I LOVE the image.Can't wait to see it. You are so talented my friend..........
posted on 2012-11-13 by Franny Swann
Clare, thank you.
posted on 2012-10-20 by David Minton
Hi, just to say I enjoy your blog and read it quite regularly.
posted on 2012-10-19 by Clare Smith
And was meant as such....... But still feels depressing...
posted on 2012-10-13 by Bo Jones
Sent three and fourpence, we're going to a dance!! I read your damnation as a substitute for salvation!
posted on 2012-10-13 by David Minton
Mmmmm..... Lets hope not eh? I'm somewhere in between I think? Consolation has a nice ring to it..... To console..... I think for me, that's what paint does. Take out the ego, the pomp, the ambition. Making heartens me.
posted on 2012-10-12 by Bo Jones
Bo, Damnation maybe a more interesting possibility!
posted on 2012-10-12 by David Minton
The need to stitch is a physical thing that hangs around my nerve endings... a beautiful phrase that captures it exactly. The physical act of feeling and joining things together, sandwiching, capturing texture, pinning it down, making it do something, say something. It is elusive, surprising, satisfying always in process, sometimes in product. I have itchy fingers too... good to know I'm in good company!
posted on 2012-10-12 by Elena Thomas
I considered writing "damnation" as an alternative, but thought that a little harsh. I love the emotions making can stir. Your words capture Hesse for me, clarify my thinking and open alternatives I hadn't considered. Great stuff!
posted on 2012-10-12 by Bo Jones
Bo, thank you. I initially wrote ‘….in the paint.’ It didn’t feel right, so wrote ‘….with the paint‘. ‘Salvation’ seems a little pompous now. He’s aware of something missing for which the act of painting and its physicality is a kind of consolation.
posted on 2012-10-12 by David Minton
Beautiful words supported with a beautiful image. Some thought provoking statements that will inspire and inform my own blog. The notion of identity is very interesting and the idea that it may lay in the paint also fascinates me. I'm left wondering if it really is salvation though?
posted on 2012-10-12 by Bo Jones
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'Parmigianino's Pigeon', Pencil.
# 14 [29 September 2012]
"Does He believe all that stuff?" He enjoys it. That may be the worst of it.
He lives daily with a degree of anxiety. Writing is an uneven pleasure. He doesn't want to be a smartarse, but that is how He looks to Himself sometimes. He's at his most vulnerable when He is pleased with something. That's when 'It' enters with doubt and discouragement. "Why do you write this stuff in public?" It asks. "Does it not look pathetic?" "It's a kind of mirror," He replies, " He makes the image before looking into it." "Crazy!" 'It' responds. "More repetition - mirror, mirror on the wall. Hoping to be the fairest?" Here is something of a quiet insanity of a man looking into a mirror only to see the back of his own head, (Magritte'La Reproduction Interdite') about it all. The image is a straitjacket for the man.
Parmigianino's Pigeon. He loves the sound and rhythm of 'Parmigianino'. The 'Madonna of the Long Neck', he has always found to be an amusing title. The alliterative thought of 'Parmiaganino's Pigeon' made Him smile. This little series involving titles continues tentatively. "But don't change the subject, why in public?" 'It' insists. "The man has no choice but to keep looking for a face that he will never see." "His anxiety involves a fear of being found out, of the finger pointing at His vanity, of a ridiculous face. Going public is a double bluff." "As if it mattered to anybody else!" 'It' countered.
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'Pre-Raphaelite Pigeon', Pencil.
# 13 [27 September 2012]
"This business of the repetitive, how does it come about?" He does not choose to be Himself but rather finds Himself in experience. Being this 'Artist' is a curious thing. It may be not that He MUST be the Artist, but that the 'art' channels His repetitive need. He MUST repeat. Repeating is a return. This mounting pile of bird work is a continuous loop whose ostensible subject-matter enables Him to acceptably satisfy the repetitive need. Allied to a degree of competence, it disguises and reveals something pathological. This drawing is not an image or a representation. Its making created something real. Lacan wrote that the real is " ..that which always returns to the same place." "Don't try to be clever!", 'It' snaps. I watch his reaction. Like the beachcomber He comes across things that look interesting, useful. Bits of Lacan, bits of Steiner, bits of string, bits of thinking, detached pieces of larger worlds that bob up uncontrollably, glinting, to the surface. Bits of things are interesting in their own right. He does what He can. Moments of 'Yes, I understand.', are just that, moments. And then He returns to a time before He understood, to repeat the process. That is where He lives, in that space. The mounting pile may one day amount to something that makes sense, if bits of this and that find that their shapes fit. The shaded boundary of the bird, merging with the background, the not quite formed feathers create through the repetitive actions of their making, something that cannot be completed, that is 'almost' and which colludes with need to create desire.
"Do you believe all that stuff?" 'It' slapped him awake. "Don't you think it might all be rather silly, unreal?"
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Hello Franny, God made us in his image, so we must be creative? And 'It' is the Devil ('s advocate).... He's stumbling around on the beach with ideas from George Steiner's 'Grammars of Creation' and 'Real Presences' and the wind's blowing the pages around and the tide is coming in. So 'He' is the Creator in us, but He didn't realise the implcations of His writing until He read it back to Himself!!
posted on 2012-09-29 by David Minton
Oh good...............He's back. [.....have to say that I do have a problem with this David - I keep reading 'Him' as God !!!]
posted on 2012-09-29 by Franny Swann
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'Silent Figures', Pencil on Paper.
# 12 [21 September 2012]
Thoughts cannot be resisted. Thoughts arise as He draws. The act of shading is a waiting game. Repetition, slow movement, gradual emergence, an avoidance technique, drawing as tangential life. He shades, something is released in passing, a consequence. He draws to escape, leave something behind, to put something off. 'It' suggests that he is avoiding commitment, a notion that 'I' has previously suspected. The longer He waits the keener is His anticipation. Anal retentive? It fits with a general inability to like things. Describable condition? Satisfaction gained from the physical repetitiveness of shading is substantial, a confirmation of self. The act is what He is. To anticipate is to be alive. I want a degree of disassociation from His more crass thoughts. 'I' want 'Him' at arm's length, to observe from a graspable distance. His thoughts as 'It' has pointed out can be pretty maudlin. "He should be past all this by now.", It suggests. It's right. Sometimes I feel for Him. He is a child on tiptoe at the window. I watch as 'It' bullies Him. He is omnipotent and powerless, no contradiction here, incompatible with Himself, a seesaw of extremes, dynamic imbalance of sorts. I remember Him so small at Christmas time looking up at the dining table where the grownups played cards. Is this why He feels Himself to be at the margins? He wrote of another artist, that she seemed to be saying, "Hey! Here I am!" The silence of a drawing can be profound. 'It' dares the child to shout. 'He' feels the silence as He works. Touch it gently. Build it slowly. I am satisfied for a while.
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Elena, yes there is a soft sound released as He draws, lets go the marks, and the drawing becomes still. The making of repetitive shading is a physical, mesmeric mantra. I think He feels a problem of over- romanticising, fantasising about what is only a drawing, being swept away on a tide of lovely imaginings about silence, softness, death. Somehow He fears that it can all seem rather facile when the words emerge.
posted on 2012-09-22 by David Minton
This beautiful drawing is still and silent, and yet, surely, on the edge of his hearing there is the scritchy-scratchy sound of the pencil that made it?
posted on 2012-09-22 by Elena Thomas
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'Tracey's Thrush', Acrylic on Paper.
# 11 [8 September 2012]
"Why does He always try to keep at a distance from me?" It asked. "He doesn't like you," I replied. "You're all the things that He doesn't want to be. You embarrass Him, following Him around." "But that's pathetic, if 'It' was not here, neither would 'He' be. He cannot invent a distance that is not there? Truth is, I tell Him things that He doesn't want to hear. Admittedly, I'm inclined to a cruel edge, and He's afraid of me. This art stuff is where He hides." There seemed some truth in that. The problem was not that 'It' would not go away, but that 'He' had not challenged It. When It looked Him in the eye, He was beaten.There are times when It rests and He has a little space in which to do something. It is possible for the art to retaliate, beat It back. He enjoyed making these drawings. When It is resting, needy tensions subside, mistakes can be made at leisure. Strange idea, 'making' a drawing. Doing a drawing? That's clumsy. A drawing grows. Can a drawing be grown? Drawing is more like breathing? You think you've discovered something and it turns out to be a cliché.The titling of the birds tickles still. Tracey's Thrush was intended to be more linear, nervously dribbled onto the paper, but the breathing was too relaxed.
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'Edvard's Sparrow', Pencil.
# 10 [4 September 2012]
He has not worked for a while. He feels no urgency. He could let his art slip away, ride his bike, buy a cardigan and slippers. The problem of judgements occupies Him. He recalls the moment when he came across the notion of the 'universal subjective validity' of judgements of taste. How strange to be sitting in a library reading such stuff and to feel so delighted. It confirmed a suspicion that he had carried around but could not fully articulate. His enduring inability to be joyful in the company of 'art' and in the company of joyful others leads him to suspect the commission of a lifelong error. It's somehow to do with the finding of a space, and the wrong space, in which to be. There is a strangeness of being that can be controlled if a place can be found for it, where He can 'be' with it. Differences of opinion emerge from differences of feeling? Or is it that we each ascribe meaning to similar events with differing terms? Points of view, opinions, are everywhere, and it can look as though we know what we are talking about, because we behave as though we know what we are talking about. Does this simply follow from confidence disguising ignorance? And there is scholarship. He has begun to recognise the truth that 'It' offers, that He has more opinions than understandings. It is no compensation to know that such is a common human condition. It is the foundation of his loss of urgency. His art may be a mistake.
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Hello Franny,maybe.
posted on 2012-09-06 by David Minton
............the cardigan and slippers would be a mistake ! Edvard's sparrow is about to be re-born methinks....into a good space in which to be?
posted on 2012-09-06 by Franny Swann
Hello Rob, Yes, the 'identities' do have a strange effect, which came as a surprise and have prompted some further thoughts and ideas. You're right, it is possible to grind on to exhaustion; 'He' and 'It 'are really too intense and this blog is an attempt to fracture, come to terms with, understand the intensity a little. May just be another way to repeat the grinding.
posted on 2012-09-05 by David Minton
His mistake today...tommorow his interest, by saturday it's essential to him and he is indiferent on Monday? And so it goes round. He should ride his bike, take the sights and sounds, then re-position himself. I think he should make art in response to something interesting: not just make art! and by the way, the fact that the birds have identities now ie: Steiner and Edvard is massive.
posted on 2012-09-04 by Rob Turner
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'Figure-field Sparrow', Pencil.
# 9 [18 August 2012]
He liked the whiteness. Reading yesterday the thought occurred that his reading is like his drawing. Much of the meaning in Steiner's writing is beyond him, but not without also some felt connection. He feels his way through passages of fog to moments of light and back to fog. Returning to this drawing today, he saw immediately the incorrectly proportioned tail, something unnoticed yesterday. Reading Grammars of Creation prompted him to buy Dante's Divine Comedy. Lovely, and like Steiner, full of references that He needs an education in order to understand. But there is enough to hang onto. The whiteness of the bird was the only intended outcome of this drawing, a kind of relaxation in drawing for Him. The way in which the edges of light and dark cling to and reject each other surprised Him. On one side is a white abyss bordered by dark. On the other, whiteness emerges as form. Steiner writes, 'Being is axiomatically twinned with non-being. ; to be is 'not not to be'.' (Grammars of Creation p.104) Just drawing really, but magic. The bird shape is a reason for the external shading. He loves the repetitiveness of shading, like the rhythm of cycling. 'It' noted that it was not the art that he needed, but the repeated releases of doing.
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Hello, thank you Jon and Jane, Strange this businesss of 'stepping outside oneself'. Is it Lacan who reversed the order of things? Stepping outside is somehow also like stepping inside and remaining separate. Regards' David
posted on 2012-08-23 by David Minton
Hi David, Deleuze says, "It is always a third person who says 'me'" - and I know you are going to ask me for the reference! It's from 'Difference and Repetition' but I can't find the page now!! Pretty sure it's in chapter one. Forgive my laxness and let me pass for by my brain is mush now...it is a curious thing to step outside oneself to speak as an observer or narrator in this case, it is an interesting premise for a blog and you are doing it brilliantly! I agree with Jon, I love trinities - they convey so much in their relation.
posted on 2012-08-22 by Jane Boyer
Hi David - I love the Trinity of He, It and I! thoroughly enjoying. "Watching" you messing about with media is quite inspiring. Maybe I need to experiment more? Noooooooooooooooo .... maybe I'm too experimental already? Ach, what the hell, I'll just get on with it!!
posted on 2012-08-22 by Jon Bowen