ARTISTS TALKING

# 14 [27 April 2009]

My son has made a fantastic video of my performance, time to get that bootleg video editing software installed.

My daughter enthralled the audience by making weird noises into the microphone.

Simply having children has a dramatically soothing effect on audiences.

In fact this works on everybody: If I go into Boswells department store alone, all the assistants put on  blank expressions, step a little back, keeping a wary eye on my activities. When I go in with the kids, it's all smiles and "can I help you sir?". Sir? People never call me sir. Well, they do when they see I'm a Dad. One of the perks!

At 9.00 pm, off went my partner and kids with a friend: school on Monday, the kids must get to bed. If they're late to school we start getting formal letters from the head, and unwelcome interest from the educational social worker. We've learned from experience.

Ex-army Czech neighbour made up for Saturday by staying behind helping me load the van 'till 11. "Naaahees Vun" as he would say.

Got home at 1 am after stacking glasses, clearing bottles, paper plates, screwed up napkins, etc., wiping up spilled wine, scrubbing the cream cheese off the carpets and hoovering up crumbs. By the time I got round to eating (after performance) there was no food left, so at home made myself a cheese sarni and cracked open a left over bottle of wine.

Daughter woke up crying. "It hurts, it hurts" ... "Where does it hurt my darling?" ... "The exhibition hurts ..."

Yes, it always does, however well the event goes.

No matter how much people enjoy themselves, and what lovely things they say about my paintings, the press, arts council reps, local council arts officers, local gallery managers, etc. are always conspicuous by their absence.

People come to Oxford for the tradition: for the Christchurch  collection of medi-aeval art, the 12th Century wall paintings and Tudor royal portraits. People don't come here for the fringe contemporary art, so why clutter the pages of the local press with it?

There's the cost too. I try to justify it as publicity for my business (teaching and offering ritual and ceremony). That's the year's profits wiped out ... it might convince the tax man, but ultimately I have to justify it from a deeper motive!

And finally, there's the post-exhibition depression. The rapid disappearance of large amounts of adrenalin from the system, it's a kind of drug withdrawal. Combined with the sudden onset of existential meaninglessness now there's only computer work to do, always unpleasant.

So, up late this morning (7.45 - the days of a quiet lie-in after a late night ended with the arrival of children!). Son rushes out, shoe laces trailing, and leaps on bike with piece of toast stuffed in mouth.

Daughter, miserable, trails to school, late, in the rain, with partner.

I take van to studio. Now, how am I going to get this equipment back up those stairs?

# 13 [25 April 2009]

I've done rather a lot of reflecting in this blog, I'm going to try and do a straight diary entry!

Hanging the exhibition today, something I haven't done for 13 years. Forgotten how much hard slog it is.

First off, the muscle (my Czech ex-army neighbour) let me down - turned out he got pissed last night and crashed out on a friend's floor.

Now, I can only just carry the performance equipment on my own. The speaker and the electric piano are a hundredweight each. But with the advancing years, the consequences of carrying this stuff are severe: back-ache for a month, and acheing wrists that prevent piano playing for a similar period. Since I'm shifting it with the intention of performing tomorrow, I can't take the risk.

Eventually, me and my son slid the equipment down the stairs (narrowly averted squashing of son), sledged it across the garden (sorry lawn) on old blankets, and ramped it up into the back of the van on a step ladder. Once we were at Wolfson, all easy, helpful porters, trolleys, lifts, etc. discovered son suffers claustrophobia in the lift. Funny you can live with someone for 12 years and not know something like that.

Hanging was pretty much trouble free. Here's a tip which few seem to know about: "Leger Stops". If you're hanging stuff with nylon fishing twine, these things stick onto the line, but can be moved if you pull hard. Really easy to get pictures at exactly the right height without endless knot tying. Available from all decent angling shops, and on the internet.

Confronted with exhibition lighting tracks for the first time. The fittings made some horrible cracking and squealing noises when I moved them around, but I don't think anything snapped.

The folks at Wolfson are very kind and helpful. They plied my son with free coke (the fizzy stuff with caffeine in it) all day, at the end of which he was whizzing about between the 3 rooms like a rocket had been strapped to his backside.

He did a fine job all day with the nylon twine and leger stops, and did his job as documentor excellently. He deserves a treat some time. Don't we all?

Back home, panicking about the performance at the private view tomorrow. Been trying to remember the last time I played the piano in public. 1996 I think.

I've made a list of the things I need to pack in the van tomorrow. Forgot to launder my clothes ... think I've still got a pair of clean jeans somewhere. Must have a bath, I stink this evening, family too polite (or too familiar with it) to complain.

So it's all over, really, bar the shouting!

And why did I do it all? Honest answer: To keep life interesting enough to bother trying to stay alive. Just now, it's really fun!

Thanks Megan (not real name) for permission to (mis-)use your story.

 Thanks for the encouragement, Rob!

# 12 [24 April 2009]

I've had some feedback from post #10, about railing against the conceptualists.

Far from it, I think the conceptual movement has been a vitalising and challenging force in the art world, and some of my favourite art is 'conceptual' in nature.

I just find it both upsetting and annoying: the way that artists demean their work by the things they write about it ... and the fact that contemporary courses encourage this stuff.

Write about your process ... write about your techniques ... write about interesting things you found along the way ... but please, do we have to write rubbish as well?

Remember, the best art stands on its own, moves us at a deep level, and requires no explanation of what it represents, no details of references.

Sometimes when I exhibit, I write a little story or poem for each painting. But the stories that get read most avidly go with the paintings that people like most: the art must stand on its own, if it needs propping up with a heap of junk, then it is a heap of junk.

# 11 [24 April 2009]

A comment on one of my posts, fantastic – thanks Laura! There is a world out there!

Isolation seems to be epidemic amongst artists. Although it’s a real peak experience when artists come together and join in a project, the very nature of creativity sends people spinning away again.

Artists find it impossible to plod along enjoying each others’ company for long, they soon get inspired and go off and do something whacky – often on their own.

Back in the early 90s I helped get a group of artists together – we all needed a break, and I’d found a community centre who wanted to help: free exhibition space and low cost room hire in return for publicity.

Our philosophy was to use the opportunity to help each other get where we wanted. We spent a lot of time talking about where we wanted to go. It was challenging, about raising expectations and not settling for second best. It started about us all wanting to get our work exhibited, then it got into gaining experience – teaching, administering, gathering practical skills. Then onto money, why we wanted it, and then how to raise money in ways other than selling paintings and running workshops.

Within a year, one was enrolled for a PGCE, another was running Yoga groups, another had decided that more than anything she wanted children, another joined an advertising agency, and I went off to start learning about ritual.

It was really fabulous … but doomed to disintegrate.

I’ve been in five such inspiring situations, and the years in between have been filled with the dark feeling of being surrounded by people, but still feeling lonely.

I was commissioned to write an article about it for the Artists Newsletter, which was really about heralding the innovation of the AXIS register (not online then), as a means of making contacts with artists. Ironically, 15 years on, searching the AXIS database, I don’t get a single hit on ritual – and the selection panel continue to reject my annual applications, so sadly never much use for me.

Having a family has been a great comfort. Children idolise their parents, and as much as being loved is good for children, it’s also good for grown-ups!

This morning I was consoling my daughter, who was in tears of frustration over drawing a glass. It was a genuine delight to sit down with her and a glass, and show that the glass is only visible by the way it distorts its background, and through its specularities.

Tonight, my son and I are sleeping in camp beds in my study/studio, ready for an early start hanging the Wolfson exhibition. He’s the official photographer for the private view, and will be videoing my performance … for the simple joy of being involved in something exciting.

When the kids leave home, I will miss them like my own limbs … back to the dark times of seeking out those chance encounters with others whose journeys briefly join the same track.

# 10 [22 April 2009]

“But Dad, what do you believe?”. I’ve been discussing spirituality with my son, and we’ve just been through some ‘modern traditions’: Theosophy (inspiration of Mondrian), Wicca, Asatru and Crowley.

“I try to stick to my own experience. All I can really say is this: there’s definitely something funny going on ...”

Not a satisfactory answer. We need to believe something. We can’t make decisions otherwise. A defining boundary between childhood and adulthood is that children believe their parents (mostly), while adults believe something else that enables decision-making.

I spent a year of my doctorate exploring belief. I started by reading about predicate calculus (“Logic”). The gist is this: One might have a rule that goes “Whenever X is true and Y is true, one may say that X is true … or that Y is true”. Is this true? Intuitively, yes, but prove it! That’s what predicate calculus does, but only if we make assumptions, like something can’t be true and false at the same time, etc. Very detailed.

There’s this joke: “A Physicist, a mathematician and a logician are travelling to a conference from London to Edinburgh. The train crosses the Scottish border, and they see a black sheep. The physicist says: “Look, all sheep in Scotland are black”. The mathematician replies: “Fool, only some of the sheep in Scotland are black”. The logician retorts: “Idiots – all you can say is that at least one sheep in Scotland is black on at least one side”. As I said, Logicians are different.

But you can’t reason with logic until you make “real” assumptions. You can’t say “all birds can fly”, and “Tweety is a bird”, and deduce “Tweety can fly”, without assuming that there are birds, something called flight, and something called Tweety. And “all birds can fly” is another assumption.

Everything we ‘know’ is just assumptions … beliefs.

Also, our knowledge contains many contradictions. Frege proved that if your knowledge contains one contradiction, then you can prove anything.

I managed to prove that it’s so hard to resolve contradictions, it would take us many lifetimes to clean up our ‘knowledge’ to the point where we could reason with it. But we can still reason … how come?

I wrote a computer program that could be ‘fed’ contradictory knowledge, reason with it, provide apparently sound proofs of completely contradictory things, quite happily … like us.

This is why I am so sceptical of the ‘academic rigour’ that artists are expected to apply to their work. There are a million ways of justifying any piece of art, given a brief and context … and our contradictory knowledge. It’s just pissing with proof, logical masturbation.

I do it - nobody takes you seriously if you don’t … but come on, folks, inject some reality here, stop pretending that this cognitive charade has any creative, or academic, value whatsoever: let’s get on with making stuff, doing stuff, and making the world a better place ... which is what I really believe we should be doing!

# 9 [21 April 2009]

“Auntie Megan’s here, Auntie Megan’s here!”. My son comes running in excitedly, and then dashes out again with my daughter. A couple of minutes later, my old friend, and collaborator strolls in, my children bouncing around her feet like badly trained terriers.

Megan is one of a very few artists I have met who sees the world, and the creative process, from a similar standpoint as my own: Willing to experiment with the conceptually forbidden zones of psychology, spirituality and emotional process.

Megan trained in the 70s, and surfed the wave of feminist art, working with some great names including Judy Chicago. Well respected in her field, but penniless, she developed an art therapy business to keep afloat.

Nearly a decade ago, to the great sadness of myself and my son (then 3), she moved away from Oxford for some landscape, and to focus on her art therapy business.

Recently, she has returned to art production, and to help “catch up”, has enrolled on a Contemporary Visual Arts masters degree.

The first essay did not go well. Quoting her influences and the great names she once shared the limelight with, she received low marks: “This is a course on Contemporary art, not art history.”

Are we really art history … surely not? At the tender age of 47 I just feel like I’m coming into my stride. At 18, the received wisdom was that one’s career would be beginning to mature at 60. Now my generation are closer to 60 than 18, are we to be thrown on the scrap heap of history, to make way for the blossoming Culture of Youth? Will an entire generation of artists be dismissed, as too youthful in their youth, and obsolete in their maturity?

It’s definitely the case that most art is made by young people. Simple economics: young people, without the ties and responsibilities of family, can live happily on virtually nothing (as I used to myself), and can avail themselves of a vast array of opportunities denied to us “Veralteten”: travel scholarships, residencies, competitions for the under 30s, etc.

The true dilettantes soon get bored, and wander off when they’ve found another novelty to play with. Those of independent means carry on, but without having to meet the challenges of living a normal life, their output tends to become irrelevant and self-obsessed.

The more dedicated take arts admin, art therapy and teaching posts, in the hope of one day going part time and returning to creative practice. A very few succeed financially, and define the mainstream.

Only relatively few of us manage to keep creating, and tread that twilight path somewhere between fame and oblivion.

Certainly, my volume of output is restricted, and I pursue an artistic vision that lies on the fringes. But that doesn’t make me history. Not even when my grandchildren are pushing Auntie Megan around in her wheelchair, are regulating my morphine drip and changing my incontinence pads … not even then … will I be history!

# 8 [17 April 2009]

Swaddling. At 2 weeks old, my son was making up for his first 3 days unconsciousness, by almost never falling asleep. By this time, it felt like he’d been awake forever – a dark eternity of crying through nights of torture.

My partner started to consult health visitors, friends, even relatives, for advice, and the consensus seemed to be to try swaddling.

We were taught as children that ancient and savage people swaddled their babies – wrapped them tightly in rags and bandages – in an effort to keep their bones straight, especially in regions with low Vitamin D in their diet … but that this was a cruel and counter-productive thing to do. So we were a little resistant.

Anyway, we decided to try it. Late one evening, when we couldn’t bear yet another sleepless night, we wrapped our son up in a blanket. Not just wrapped, but bound tightly, so that he couldn’t possibly move either arms or legs. I was expecting bawls of protest, a bout of screaming that might prompt the neighbours to call the police. But not at all. He took one last look at us, heaved a sigh, closed his eyes, and fell fast asleep.

The theory is that the sudden freedom of movement, after 9 months confined in a womb, is unbearable – arms and legs waving around wildly trying to make sense of an alien universe, no soft womb wall, or soft warm mummy, just these itchy, scratchy, flappy babygro things.

I knew a woman who swaddled her baby ‘till she was 3, whenever she had a tantrum. Whether this was appropriate or not is a matter of debate, but her lodger was so disturbed by the practice that one day he lost it, and threw a tantrum at his landlady. She, being trained in martial arts, quickly disabled him and despatched him from the house, after which moment he was officially homeless. The dangers of challenging somebody else’s parenting technique … just never do it!

When Andrew Bryant sent us bloggers an email urging us to post comments on each others’ posts, I froze in fear. We’re being urged to throw off the swaddles. Simply writing this stuff feels like one is thrashing around wildly in the emptiness of cyberspace. Now we’re presented with the dread possibility of actually making contact with something, someone, unknown, “Out there”.

I took up the challenge, and for better or worse, made a comment on one of Miss B’s Salon’s, which felt very, very unsafe. Reading it this morning I realise, of course, that my choice of topic was all about a desire for safety, and how one way of dealing with that is by inviting tyranny.

So, Andrew, there you are, I’ve done it, I’ve thrown off the swaddles (made contact out there), crapped in my nappy (written about it) … now where’s that tit?? (Oh yes, stop wasting time, and get back to remunerative work!)

# 7 [15 April 2009]

Bed time punches a huge hole in the day. When I’m not too busy, this forms a delightful 2 hours of family play & chat time. While my daughter’s in the bath, we catch up on the day’s news, and explore the typical questions of a 6 year old – “How does a tape recorder work?”, “What was wrong with Hitler?”, “What is The Economy?”… a whole booksworth of elucidation squeezed into 15 minutes of splashy, milk-slurping, giggling exuberance.

Once she is settled, after bedtime story, when her music is lulling her to sleep, then it’s my son’s turn. “How can I learn to be a helicopter pilot?”, “How dangerous is it being a fighter pilot?”, “Which are better, AK 47s or Kalzhnikovs?”, and then the statutory chapter of Anthony Horowitz’s latest spy novel …

Tonight, though, I’ve been busy: my daughter had to bath alone, and my son was persuaded to watch Top Gear on the telly. The bedtime stories have been rushed interruptions to a long day at the computer.

As part of my exploration of potential new identities, I perused the Opportunities pages of AN Magazine in a quiet moment on Sunday. The St. Helens & Knowsley commission caught my eye – “Yes, I could do that … and I would really enjoy it … and it’s pretty well paid …”. In fact, reading through the terms and conditions it’s pretty clear that the commissioning organisation have been reading the AIR best practice guidelines very closely.

OK, so I’ve never done any permanent public art before, nor any training in how to do it. But I know I’ve got all the skills – not only the creative skills, but also the construction skills, technical drawing and design skills, business and budgeting skills, interpersonal and communication skills. I know I can do it, and can do it better than most, but how on earth can I present 29 years of accrued experience across the disciplines of science, engineering, psychology, counselling, teaching and business (let alone Art!) on the currently fashionable single-page CV? I can no more condense this effectively into a single page than I can write a 500 word Artist’s statement.

In 1999 I was on a selection committee, and this experience gives me a huge advantage when making applications. The key (oh so simple!!) is to put a truly Stunning piece of art work on the first page/slide. One that makes the whole committee go “Yes” in unison. The second thing to get right is to provide examples of work that fit the context of the application. The third thing is to demonstrate versatility, provide a variety of work. The very last thing to worry about, I always have to remind myself, is my CV. Out of 75 applicants, our selection committee only looked at 1 CV.

It’s now nearly midnight, the application is completed, the children asleep. Next stop: morning, and a double-dose of extreme interrogation from the kids.

# 6 [11 April 2009]

“It’s Easter Day tomorrow, that’s the day that Jesus woke up … I think I’ll pray, I’d better find a prayer mat”. At 6 years old, my daughter has an unusually well developed sense of religious conviction … even if she does get a little confused over the traditional forms.

We decided to send both our children to a multi-cultural school, where 50% of the kids are from an Islamic background, though not all from the same brand of Islam. My son has emerged with a strong sense of his individuality and his potential contribution to a global community. My daughter seems to be entrenching herself into the minority ethos – a born subversive.

It’s all to do with a sense of identity, who you feel you belong with, and who you want to keep away from, what you love, what you hate. And that’s something I’m really wrestling with at the moment, which is the essence of this blog.

My identity as a would-be subversive artist was forged at military school (my father suffered from a form of paranoia in which he fantasised he was a soldier. In reality he was a small-time provincial lawyer). A small group of us organised ourselves into an anarchist collective, which involved the production of volumes of incomprehensible surrealist poetry, and subversive ‘actions’ such as leaving our roaches in the headmaster’s private library, or spraying the school armoury (!) with a CND logo.

The realisation that this brand of art was unlikely to turn a profit, coupled with the lack of a family fortune, led me to study sciences at university, where I endured the company of spotty, pale, anorak-clad scientific reductionists for 3 years, after which I escaped into psychology for my doctorate.

Since then I’ve flirted with the communities of academic psychologists, psychotherapists, art therapists, poets, painters, musicians, visual artists, teachers, environmentalists, IT professionals, and logicians.

Spiritually, I feel closest to the psychotherapists and art therapists and their goal of personal emancipation; in terms of what I enjoy, I feel closest to the visual artists and the musicians; The IT professionals generate the best remuneration; the embattled environmental movement are the most accepting of any support they can get; the teachers expect nothing but total life commitment; the logicians … well, they’re just different.

After 8 years, I’m heartily sick of the IT business, and I now have the time to look at other opportunities … with other identities. I’ve become a specialist in ritual, but I’m wary of entering the murky world of the ritualists and religious studies academics; I’ve got some teaching work in art therapy departments, but to pursue that too deeply is to give up all hope of being taken seriously as an artist; I’ve marketed my services to consumers of ‘alternative wedding ceremonies’, but with zero success; my latest exhibition might open some doors in the visual arts world, but am I really prepared to slaughter my dependable cash-cow to return to such a precarious financial future?

# 5 [9 April 2009]

The day after the birthday party. Every year I forget, and then on April 6th I remember. 2 days before my son's birthday I start getting flashbacks. My son spent his first 3 days unconscious, with my partner (barely able to walk after the caesarean) and myself spending hours sitting by his hospital cot, willing him to wake up ... before being forced away from his cotside by the practical imperatives of life.
For many families, this would be a time at which everyone would  pitch in. My partner's cousin was a terrific source of support, but apart from her, the phones remained silent.
You see, we both come from military families, where the over-riding attitude is "deal with it yourself". So we did.
Today, as the flashbacks subside, I had planned a day on site with a customer. This was to have provided my week's income, but a mis-communication with my partner means that she needs the van today to return the participants of the party sleepover to their homes. I'm stuck in Oxford, with the customer in Banbury.
It's one advantage of self-employment, that one can cancel a day's work whenever it suits (as long as the customer isn't too pissed off). The disadvantage is that the days off are unpaid, and the work still has to be done ... in this case I'll be squeezing it in next week.
Now I've spent half the entry explaining why I've got time to make an entry. Let's get to some substance:
Jan, my Wolfson contact, needed 15 more private view invites. 2 hours to get to the printer, and then deliver 15 invites - time I didn't want to waste.
"Will a pdf version by email be any use?". 
Yes, all the remaining invitees are on email (it's amazing how many people still aren't), so a pdf attachment was acceptable.
I've finished my artist's statement, and the documentation of process ... still kicking myself that I photographed my last event without film in the camera. Time to go digital, but the cost of a digital SLR (even second hand), with all the required lenses, still seems daunting.
I'm considering spending my spare time over the next 17 days working on a performance for the Private View, something I used to do as a matter of course. I'd like to do a digitial music improvisation, but have just found that my new computer's sound card has no midi interface. I can't believe it took me a whole year to realise this! I used to tinker with midi every week. More outlay, but this is essential, I just can't do serious music without midi.
There should be time to get back into keyboard practice. But I now have a huge gash on the back of my left hand, and a swollen index finger, from a bow-saw blade while cutting wood for the campfire for my son's party. Circumstances are stacking up against me ... but that's OK, I'll deal with it.