Threads

I always say goodbye to the summer with a sense of relief. September and October I love. Low sun, bright blue sky and the occasional frost, the turning and falling of leaves. The old October days turn to November and the clocks go back and suddenly the days are short. It seems a brutal snap.

December has arrived and I have a cold. I don’t get them so much these days since I stopped working with children!

The damp November days have tugged at my arthritis and I start to hunker down. I’m reluctant to go out, especially in the evenings. I fear I’m turning into my mother (too late, I hear my family say). I have vague plans to travel, but at the last minute I call them off. I’ll go in the new year (maybe). At this end of the year I feel old.

My drawings don’t feel dark enough. I feel like a fake, because it all seems a bit level. I feel I need to find a way to plumb these depths and dive into the abyss. I want deeper water on the paper. I need blacker purples… blacker reds… blacker blacks…

I need to carve something into the paper, not draw on the top of it.

My lyrics are not for public consumption really. They speak of very dark places. 

This personal slump is not helped by the sense of impending doom I feel about the General Election. I protect myself from crippling disappointment by feeling as grim as I possibly can now, so that the shock isn’t so extreme.

I live in a bubble of like-minded folks, I am aware of this… and so I am wary of feeling that everything will be fine, because, let’s face it, everything is far from fine. I am European, and I am an old-fashioned socialist. I feel we should hold hands with our neighbours and work closely with them. I feel we should be kind to those less fortunate. I feel that all people regardless of socio-economic background should have opportunities to fulfil their potential. I’m not rich by any means, (it’s all relative) but my life is rich. I have what I need and am surrounded by love and kindness. I feel then, that I am in a position to spread it around. I have huge difficulty understanding the help only yourself mentality. Surely we all benefit when people reach their potential? We all benefit from having a well educated, healthy society? Surely?

So having a general election just before Christmas fills me with dread. It is a difficult time for many people. I have this knot of black dread that sits in my chest. If the conservatives win again, people will be in deepest despair… and I don’t know what I can possibly do about it. 

All I can think is that the charcoal and the ink just aren’t dark enough to express it.

I’ve been struggling a bit since the exhibition.

It’s right that each exhibition becomes a little pinnacle at which you can assess progress, and where you are and what’s important.

And then move on… maybe down a different alley, a tangent, a crossroads… I keep going down the alley, taking a wrong turn and end up where I started, but facing a different direction, and I dive down a new alley… but that peters out and I’m lost… but in the same place.

Lost.

The old ways seem tired.

The new ways seem contrived.

The current drawing I’ve already written off, but in view of the cost of the paper, I’m using it as an experimental ground for some different techniques… in an attempt to find something I want to pursue.

It’s got so bad this afternoon I just thought maybe the whole thing is a dead end and I should get back to stitching.

But I know in my heart that’s not the way either.

I’m not in the studio till Tuesday or Wednesday , so I’ll look with rested eyes then… or get someone else to look with me.

Stage 1
The charcoal is too crude, although the making of it is delicious, it doesn’t match up… If I stick with the charcoal I will have to ditch everything else.

Stage 2
With a layer of graphite… mismatched… is that a good thing or not?

Stage 3
I’ve knocked back the charcoal by scrubbing, then fixing a layer of chalk over the top. Tonally this is better but the method of getting here far too complicated and contrived and inelegant somehow, I like my method to be fairly simple. This is not simple. it feels clumsy and therefore ugly.

The film Sliding Doors holds significance in our family. It’s used in multiple ways, one: an affectionate teasing of grandma, long since gone, who was unable to grasp the concept of the dual storyline… two: the inability of anyone else to grasp a multi-layered concept… three: that moment when things could go either way, haircut or no haircut… often also called The Trousers of Time (after Terry Pratchett) where you can put your foot down one leg or another, the decision, seemingly small, can affect your life in irretrievable ways. Schrodinger’s cat sometimes makes an appearance too, maybe he gets trapped in the sliding doors?

anyway… 

There I am, currently loitering rather than following the unknown path. I am Gwynny before she has the useful cinematic device haircut. The cat before the box is opened. My foot has not yet committed to one leg or the other. But once it does… My path is determined for the next year, possibly two. The problem being, the decision is not mine to make. So I wait.

I’ll let you know.

It’s been a grim month.

I say this not to extract sympathy, as I know we all have grim months, but to sort of highlight the effect it has on my work. The recent show was titled Cause and Effect and this is why. The latest piece is dark. Even I see it (I sometimes don’t!) stark in front of me, spread out on the table. I have strayed into charcoal, which anyone who knows me or my work will see as a departure. I am a clean and tidy worker. Charcoal has been for other spaces, drawing workshops, students, working with children… but not my studio.

And yet here it is. I still have a watercolour washed ground to work on, a pale ochre. The charcoal has been rubbed into the texture of the paper (this is why it was allowed in I think) and takes to it beautifully. The shapes and clouds and lines are familiar, still reminiscent of the bodily and the visceral. The blackness sucks me in. I try to layer it up to get it blacker and blacker, fixing and drawing over and over… And then, another layer of graphite working lies on the top, reflecting the light that the charcoal absorbs.

And herein lies the reason again. Some stuff we have to absorb and live with. Some stuff we can deflect and shake off. Some stuff leaves a mark, some doesn’t.

So this grim month? Some of it will stay with me forever. Deep and black. Ground in. Some I’ve been able to shake off. Some of it has left a smudge that will fade over time.

I love the metaphorical. In drawing and in words. To live in metaphors is so very human.

I’ve abandoned the green monstrosity. I may chop it up for collages or something at a later date…

Yesterday the opposite happened.

Over the weekend I cut another narrow strip and laid some paint down. I’ve been using a combination of Indian red and alizarin crimson, in various proportions and it gives this lovely rich skin and blood colour…

I put the paint on the paper first thing on Saturday morning, then spent the day in the gallery with a load of families and a bunch of brownies for our Big Draw day (there’s another on October 19th).

When I returned to the paper at 4pm there was an intriguing series of gaps… thoughts of spines and slipped discs came to mind… constrictions…

So on Monday I had a good few hours on it. This time it just seemed to go how I wanted it to… tight bands and then a bursting out… pressure and release. It was feeling good to do it and I like the results. This is the best it has felt… this is what I’m aiming for. The feeling while I am doing it is important, not just how it looks when it is finished.