ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [9 January 2010]

Snow, snow and more snow.

I am tidying up my office which now has to double up as a studio since I have given up my external studio for the time being.

# 2 [12 January 2010]

I have been working on one of my many attempts at writing a statement about my work. Here is the latest of these:

“Drawing is an absorbing activity and a way of allowing subjectivity to emerge through the mark-making process itself. It is for me fundamentally about line-based mark-making and abstraction as a starting point. I am interested in the relationship between control and spontaneity, between blot and line, restraint and exuberance, autobiographical subjectivity and non-linear story making. My mixed Chinese/English background has recently become a factor in my work and I am exploring this through the use of traditional Chinese materials and the use of a technical pen.”

# 3 [13 January 2010]

Have all my scans lined up and operation scheduled for next week. Might as well be upfront about the "ill health" - it's breast cancer and I'll only know what it's like as I'm going through it. However, I am intending to work as much as I can, because work is not separate from life but integral to it.

This blog isn't intended as a chronicle of health issues though, but inevitably they will come up so I thought it best to get the "telling" bit done now.

Apart from some DAD work, arrangements for the dog to go into kennels, tidying up the house, I'm also finishing my work for the Interim Show (http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/whatson/preview/594892), which a fellow MA student is taking to London for me and which the college is going to hang.

Every arranged visit to the space has clashed with a medical appointment so I've only got my memory of it and recent photos sent by my "room group" to go on with regard to how to adapt my work to an exhibition rather than studio context.  It's a difficult space and there are lots of us showing so the work has to make an impact. Worse it is on the top floor so unless visitors start at the top they'll be tired of looking at stuff by the time they get there. Moreover, there is also the problem of how to actually hang the piece. I'm thinking baton screwed to the wall, screws on the baton and bulldog clips (painted white) rather than staples. Let's see how it works.

# 4 [14 January 2010]

I've joined the C4RD drawing community and used the statement I wrote the other day.

http://www.c4rd.org.uk/Site/Clare_Smith.html

I'm quite pleased with myself because it's taken me a long time to get to this point with my work and I've written so many statements along the way. I think the confused nature of most of my artist's statements definitely reflected my own confused position vis a vis my work.

# 5 [16 January 2010]

So, no operation next week: chemo first, after a couple more scans. Sigh.

I have done my journal pages for the Alturnertive 100 journals project, which is based on the 1000 journals project in the States. The outcome of the 100 journals project is going to be exhibited at UCA Canterbury from 16 - 20 February.

It has prompted me into thinking I should do a sketchbook again really. I always mean to keep one but abandon efforts after a a very short time. So perhaps a public statement of intent will help.

# 6 [20 January 2010]

My latest drawings continue to some extent with the food theme in that they combine prints using food, e.g. noodles, with drawn lines. The food theme seems quite important somehow though I am only inching towards an understanding of why. One thing I read recently explores the political importance of food.

"As a ritual of integration, the meal, far from being a simple mechanism of automatic consensus, is an instance of negotiation... It can function as a procedure of mobilisaton, allegiance, or reconciliation. ... it offers of course a marvelous opportunity for treachery ...

Thus eating together is a recurrent means of political participation in all its dynamism, complexity, and even conflctuality." (from The Illusion of Cultural Identity, Jean-Francois Bayart)

# 7 [24 January 2010]

That's it - date for chemo to start is 28th Jan. I was expecting to feel relieved when I got the date but actually felt anxious, which I suppose shouldn't have been the surprise it was.

My partner has been great and measured my head for a hat yesterday. Today I'm getting my hair cut short.

I've been getting my work ready for the CSM interim show and annoyingly the opening is on 28th so I can't be there. However, I am going to try to get to The Bargehouse during the week.

# 8 [29 January 2010]

1st chemo yesterday and I'm feeling fine. I can't quite believe it but there we are.  I've been up in the office cum studio and working on some small pieces. I never know what titles to give, if at all, and have been toying with the idea of text in some form or other. Also the idea of how text can pick up undrawable narrative.

My partner is fast asleep having promised to walk the dog. The dog has given up thoughts of a walk for now and is lying under my feet asleep. The cats are sleeping. I am the only one awake.

# 9 [30 January 2010]

Was feeling a bit woozy today so didn't make it up to The Bargehouse. Fellow student Le sent me some pics though of my work installed. Other people helped hang it and also provided some lighting.

# 10 [3 February 2010]

Here are a few close ups of my work in the Bargehouse. Am feeling quite perky and have done some DAD work and some new drawing. I've been catching up with old friends too via Facebook - a relatively recent discovery.

I've just been listening to Front Row's interview with Gillian Ayres. I liked her statement that her paintings weren't about anything and that one could look in vain at the paintings to see what the relationship was to their titles.