Two Steps Backwards…

No More Smart Casual.

“Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.” Henry David Thoreau

The “enterprise” in question was the private view in London-for which right up until the day before, I had not the faintest idea of what to wear.

“What are you going to wear?” I asked my husband “Oh, smart casual I expect.” Smart casual, no one does it better than my husband and indeed, his father before him. They seemed to have the knack of appropriate dressing in any social situation.

“Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.” Quentin Crisp

Later that day I was party to a conversation about branding and personal style with the need to first to identify who you are and how you wish to project yourself. (Thank you Beverly Hills actress extraordinaire) Further reflection began a fault line of new thinking that ended in a seismic shift, disrupting old and embedded thought patterns.

“I put a bird on my head.” Carrie Bradshaw Sex in the City

For most of my life I have found social dressing challenging, my contrary nature means that I bend over backwards to wear the “right” thing while completely resenting the restrictions. Bareheaded at a recent wedding I saw a group of girls and women wearing fascinators that seemed to me like a shoal of decorated angler fish-I am so not with the programme.

“Give a girl the right pair of shoes and she’ll conquer the world.” Marilyn Monroe

So-hours before the private view I decided to wear a very old second-hand, properly vintage Laura Ashley suit from the 1970s, unfashionably brown and tweedy, but as soon as I put it on and garnished it with boots and lavender earrings it felt instinctively right…for me! “It’s always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting.” Jean Paul Gaultier

So… at the private view, surrounded by ubercool people sucking gallery lollipops, who wearing scruffy taken to an art form, instead of loitering in the corner, I stood up straight swung my shiny Pantene hair and talked and engaged with people. Of course uncool things still happened like one of my tree pieces falling over and narrowly missing a guest, and my neurosis about the gallery dog who kept up a sort of canine country dancing around my best piece covered in kid leather, expecting any minute that it would be weed up-fortunately it turned out to be a female a dog after all.

“Never wear anything that panics the cat.” P.J. O’Rourke

Later, inspired by a drawing made by (the man who jumped out of a balloon) Felix Baumgartner aged five: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/shortcuts/2012/oct/16/felix-baumgartner-kids-drawings?CMP=twt_gu as a sort of positive projection of confidence into the future, I tried hard to express through drawing, the feeling of serene confidence embodied in my suit. It was a disaster I made myself look like a Bratz doll. So instead I went back to ink, brush, quiet meditation, and consequential mental drawing and mark making, a bit like practising musical scales. Interesting results. Figs.1.& 2.

“Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography.”
Linda Grant The Thoughtful dresser

*Last quote especially for Sophie Cullinan-but don’t worry I shan’t make a habit of it.

Forgot to Mention…

Forgot to mention that I am now showing work in a group exhibition, at the Bearspace Gallery in London. The private view is this evening (26^th October) *shameless plug* from 6.30pm – 8.30pm so if you are passing, come in and say hello.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW

EXHIBIT D

20 OCTOBER – 17 NOVEMBER

Frances Copeman

Ruth Geldard

Sarah Greaves

Christopher Lee

David Lupton

Katie Goodwin & *Alex March

All details can be found here: http://www.bearspace.co.uk/

The show is curated by Julia Alvarez and Kat Hawker, Julia Alvarez has recently been selected as one of the UK’s Top Ten Art dealers by Art Info.

*Alex March has a blog on Artists Talking, called called: Re: What we Talked About.

Are you Roaring?

“Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.” John Wayne

Have you ever found yourself at a party, temporarily mute, in the midst of a group of cool, elegant people who seem able to communicate and work the room effortlessly? This was me last week feeling tense and oversmiley. Just as I was beginning to wish I hadn’t come, a rather special person managed to engage me in conversation and drew me out of myself. Such was the ease I felt in her company (and I hope she in mine) that we comfortably relayed our histories and I found myself talking earnestly about my passion for art and the ideas that drive me. She completely got it and turned to me in her measured way and said: “Are you roaring?” to which I answered: “I beg your pardon” as I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Are you telling the world, shouting from the roof tops? This sounds like stuff we need to hear. Are you roaring?” I was momentarily stumped because I am not shouting from the rooftops, or even whispering from the ground, I am hiding behind my work because I am afraid.

“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”
Charlie Chaplin

I am afraid of heights, deep water, private views, funfair rides, other people’s dogs, flying, root canal work, rats and talking about the ideas that inform my work. I can however temporarily overcome fear while making art as in Fig. 1. flying in a tiny six-seater plane which was no more than a shaky teacup with wings, when mute with fear, I managed to draw the backs of the pilot’s heads and found that the concentration served as a distraction.

If you’re looking for something to be brave about, consider fine arts. Robert Frost

I have not made a properly representational drawing in the traditional sense for some years and the mere thought of it can induce a nervous tic, so I was genuinely apprehensive when I faced my rocks armed only with children’s crayons. Fig.2. my inner voice told me not to bother as I probably wouldn’t be able to do it anymore and in any case, that type of drawing is pointless etc, etc.

But I pressed on and during the process found my way again.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill

In Fig. 3. The drawing began to deconstruct.

“Leap, and the net will appear” William Burroughs

During the previous drawing I got the strange urge to crochet over the rocks, this felt ridiculously good and I was delighted with the first result. Fig. 4.

“If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.” Rollo May

However the feeling began ebb once I had committed myself to covering the three larger rocks and it was really hard! I could so easily have stopped and I still feel a bit ridiculous when I look at them.

“Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth.” Bruce Lee

Yes I can be brave during the making process and override fear, but talking about the ideas behind my work, this will be a much harder nut to crack, I have picked such an emotive subject and just my being a woman makes me biased. It is going to take some unpicking. I don’t want to be a politician or an activist, I just want to talk about human behaviour in the real world…one step at a time.

“We put our art out for others to see like laundry on the line. We expose ourselves to the core. It takes great courage to be an artist.” Gwen Fox

Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

“Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it’s one of the most charming things about them.” Germaine Greer

“Blogstipation” I moaned “It will soon pass.” quipped Sandra my new Twitter friend. Unaccustomed to complete mental limbo, I hit the beach for a very long walk. Optimistically I carried a strong bag, but without any idea of what I might put in it. It was hot and bright, after a while I began to notice things, first the lovely grey-blue flints especially the small ones that shape-shifted into pre-christian goddesses and miniature Moores and Hepworths. Broken bits of tile appearing like tiny ancient Tabula Rasas waiting to be inscribed. Whole planets of chalk, riddled with small craters. The big open space, promoted big open musings about the evolution of human mark-making on the landscape. Two and a half hours later, my bag had become heavy with gleaned beach booty and I struggled home like a giant Borrower.

“An artist must evolve to quell the voice within and find new ways to speak unspoken ideas.” William Scott Jennings.

Adhering to the Two Steps Backwards principle of not being seduced into making an “artwork” just when the “drawing” gets interesting, I went back to the drawing board, back to basics, just back. This time my new mark-making “rules” were: new ways to express surface and volume. Figs 1 & 2.

Fig.3. Fascinated by the hide-and-seek nature of the natural holes in the flint and chalk, I made some test pieces (a la Eva Hesse) by filling them with a mixture of beeswax, paint and rosin as a way of delineating and drawing attention to the particular shapes. This was relatively easy as the holes were facing upwards.

“Most species do their own evolving making it up as they go along which is the way nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with the mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there is nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone.“ Terry Pratchett.

However: when it came to the chalk “planet” it was a different matter altogether as the holes faced every which way but up. I endured hours of patient tipping and propping of the chalk and much pouring, dripping and burning (mostly me) of moulten wax. Repeat drippings were necessary to get the wax flush with the surface. It was during this agonisingly awkward process that my live-in technical advisor walked past. He watched the torturous process with loving concern and advised:

“If you’re going to take this further, I suggest you find a big one of those (planet) one without holes, and then you can drill the holes yourself and get them exactly where you want them.”

There was a time, dear reader when I would have bristled defensively, and responded with a mini rant, with more than a whiff of moral high ground, about highlighting the organic beauty of creature-made holes, the random specificity of each… and how he would never understand…or get me etc, etc. But instead I kissed his concerned forehead and he went back to doing what he was doing.

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Next morning, fired up with creative over-enthusiasm and intent on stretching my own parameters of drawing once again, I remained undaunted even by a casual remark from a friend. On hearing that financially things were a bit tight and that I was now taking students to augment the budget, she looked me in the eye and said:

“Without wishing to demean you or anything, have you considered cleaning?”

I felt considerably demeaned- but not daunted and I went back to my small “pre-Christian” goddesses and stood them up and put them in their own specially made bases, thus bestowing them with a sort of rampant authority. I happily surveyed the work laid out on trays looking like a fresh batch bake and it felt good.