University Campus Suffolk

This next post is the last of my ‘looking back and wondering why I do this stuff’ ones. I wrote it a few days ago. Understanding myself is my only reason to exist. Understanding all of you I will never be able to do, as it’s hard enough working-out ‘me’. Stepping back, with hindsight, I can see why I am here now, doing what I do – and why my Degree Show project is to be (ultimately) about death in many forms. I question death. I question endings. I question the life I’ve had. I question your lives. Here is that post; you don’t have to read it:-

I got myself another little job in the early 90s, and an even bigger studio in a mill by the beautiful River Blackwater – then set-up my own Youth Arts Workshop which gained Arts Council funding. I later responded to an ad in ‘Artists Newsletter’ for ‘an artist to live in a wing of a manor house’, thinking ‘I’ll never get that’. I did – and moved to said place where I lived and worked as an artist for over 2 years – exhibiting with some local ‘young luminaries’. I had another one of those little jobs – I was ‘head-hunted’ by an establishment to re-open the art day-services at a care home for people with learning difficulties.

I applied for an overseas position (in Germany) running art workshops and installing my artworks around a pretty town – I was chosen by the Germans from a shortlist … but that’s another story I won’t bother to tell.

Eventually, my day job became all-powerful, and I took on a bigger role. Creating my own art became less-and-less possible, as time disappeared. I quit after some time – and for a while drew pencil portraits on commission; then went on a Garden Design course – on which I gained a distinction. I thought I could create ‘contemporary fine art gardens’. Soon after starting to design a nice big one called ‘The Time Garden’, I slipped 5 discs and found it impossible. 18 months later, I had major spine surgery.

A while after that, I returned to working within the care industry – and went to study to become a psychiatric nurse – becoming a group worker running art & drama groups.

In the years leading up to attending UCS for this degree, I created a lot of new art – testing my abilities and finding out about my creative self all over again. Almost in a moment of madness, I decided to try to return to study art – and if I’m absolutely honest, it was entirely to network so I could find creative allies in this difficult world of ours. It’s worked, and I’m happy with that.

If sometimes I am a little edgy at having my art ‘marked’ – perhaps all of this will go some way to explaining why. No matter what, I will always be creative. It’s been a very long time since I worried about whether anyone else liked it. It’s my way to try out things that I feel like doing – I suppose that makes me a bit of an ‘outsider artist’; but I’m alright with that. I’m also on the inside too, now …

We are what we did.

6IX Souls is a project about all of the above.

That is why I have posted this.

You didn’t have to read it.

What follows is the next part of my thinking relating to why I came to be the artist I am today – which I’d stored offline a week ago, wondering if I’d post it. I have done. It’s about having confidence in what you do that you appear to find easy, because you have little confidence in anything else. And the consequences of that:-

Always interested in family history, old maps, old buildings, social history, how normal people lived/live, and all the marks these people leave/have left on their world – and in a world that may or may not exist alongside ours – one that we call ‘paranormal’. Scared of the dark as a child, I became fascinated by it, and all the ‘monsters’ lurking there in what may be the imagination. All of this and so much more is my headful of resources from which my art evolves.

Art’s always been my only ‘self-therapy’, and when I can’t practically be making art, I am not right. It has to be made, even if it’s never seen; even if it’s made to be destroyed. I am used to that.

From a childhood wherein I would be constantly making things and drawing things (generally from the imagination) and gazing out of windows in search of a dream that might just take me away from whatever room I was in. How little of that was truly valued, other than to be called ‘a most artistic child’ year-in-year-out, it seemed that creativity became less-and-less important when people assessed my abilities – until, eventually, I really did wonder why I was doing it. Being great at art was nothing in comparison to being a maths genius, so it seemed.

Despite all the constant ‘A’ grades in school for art, the ‘O’ level gave me a ‘B’ – and we all sat the ‘A’ level at college as an aside whilst we were doing our art diploma. 4 weeks effort to get a rather pointless qualification. I gained the top mark in in my year at the end of year one of my art diploma – at which point the penny dropped; I didn’t need to try to be an artist – I just needed to be an artist.

Off I went into conceptual art, and got myself a place at Portsmouth to study a Fine Art Degree. It wasn’t right. Not for me. Not ‘what it said on the tin’. I felt like I wanted to be freely creating, but that the shackles were back on. I became homesick, left, and got myself a little studio and job – and pretty soon found myself thinking about going back to study art – but at Maidstone College of Art, the lecturers were all a bit raucous at my interview – I had traipsed all the way there by bus/train/foot with 2 massive folios and bags of sketchbooks etc., only to be contronted by ‘merry’ (shall we say) lecturers and the last interview of the week. They banged-on about me having a ‘lack of commitment to art’, and rejected me. It was at that point that I decided to never put myself through that again.

I also knew that they were very wrong – of course I was (and remain) very committed to art.

Ah yes – a reasonable night of sleep results in a very full day of creativity.

Well, it all turned-out not quite as planned today. I was looking forward to attending a lecture by YBA Michael Landy at UCS, to hear what he has to say for himself. I’ve heard and seen some interesting things in relation to him.

My 5 year-old son ‘decided’ to inherit some form of pestilence from school again, only 4 weeks after his last – so I became the necessary parent today. He was fab, and really understands when I have a lot to do.

So today, I finished some art in relation to my Degree Show, some art for display in my gallery (which I was daft enough to open at this time!), some research in relation to my current project at uni, photographs of said artworks, chased a lot of artists (for info) who are taking part in the next exhibition at the gallery, promoted said exhibition etc. etc.

Very pleased to now be exhibiting art by artists who are studying at Norwich School of Art, along with many from University Campus Suffolk, and a lot of graduates from all over the place from down the years. Exciting stuff at The Freudian Sheep – which is very much set to take a back seat (a bit!) for me in the next few weeks whilst I concentrate on getting my Degree Show ‘6IX Souls’ project completed to my satisfaction.

Sadly, as life is unpredictable, there are likely to be a few ‘spanners in the works’ along the way; but blimey – I’m getting used to that.

Since I started the course, my teenaged daughter went to live back with her mother, my teenaged son came to live with us, then went back to his mother, my mother died (just at the end of last summer), and I got a bit older. My partner’s mother has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness which may give her 6 months-2 years at most. Oh – and we set-up The Freudian Sheep as a gallery to help our creative pals to get a foot on a rung. And my partner got herself pretty unwell herself recently too! Phew!

Fortunately, art for me is and has always been about the difficulties of life. Whenever life goes too smoothly, I find it difficult to be creative. I must now be in a real seam of creative genius then, eh?

Perhaps …

Anyway, sorry for all that – but in order to understand why I do the art I do in the way that I do, you really do have to see that (despite all appearances) my life can be complicated.

It’s just a phase I’m going through.

I’m inclined to believe that it’s difficult to create a ‘whole’ project without there being a series of judgements of all the ‘parts’ along the way; that is, if you’re seen to be making it.

I’m not a big fan of these early judgements, as I prefer to enjoy the moment of finally unveiling my large and suitably ‘deep’ artistic meanderings as-and-when they’re ready to be seen. That, my friends, is a result of being a ‘mature student’. Years of being shut away prior to this, making art without being judged.

My creative process has always been unpredictable, even for me. I have always enjoyed the knowledge that I don’t know where I’m going. It’s how I like to lead my life. It’s an adventure.

So, when I say that I may well destroy everything and present you all with a very big nothing … well … it’s certainly possible.

My current thinking has reminded me of the work of Arman – who would burn objects like chairs, violins etc. and then cast their remnants in bronze. My Dissertation focused on Chance as Art – and I have long believed that the natural elements can be an exciting ingredient in the process of making art, and in doing so introduce chance.

Fire can and does destroy. By this destruction, it also creates something new. Mankind has long tried to contol fire, with limited success. I am experimenting with the use of fire to impact-upon my final artworks. Whether/how much I control the fire is a major part of my activities at present.

I shall explain more about this in subsequent posts – and more about how Arman first influenced me, and still does today.

In year 1 of this Degree, I undertook a project which studied the work of a contemporary painter, Fabian Marcaccio – again, an artist who works with destruction, up to a point. I am happy to say that whilst it may sometimes seem that I do occasional ‘pretty paintings’, it is far from my make-up to do that, and it is near to my thinking to see them go …