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It’s like learning a new language really… and there are levels of fluency to be achieved, from basic “one beer please” or “where is the toilet?”, to being able to express complex emotions, or write poetry.

I’m talking about the undertaking of a new artistic medium or method.

I can remember very clearly still (because it isn’t really that long ago) the day I actually said out loud “I am an artist” and actually believed it to be true, and didn’t hear the giggle of my internal critic.
I am fluent (enough) in certain things. I can draw. And I can stitch. I can’t draw like a photo-realist would draw. But I think I have a fairly high level of representational competence. I can draw a thing or a person that looks recognisable to another set of eyes.
I can stitch probably better than I can draw. I can manipulate fabric and thread to a high standard… I can make the “stuff” do what I want it to do. It’s taken many many years of drawing and stitching to gain these skills. Using them to communicate my thoughts is another thing, of course, but, in recent years I feel able to say I am an artist, with confidence. Yep. That’s what I am. It even says that in my passport now.

So… the new language… songwriting… singing… performance…

There is in this too, in each of those things (because although they are connected in my practice, you can do one without doing the other two) a hierarchy of fluency. I doubt that I have the time left in my life to become as good as I could have been in terms of technical ability as I might have been if I’d started earlier, but I’m  doing it.
I am at the point with these things where I can say “I write songs” and “I sing in a band”. But I’m also still at the point where I can’t quite bring myself to say “I’m a singer-singwriter” because I don’t feel worthy. I’ve not put the time in. I don’t have the … what is it I don’t have? Anyway… I still have the internal critic sniggering when I talk about it.

Last week however, I performed with the band, songs that I had written (co-written) in a “proper” live music venue where I have previously sat in the audience and watched bands and singers I admire. This time, the other side of the mic. It felt slightly surreal. Other than my usual pre-gig session of contemplation and meditation in the loo, I didn’t feel any more nervous. It was great to do.

But… we (and by we I really mean I) hijack ourselves don’t we?

The venue is small and intimate. Extraneous gear is a problem. I usually have my lyrics in front of me, because the terror of performance for me, lies in forgetting the words. About three years ago I bought a special clamp so that I could use my iPad on the mic stand. But I have persevered in carrying around a huge heavy music stand and a folder full of paper instead. It can be impractical in terms of space, and sometimes the light isn’t good enough for me to read them anyway. But I make a big deal of erecting it and hiding behind it. Because apparently the iPad clamp thing is too professional a device for idiots like me… Says the internal critic.

Anyway, at this performance I used the iPad. It worked well. I had my paper with me, just in case the technology failed, but it stayed at the back of the stage, untouched.
The gig went well. I loved it! We were received well, our songs enjoyed and commented upon after, and we sold some cds too.

I’m wondering what it will take… and if I will ever get there?
But here is the crux of the matter… I’m doing it regardless.

I think any blogger would agree that it is hard to remain permanently positive…

I always said I would be an honest blogger, but sometimes that means actually not posting anything, because no one wants to hear me moan all the time do they?

Quick moan, and then perhaps an explanation…

I’m in pain with my knee. Sometimes this is low-level, ever present but manageable and mostly ignorable in terms of what I can get done. Sometimes it is the sort of pain that is shouting in my ear, and rattling my brain, making it really difficult to listen, process and respond… I’ve had a few of the latter lately, and it grinds you down doesn’t it? I know there are a few who read this who put up with similar, and worse. It’s not a competition and I’m not really looking for sympathy here. I state it in order to put things into perspective. Some days I go to the studio to be distracted from it. Some days I feel I shouldn’t drive. Some days if I got there, I’d have trouble getting up the stairs. This has an effect on my thinking about how I work, and indeed what I work on. Content, context…

I am also fortunate in that there may soon be a solution to my problem, through surgery, medication or both. So I hang on by my fingernails, trying to stay positive. But it isn’t real life that, is it?

I have been having many conversations lately about the mental health of artists, how to sustain and how to build a life, and how it may or may not be possible to earn a living. Not many artists I know, for instance make enough money (from just their art) to pay tax. That is nowhere near a living wage if you have a home and children. There is always something else that has to be done in order to pay the bills. Whether this is shelf-stacking, bar work, teaching or caring, it takes a toll on the creative self. It is easy for the creative self to be subsumed, consumed… exhausted… forgotten?

And yet, I know to my cost that this has its perils, so I now choose to not do those extra things – or rather – not too many of them. (Because I am older, this is possible now, without going into personal details.)

I have built a tool kit of ways to maintain myself, and build myself. I also now try to surround myself with people who understand what it is to maintain this part of the creative self, and we help each other along. I find it helps to explore my own nature… to go with the flow and not worry too much about when things get done. Sod the dusting, washing… even the cooking… most things can wait… including the blog writing…

This bunch are keeping me afloat at the moment… they bring me so much joy!

(photo credit Simon Meddings)

Several people, astonished by the lack of textiles in my recent work have asked if the drawings would ever become sculptural/ textile. And the answer to that is “No”.  (At the moment?) The reason is that I started doing the drawings, or rather I discovered in the drawing process a way to join up my thinking and my doing in a way that the textiles couldn’t do. To make these drawings textile would be both a step backwards in terms of my thinking, and would also feel like I was merely illustrating the drawings, as if the drawings were not good enough, confirming that tenet that drawing is something you do BEFORE you do something else… Thank you Sarah Goudie for putting that string of words together for me… that is exactly what I feel… the drawings are not only enough on their own, they are exactly what they need to be for me.

Someone kindly pointed me to the work of Sonia Gomes:
http://www.pipaprize.com/pag/sonia-gomes

And it started or rather refocused a brain train….

You could possibly put one or two of my drawings next to these and make a connection visually… interesting… and, if I was going to render this work textile, this is probably pretty close to what I’d end up with. Contained in the text of the link are similar thoughts to mine too. I’m sure I’ve said those words, or at least something similar when talking about mine.

One pair of words however, stood out: Visceral and Sacred.

Visceral, yes. Obviously. Here in my drawings we definitely have the visceral. But sacred?

I’m possibly going to tread on dodgy ground here. But I think it’s the right time. Sacred. How do I go about this?

I am a Catholic Atheist. By which I mean that my upbringing was Irish Catholic from my mother, with a strong streak of Orthodox from my Serbian father. But I no longer have that faith. It has gone. I spent a while looking for it, but it just isn’t there. Thing is, I don’t even now know why it was ever there. But it was… and that has profound effects on the formation of a person. Having shaken off the formalised worship, dogma, ritual, seeing my performance and behaviour within it as hypocrisy at last… Having shaken off the job that tied me to it by the last strands… I see the world differently now.

Or do I?

Do I see different things as “sacred”.
Do I “worship” different things…?

But ritual is hard to lay down I have found. I think perhaps we humans have ritual hard-wired… we develop habits bound up in circumstance and coincidence in order to pretend we have control over the world. We don’t. We cross our fingers, we don’t walk under ladders or step on the cracks, we make gestures invented by man to ward off a devil invented by man. We pray to gods invented by man. Now I want to make a distinction here… a fine one perhaps… the way that god* and faith exists within some people is a true thing for them. It is definite part of who we are to take on this belief and it shapes our lives. I am fine with that. If that is a choice, or a vocation, or your own truth, I am a little bit envious of the certainty that god exists for those people, that he makes them feel that they belong in a place, belong with a way of life. I have seen people who exist with god on a daily basis, who breathe him and live life by him. The goodness of how they live is honourable and I respect that completely. But I don’t think it was ever that in me. It was a social habit that eventually fell away to make a place for a different way of operating for me.

So now…
I’m not sure what spiritual means.
I’m not sure why we are all here.
I’m coming down on the side of chaotic, coincidental chance probably, and that our extinction will be the same… so make the most of life and don’t worry about there being an after.

To me, art is the way I think about these things, the way I try to make sense of the world, my position in the world and my interactions with other people.

While I am making these drawings I am looking inwards. But also I’m looking for those threads of attachment to other people and other things and my own mind/being. I am deliberately trying to include animal/vegetable/mineral in these works. Our atoms form the same patterns and the maths is relevant to every cell…
When I am drawing all day I reach a state of mind. It feels like prayer and meditation should have felt, but never did. The connection I feel to the world and the people around me feels stronger**. Those cells that connect us all to the world? It’s almost like I can see them. Religion was never like this. Faith never reached this deep.

I think that because I am an artist, these feelings are tied very tightly to the haptic. The making, the repetitive nature of drawing or stitching or whatever I choose to use is where my ritual now lies. I perform these physical acts over and over in order to achieve this state of mind, in order to make the connections between myself and the world. To not be able to do this would be like cutting me adrift in space. It is no coincidence that in those times in my life when for a variety of reasons I have been unable to submit to this or commit to this, my mental health has suffered.

I know that some people I know will read the above post and possibly be scornful. Possibly offended. Might think I’m losing the plot. But to me the plot has never been clearer.
I am human.

*I am not going to capitalise god or he/him through this, as that also feels hypocritical and I am referring to god as a general concept not a specific or monotheistic being.

**I also predict that some will label this as god. That’s ok for you, but I’m not doing that any more.

Since my last post I have taken delivery of a large roll of good quality paper… this was a gift from a very generous friend, who thought I should be drawing instead of moaning about how I couldn’t afford to order it yet. Bless her heart!

So I began to draw on it straight away, using those things I had learned from using the crappy paper. I don’t know how practical this will be, but my intention is to not cut the paper. It is five feet wide, and eleven metres long… I know the mixed measurements are unsatisfactory… sorry… but that’s what it said on the bit of paper! basically you just need to know it’s huge.

The rolled up end is propped at one end of the table, and I am unrolling it a table-width at a time. I don’t know how I’m going to manage the worked end just yet… I have already had to add a third table to my working space to take the width of it. I surround the table with chairs and I move from one to another while I work. This is how I wanted it. The motifs have increased in scale a bit, naturally, but the drawing is still happening within the sort of area encased by my arms when I adopt the “don’t copy my answers” pose. Each section of drawing takes about a day, and the choices are made according to mood, outlook and levels of belligerence. I think I’m getting somewhere. There is a tightness… I like that… but there’s lots of it… which lends a sort of relentlessness to it. It is a bit like a diary… a bit… each section a statement of the day. Each section a measurement of sorts, concerning sleep~pain~love~sex~death~joy so some days are dark and tight.

Other days are ethereal and wispy and loose. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Meanwhile… perhaps this is also included in the feel of the drawings… is the state of limbo. I wait.

This afternoon I met a printer, and we talked about this distant mythical publication that may or may not happen. I had this glorious conversation about bindings and mixed paper stock and stitching and hand-painted/drawn end-papers, and short run feasibility. And then I sighed, I said “I’ll let you know”, we shook hands and parted company. It was one of those pivotal meetings, but there is also a sense I might never see him again!

I could have carried on for a while, but my stamina was flagging as I think I’ve found out what I wanted to know.

A large drawing is a problem for me… I have to know WHY I’m going bigger. Bigger isn’t a good enough reason on its own I don’t think. It has to achieve something.

Anyway… I found a reason… or two. I wanted the shapes and motifs to relate to each other over a space, but didn’t want to draw them smaller, or to hang them together, I wanted them on the same surface. I also wanted to create a sort of narrative. I had noted how the drawings changed, and their content and mood changed depending on what was happening in the other parts of my life, so I wanted to see if the story worked as a story.

What I discovered from this 14 day (ish) experiment is that the narrative element works, and the overlapping relationships work. What I didn’t like, and the thing which has led me to this morning’s halt is that the quality of the outcome isn’t working for me.

I suppose as a textiles person, the feel is important… how I touch the paper and how the paper touches me is a vital part of the work. How the materials interact with each other is crucial, because in these drawings it is the interactions which give the pencil the starting point. Those interactions are what I stare into, to see the drawing that it will become. All a bit wanky perhaps, but there it is. That’s my truth. I could have said self-indulgent, but that’s my truth too. It isn’t. But I say it to ward off those who might. I beat myself so they don’t need to beat me. This is a thing I am hoping to stop. This is why I am pointing it out. If I notice it, I can stop it BEFORE I say it or write it.

I digress…although it isn’t a digression, it might actually be the nub of the matter…

anyway…

Things I like about this piece, now I’ve hung it on the studio wall, with my feet on the desk cup of tea in hand: The narrative element does work. I like the colours. I like some, but not all of the pencil marks. I like the way the shapes are starting to relate.

Things I don’t like about it: The paper is cheap and crappy. It has no character, so it doesn’t work hard enough, doesn’t pull its weight. The paint hasn’t settled into it, so leaves busy marks. This means I can’t see the points in the texture of the paper, highlighted by the paint, where I should start making marks. So for the most part, they are coming from my head, rather than being suggested by the materials. I’m possibly the only one that would know this. But it is this sort of integrity that I want. I don’t want it to just LOOK this way, I want it to BE this way. The pencil lines, because of the lack of surface interest, have made holes. The thin paper doesn’t like a 6H pencil. So therefore also, it won’t then take the depth of tone I want to give it with the 8B pencil…

As a piece, it is a sketchbook piece, an experiment. It’s just full of self-importance because it is large. (I call it the Trump Effect).

So what I need to do next is get bigger, better paper, and do it properly.