The painting/conceptual debate continues both explicitly and implicitly in the blogs. Painting seems to be acceptable when it is conceptually based. I engage in the debate,but sometimes I feel that my debate is camouflaged self defence. I wonder if this is common, or peculiar to me. My experience such as it is, suggests that much of what happens between people, be they artists, scientists, teachers, children in the playground, is determined by personal dispositions which support a world view which is tenuous and fragile, or monolithic and static, and either way has to be strongly defended. Real insight and understanding is a rare experience for me. I have no ‘real’ idea why I made this drawing. I know that it was a satisfying experience, that I ‘liked’ the outcome and feel affinity with the subject-matter. It grew from what I had been doing and has prompted visual thought. The need for explanation perhaps is an attempt to banish the fear that there is none. We make the art that we need.
Having potentially dug a hole for myself re thinking and doing, I have been trying to explore what it means for me. Paintings and drawing are somehow approached elliptically. Their making is achieved through a discrete approach, an almost pretending that they are not being made so that they have no idea. I know what I intend to do, with regard in these to flat colour and line. The minute by minute engagement in working sustains a sense of purpose that might not be justified in the end. In this regard, an ongoing anxiety ensures focus. A sense of apprehension can be followed by pleasant surprise, uncertainty, or disappointment in the result. In an age of the brief and research I don’t know if I am alone in feeling that to just ‘do’ seems to somehow fall short. But whilst there seems no reason, there remains sufficient suspicion of purposefulness over time to keep asking the question.
If the act is the thought, action is the thinking. I find that I draw differently at different times. I can be obsessed with ‘accuracy of description’ – in so far as I am technically able, and at another extreme, immersed in the energy of physical marks and surfaces. The two extremes create tidal tensions. Energy and gesture sometimes miss the point, consequently to be balanced by a period of considered description; over –descriptiveness results in tedium. The process of making marks probes subject-matter in the search for subject? This drawing was the product of the energetic end of the spectrum. Words often get in the way. It is difficult to trust entirely to the truth of action.
