‘It’ a Hiding to Nothing.

Paint softens the torn surface. A healing skin? The seascape had to go. Instant transformation of the implied space of a horizon to the ambiguous space of flatness. The original painting using suggestive marks has given way to something more descriptive. There is a preliminary approach to painting that He takes which might be what is meant by ‘expressive’. He paints like a shot-putter. Stuff is launched onto the surface with what turns out to be more hope than judgement. Does hope imply a lack of faith? ‘It’ rides with the frustration that is carried in the act and the mark. A period of enthusiastic scrubbing and dabbing follows until He realises the futility of it. ‘It’ begins to tire and He relaxes into looking and a more considered process. The expressive approach is not the painting but a clearing of shards of feeling that litter the floor of the china shop; the bull is still for a while. ‘More considered’, Safer? The work becomes less resistant as ‘It’ retreats. The wounding of the surface is healed by the perpetrator, neutered perhaps by the process. A tamed painting expresses gratitude.



He put some Zinc White pigment on the surface and brushed it in. A seascape appeared, grey reflected light. Truly awful. The work appeals to ‘Its’ sense of perverse pleasure. One of them must lose. ‘It’ eggs him on. Graphite powder is applied. Cotton wool to rub it in. But cotton wool catches on the rough surface , a memory of lint on childhood scabs, stuck and painful to remove. And as he stands back the work remains appalling. It is amused. He laughs. Cotton wool has drawn itself next to the zinc white to suggest a shore. It has all the qualities of bad collage. If the work continues to defy him, He will make it so bad that there will be no end to its regret. Or He might see the error of its ways and allow some means of redemption.



It told him to get on with some work. This idea of damage is hanging around, thoughts of paper scarified. He scored the paper surface with a blade against a straightedge, Too clean a cut . Twist the knife. That did it. Working his way across the paper, perversely, the scratches look good. Nice? It wanted something more defiant. Black paint – cliché? He is attracted to niceness, ‘It’ pours scorn, prompts him to cause more damage; what happens to the paper remains arty. Having lost his sense of direction neither he nor the work is going anywhere. ‘It’ runs out of energy . Stuck, in a corner, it looks around. The workshop, like his brain, is cluttered with stuff , unorganised, hardly room to turn around. Brain and body bump into things that fall to the floor. Both need space for u-turns. Brain is a function of the world outside. Cod stuff? That’s all he’s got. When the stuff is put away, (always more stuff than places for it) dust remains. Hoover, Infinite regress.



Where is the ‘I’? The previous post was an attempt to avoid responsibility for what was a miserly response to the Bus. I guess that the ‘I’ wrote it. The trinity of ‘It’ ‘He’ and ‘I’ creates spaces and cracks in which to hide; the slowing down of his motivation gains momentum. ‘I’ am drawing. ‘He’ is wondering where it is leading. ‘It’ remains a dog in a manger. Working with three other artists recently (and somewhat uncharacteristically) on a proposal, the first time he had done such a thing, It came up with the notion of ‘a cradling of loss’ in relation to his bird work. He decided to put it into the discussion to see what response arose. Simultaneously with the birth of the notion (?) phrase (?) idea (?) it pricked at his sense of vulnerability. ‘ What nonsense this is. Unintended consequences? You draw and paint images of dead birds.’ From the same thoughts came the notion that ‘dead bird’ is no more than an inadequate label. Whatever constituted the bird is no more. (He keeps tripping over Monty Python) What remains is loss. This female Bullfinch was given to him by a fellow artist, retrieved from her cat, the disorganisation of its feathers testament to its suffering. He felt for it, even as ‘It’ underscored the superficiality of his feelings. There seemed the possibility of disrespect in the use of the remains. He tried to invest the act of drawing with a proper dignity by sanding the drawing surface with the pain of grazed skin. But the paper resisted and would not be hurt. The surface became gentler as the cotton was scuffed. Perhaps, like skin, healing commenced simultaneously with its damage.



He’s been mulling over it for a little while – there are truths that must be approached tangentially.

He suspects that ‘It’ is common to many of us. But how can he pretend to be an ‘artist’ when it is so obstructive, picking and poking and scratching. Its constant contrarian haranguing exhausts him, even as he takes perverse pleasure in its excesses, contrarian even to himself.

‘It’ accompanied him to Bexhill. He was going to see Richard Wilson’s ‘Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.’ and wondered how ‘it’ would respond. A bus sits, apparently precariously balanced, over the side of the De La Warr pavilion, a jokey reference to Michael Caine’s line in ‘The Italian Job’ Well not really a bus, a mock-up of a Harrington Legionnaire. ‘It’ was disappointed. The detail of the bus was fairly blandly painted. He told it to be sensible, that the bus didn’t need to fool us into thinking it a real bus. We were here to enjoy ourselves, but it wouldn’t be convinced. Lots of people were really having a good time. He could tell from their smiles and gasps of delight as the mock-up bus mock-teetered on the brink.

He so wanted to feel the work to be great, to happily enjoy it without reservation, but ‘it’ kept interrupting. ‘It’s fixed so it won’t fall off, it told him. It’s not real life. (that puzzled him a little. How was it not real?)They spent a lot of money on this’ It clearly thought that a mildly boozy laugh had been taken too seriously. Killjoy, it can’t help itself, poor thing. It imagined Richard and the lads passing by on their pub crawl, Richard lagging behind, distracted by his idea, keen to grasp the moment, worried that it might pass, the lads keener on the next drink, Tracey and Damien having already gone to fetch their paints. He was becoming quite dispirited. It always does this to him. He leaps up full of hope and interest, only for ‘it’ to sour the sweetness of the experience. How to be rid of it? It looked for a while. Children had their photographs taken, bus as backdrop – ‘We were there!’ (Always the pleasures that children take in their experiences are most enjoyable.) Would their enjoyment gain another perspective given time. Would ‘it’ intervene later in their lives with misgivings and incomprehension? Its path crossed that of Mark Kermode as he made his way to the Pavilion roof to interview Richard Wilson for ‘The Culture Show’ Watching and listening to the interview later, he squirmed as he ‘got it’. but ‘it’ failed to love it. He watched as ‘it’ became mildly despondent, hearing the words but remaining distanced, feelings tainted by small-minded scepticism, which was as undeniable as the freckles on his arm. He and it were becoming one. Later as he sat outside on one of the new seats in the finally landscaped lawns, a seagull wandered close. It stood , hopeful, looked, waited – for crumbs to drop from something that ‘he’ might eat, or even to be fed. He knew how it felt, being a frequent seagull to artwork. Seagulls know when not to hang around. Off it flew for a ride on the bus?