A Portrait of an Artist as a Very Late Starter

Happy new year!

I actually made it to the studio on Monday. It was not too cold, the doors had swollen with all the rain we have had and I couldn’t get them closed at the end of the day without opening both doors and then jamming them together hard so the padlock would just about work. Apart from that, along with my trusty Calor heater to keep the chill off, it was a good day. I made 3 small postcard pieces for The International Postcard Show at Surface Gallery, Nottingham, just in time to get them in the post for the deadline. Do other artists leave stuff as late as this? I expect so. I am not usually quite so late with my preparations but the builders didn’t depart my house until just before Christmas and there simply was not the time to make work. I am now frantically finishing my sketch book for The Sketchbook Project so I can get it in the post to USA.

Working so quickly on these pieces is turning out to be a positive thing; it proves I can produce things fast when I need to and stops me over thinking and fussing my process and ideas. Keeping my overall concerns in my head and allowing things to flow, working small and quickly, I am noticing small diversions and convergings of images and ideas I have been building on for the last twelve months. It is going to be interesting to work out if I can incorporate all of the ideas in some other pieces, or if I will need to produce some works using the imagery and symbols seperately but that work together as a whole body. Either way; it will keep me busy for the rest of the year.

With the building work (this phase anyway), coming to a close at home, my priority for this year is to be in the studio as much as possible. My work for Ryedale ArtWorks last year threatened to overwhelm me so I need to prioritise my time more efficiently. I am passionate about helping to develop the group into a force to be reckoned with, but my own work has suffered as a result.

If you are interested in seeing some images of the work I have discussed, please see my latest blog: www.suegough.blogspot.co.uk I also discuss making the work in a little more detail.

(I have trouble uploading images on here because they are always too big and I do not yet have photoshop with which to reduce them).

So, sketchbooks still not completed. Horrendous filth at home, which I am valiantly trying to clean up in time for Christmas. The team are still on site, installing the wood pellet boiler, the company involved do not seem to know the meaning of the words project management. Today was one of the worst days of the ongoing refurbishment of our house ever.

BUT: after feeling so low, at the end of the day I opened my emails to find that my first ever application to participate in North Yorkshire Open Studios has been successful. So at least I have had a more positive end to the day.

I am quite excited at the prospect; it gives me the incentive to get back into the studio in the new year and get my new projects going as well as painting two large canvases to complete the quartet I started this year.

With the sketch book touring in the new year as part of Sketch 2013, the painting I am showing as part of W0budong in Manchester and now NYOS, it feels good to know I have good opportunities in the diary already.

You never know, I might get the decorations up before Christmas eve this year! It is 11.37pm so I am going to have an early night . . .

http://www.nyos.org.uk/

A series of exhibitions has been set up for Ryedale ArtWorks members over the next twelve months at The White Room Gallery @ Priestleys No. 36, Bootham, York. https://www.facebook.com/thewhiteroom36 This is part of our funded work; to raise RAW’s profile beyond the boundaries of Ryedale itself. We are very excited about it, though it remains to be seen if I get selected to show! Our first opening is tomorrow night, so if the lurgy I’m suffering from eases off, I shall be there.

I am immensely proud of how far we have come as a group in the last eighteen months or so. There are lots of possibilities in the pipeline in terms of exhibition spaces and collaborations. However, I need to prioritise time for making my own work in the new year. I haven’t even touched my sketch book during the last two weeks. Shock horror.

Today, I learned how to register my blog with Networked Blogs and get a tab to it on my facebook page, so I have not been wasting my time. All this social networking stuff is great but I am not all that confident with it. A colleague, who had just been on a Chrysalis Arts course about such things, told a couple of us how to do it and posted a useful link to a blog about such stuff. I am learning fast though: I did my first Mail Chimp newsletter last week without help from anyone, AND no swearing. Amazing; the tinterweb has an online lesson on just about everything. Now, I wonder if I can find out how to mend my wonky chair . . .

To do list:

Finish writing training outlines for RAW members.

Finish filling my sketchbook -only a few pages left.

Start new sketchbook to try out colour studies using my watercolours and anything I can find that is not buried under builder’s dust.

Clean dust? Nah, not yet, still some work to be completed.

Finish sketchbook in readiness for work in studio in the new year.

Mend wonky chair.

Find another empty sketch book; I seem to have quite a goodly collection of those!

Oh, and can I just say a big thank you to all the readers who put my blog in the top ten during August and September. (Places 7th and 6th respectively). To my shame, I only just realised I had been so elevated last week because I hadn’t realised there was such a thing as a top ten. Now I must resist the temptation of checking to see if I get there again!

The exhibition in Manchester is very real now; thank you, thank you Jayne Lloyd, for setting up the website for W0budong. I am really looking forward to conversations about the project in the discussion section of the site and to meeting everyone in the real world. I feel honoured to be taking part; I only started back into serious practice and intentions about two years ago and although I constantly veer between elation, dogged determination to keep to my path of serious fine artist and complete self doubt, it is the opportunities that arise such as this show that bolsters my courage!

I have been reading information about the other artists with interest and just know that the experience of exhibiting and interacting with them is going to stimulate more responses through my own practice.

The title of the exhibition is a phonetic translation of “I don’t understand” in Mandarin. All the artists have some connection with calligraphy that has no meaning, or asemic text. Over the next few months the web site will host a discussion between we artists and any one who wishes to join in and will culminate in the exhibition. The whole project is a result of twelve months of study by Jayne that included a residency in Chongqing at the 501 Arts Space.

For information about the exhibition follow this link:

http://w0budong.wordpress.com/

The artists:

www.a-n.co.uk/p/3245703 .

www.a-n.co.uk/p/1650059/

http://wynnepatondotcom.wordpress.com/

http://www.juliebrixey-williams.co.uk/

http://suegough.blogspot.co.uk/

Here I am again, two posts in two days after a long absence. How strange, but I sort of need to put into words some reflection on my current situation and how it will probably feed into new work.

My current work deals with ideas to do with memory, loss and the passing of time. While I was preparing for my show last Easter thoughts of my mother in law kept intruding. We have a bit of a history as some people say, when alluding to a difficult relationship; she has never been very nice to me and although I tried for years to gain her approval, I finally realised it was pointless. This coincided with my finally getting to art college, no coincidence I am sure. Anyway, this woman who has made my life very difficult intruded once again because she needed to be brought back to the UK this summer, being alone and getting frail and forgetful.

So during the making of one drawing in particular I was thinking about her memory coming and going, a life lived. I found myself obliterating parts, re drawing, and washing out, re drawing and so on. The edges of the drawing, like the edges of other drawings in the series, resembled the edges of textiles, knitting in particular, before it has been blocked and pressed. Knitting is about the only practical activity I ever remember her doing. This drawing is an important part of the current work and now, with evidence that my difficult mother in law is becoming ever more confused and frail, I find my thoughts turning to it increasingly and needing to get it out of its stiffy bag protection, to have it near by so that I can make some new pieces that react/lead on from it.

At the moment I am stuck at home waiting for a new wood pellet boiler to arrive, (we are dedicated eco refurbishers), but I do have to hand some paper, emulsion paint and drawing mediums, I’ll try and start some more pieces that react to the drawing and the developing situation with my mother in law’s health, if I can concentrate amongst the chaos. If anyone is reading this, I would welcome any comments and especially encouragement; I am feeling a bit marooned at home, unable to get to the studio!