I will be showing 30 collage images inspired by the landscape of Harris in the Outer Hebrides at Dunoon Burgh Hall's beautiful new gallery from Nov 21 - Dec 7, Thursdays to Sundays from noon till 3pm.
Some images can be seen at www.livesimplysimplylive.weebly.com under Simply Paint (Until I can solve a current problem uploading images to this site!)
I'm delighted to be showing work with Tighnabruaich Gallery at Battersea Affordable Art Fair from 27 Oct - 31 Oct.
Don't miss it if you are near enough to go! http://affordableartfair.com/battersea/
I shall be taking part again in Cowal Open Studios 27th - 30th September. Always fun!
There will be an additional supporting exhibition this year of the work of the late Robert Stewart who was my tutor at Glasgow School of Art. At the Burgh Hall in Dunoon from 13 - 30th of September Thurs - Sat noon till 3pm. Bob was a textile designer, potter and painter as well as an inspirational tutor. Students from other departments used to like to spend time with us, and come on our art trips because Bob was such a great source of ideas and motivation as well as a talented practising artist. I am looking forward to seeing his work again. Don't miss it if you live near enough to make the trip.
Until the 10th of August I will be at the Scottish Sculpture Park working and showing my paintings in The Boathouse Gallery there.
See www.scottishsculpturepark.com for more details.
There are some photographs on my other blog www.livesimplysimplylive.weebly.com showing the exciting space at The Boathouse which is currently being restored. It's being used in association with Tighnabruaich Gallery.
THU 30 JUNE 2011
I've just delivered four paintings to the Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow for their summer show which starts on July 2nd and continues till the end of August - hope you will have time to go and look! Prints from Peacock Printmakers, Aberdeen and Advanced Graphics, London; paintings, sculpture, ceramics and jewellery......
We've also been hard at work creating a new website for Cowal Open Studios, so if you are too far away to visit the gallery do click here to see the work of 32 artists and the get a glimpse of the beautiful Cowal peninsula (and maybe plan your trip to the open studios weekend) - www.cowalopenstudios.co.uk
FRI 13 MAY 2011
I hope this is not an inauspicious date to announce that I am taking an arty blog holiday to concentrate more on painting and less on talking and writing about it!
On a recent holiday in St Ives I was so impressed with the commitment of some of the greats, like Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron and Bernard Leach that I decided to try to emulate them and work harder....I will be back..
WED 23 MARCH 2011
Rosie Hilton
Can I refer you to a fascinating interview with the 80 year old artist Rosie Hilton who has an exhibition opening this Friday at Messum's in London.
I love these stories (like Carmen Herrera's - see Fri 5 March 2010) of artists who are still painting in their 80's and beyond - such vitality. Are they still painting because they have vitality, or have they vitality because they are still painting?
Either way - makes me determined to keep going!
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/mar19/rose-hilton-painter-messums-gallery
FRIDAY 4 MARCH 2011
I love this bit from Alan Bennett's Homecoming:
'....always of course it is art as struggle, art as pain, art as redemption and transcendence. Not art as a relatively easy way to keep the wolf from the door. Or art as actually a quite nice thing to be doing. Always it must be torture....
No matter that an employee of the Midlands Water Board might occasionally ask himself whether he was doing anyone any good....even a traveller in Skefko ball bearings goes through the occasional dark night of the soul. No. This is demon art, demanding so much from its practitioners that they are destroyed. And if one says it is like many another job, that it helps pass the time and brings home the bacon, you are being shy and self effacing. Art is pain. It must be. Otherwise it is not fair.'
That will teach me to take myself too seriously!
k
SUNDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2011
I am showing small watercolours at Roger Billcliffe's Postcard exhibition in Glasgow until 1 March, and at Tighnabruiach Gallery in Argyll.
Postcard exhibitions have become a popular way of buying work of well known artists whose prices for full scale works may be out of reach. I have bought two Christine McArthur paintings which I love at postcard exhibitions.
I'm reading the books of the American sculptor Anne Truitt, who writes movingly of the difficulties and joys of being artist/wife/mother/writer.
Her three memoirs are called Daybook, Turn and Prospect.
THURSDAY 26 JANUARY 2011
Having been asked at short notice to show some work at a gallery I love, I have returned to watercolour after a gap of years! (oils take a long time to dry...). I naively imagined I could translate my current work into a different medium without any difficulty. It doesn't work like that!
The medium has its own demands and I found myself working on a tiny scale and in quite new proportions.
They are tricky to photgraph, but I will get some onto the site as soon as I can.
Am excited at the possibilities....new ideas for a new year
SATURDAY 15 JANUARY 2011
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM PICASSO
'If you can handle three elements, handle only two. if you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.'
Ah, strength in reserve sounds wonderful....
SATURDAY 8 JANUARY 2011
A HAPPY AND CREATIVE NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL and thank you for reading!
I'm still thinking about the mysterious 'it'. (See previous few postings.)
The 'it' which I'm suggesting is something to do with the personality of the artist, doesn't need to be some profound truth (some would say everything has been said before anyway). It can be something as simple and traditional as a response to beauty in nature.
If said with honesty and purity of intention, and with skill - which is subordinate to the message and in the best art often understated ie in the service of the message - we respond to it on a very deep level. The so called 'naive' painters are of interest here.
I think I will take a look at some of my greats among the artists....
Do share your thoughts..
TUESDAY 28 DECEMBER 2010'
COULD 'IT' BE INTEGRITY?
'All children are born artists. the problem is to remain artists as we grow up.' Picasso.
Most people respond positively to children's drawings and paintings. My own theory is that it is the integrity of the intention that we respond to - I believe it shows, it shines through.
A child's intention is pure and we respond with delight to that purity and honour it. To see the same thing in an adult, in an artist - be they writer, poet, painter, is exciting and hard to explain. As Carrera says 'Either you feel it or you don't.'
Perhaps you have to have integrity yourself to recognise it?
MONDAY 20 DECEMBER 2010
IT
'It' is that inexplicable thing covered by the phrase 'I can't describe it but I know it when I see it', much to the annoyance of those who want an explanation (see Picasso in posting of 20 Jan).
The artist Carmen Herrera (5 Mar) describes seeing a Rembrandt:
'I began ranting about it. My husband said 'What's so good about it?' I said 'I can't answer that. Either you feel it or you don't.'
SATURDAY 11 DECEMBER 2010
WHY PAINT?
The studio is like an icebox, and I'm musing not painting. I do sometimes wonder why I paint. It is a compulsion. It is my need to express something visual which can't be described any other way. Or rather my response, both intellectual and emotional, almost visceral, to something visual. Occasionally I see a painting and think 'Yes, that's the way I see the world too! Imagine! That person knows the way I see things!' It always seems amazing to me. I carry on painting to refine that vision, that perception/awareness and every now and then I do a painting and think 'Yes, that's got it.'
But don't ask me to explain 'it'....
SUNDAY 21 NOVEMBER2010
A STORY OF ART...
A business concerned with the welfare of the people becomes one of the world's biggest multinational companies. With profits to spare, they sponsor an artist and political activist from a communist country to fill a defunct power station in London with something impressive. The artist turned sponsor employs 1600 people in a Chinese town for two and a half years to make and paint by hand 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds which are spread on the floor of what was the turbine hall, for the people to walk on and look at and contemplate. Free of charge. Out of concern for the welfare of the people, a government department bans walking on the seeds.
What an amazing story!
Art, but not as we know it perhaps?
Do look at the beautiful short film called Ai Weiwei:Sunflower Seeds Video at www.tate.org.uk
FRIDAY 12 NOVEMBER 2010
EDINBURGH ART FAIR 18 - 21 NOVEMBER
At Edinburgh Corn Exchange, the annual Art Fair has 65 different galleries showing, including Tighnabruaich Galleries (stand B3) who are showing some of my work this year.
Art Fairs are a great way to see original work from many galleries from all over the country without the travel - though it can be a bit overwhelming.
My own strategy is to take one very quick look round everything, noting which stands I want to come back to for a longer look, then to take a long slow look at maybe 25 or 30 paintings. Some familiar artists whose new work I don't want to miss, but I try to look at new artists too. Of course this strategy counts for nothing if I see one or two things I really want to buy!
It's exhausting, but exhilarating too. The private view and the first day have more of a buzz about them....maybe I'll see you there?
SUNDAY 7 NOVEMBER
OPEN STUDIOS
Cowal Open Studios had its AGM and it was clear that the event is deemed a success.
I find opening my studio refreshing and enjoyable. It gives me a new perspective.
The studio is along three miles or so of single track road and not everyone ventures this far. But it gets its annual clean up and is attractive looking with its white painted floor and lots of light. (I'd forgotten how good it is!) Seeing my life and work and where I live through others' eyes is interesting and I enjoy talking about the work, engaging with people. People like to know a bit about the painting they are buying, and I rather like to know who is buying it. It lessens the little pang I feel as it disappears forever - paintings are so personal! Many of the visitors are artists, or paint as a hobby.
Best thing about open studios? It has to be the people I meet and getting feedback and noting the different responses to the work. It also makes me do a sort and clear out once a year!
Worst thing about opening the studio? Well, I can't work with people coming and going, or demonstrate as some artists do, and I can't go anywhere myself for four days. Also being quite solitary most of the time, making conversations is tiring for four full days!
But I plan to do it again.....
THURSDAY 28 OCTOBER 2010
CAN'T GET NO SATISFACTION..
American choreographer Martha Graham said -
'No artist is ever pleased. There is only a queer dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.'
Would you agree, I wonder?
...on my other blog www.livesimplysimplylive.weebly.com I'm looking at routines and a fascinating website called www.dailyroutines.typepad.com about how creative people structure their days...
WEDNESDAY 20 OCTOBER 2010
FREEDOM
Why words, I asked myself when I started this blog. Because words help me in my work is the answer.
I've just written to a friend explaining my struggles with a particular painting, and in the writing of it - in trying to explain the problem coherently and in seeing my own thoughts out of my head and on paper, I saw clearly what the problem was, and more importantly, what the answer was! Straight back into the studio and resolve it. Fantastic.
It went something like this...
I was struggling with a painting of snow which I began in about February. I had over-complicated it - it was becoming about the house and the room I got the idea from, and about the person who lives there and about what they would think of it.....when in fact what I wanted to paint was just the snow, huge flakes of it falling slowly slowly, filling all the air outside for miles around, magical viewed from inside through the large windows on two sides of the room - magical and mesmerising. I lost sight of what the painting was actually about, and lost sight of the fact that I am free to paint however I want.
You long for freedom, and yet you can actually forget you are free!
SATURDAY 16 OCTOBER 2010
REJECTION IS HARD TO TAKE!
Strange how one rejection cancels out 17 sales - in emotional effect that is. I've written about the advantages of being self employed (see 14 March 2010). The downside is that I have to motivate myself - no one else will do it, and when your work has been rejected, it's hard not to take it very personally. I submitted two paintings to the RGI - Glasgow's equivalent of the Royal Academy Summer Show - and they were turned down.
Mind you, I think they have become more sensitive in their wording - they didn't use the word rejected this year (yes, I got turned down last year too!). Instead they regret my work has not been successful. OK. It softens the blow. A little.
Never mind that I've had a good number of sales recently, and many compliments from other artists whom I respect and visitors to the Open Studios, or that thousands of paintings are submitted and 150 or so selected, or that I've two shows booked for next year, or that I've just sold my first painting at over £1000.....
The best way to get over it is to get back in the studio and paint. I've always maintained that if you do something with conviction and integrity, for long enough, it will be accepted.
So try again next year....
FRIDAY 1 OCTOBER 2010
EXHIBITION TITLES
My first exhibition, in 1997, was called Anna's Meadow and Other Paintings. I was working as a landscape designer and created a small wildflower meadow in Anna's garden. Visiting it in it's first summer I was so delighted by it that I just had to paint it, and in doing so came back in a circle to my first career.
I enjoy thinking of titles for my solo shows.
As I Walked Out Early included landscapes as well as meadows and flowers, as did Happy As The Grass Is Green, after the poem by Dylan Thomas.
In Changes and in Clearing One's Head I obviously took a more cerebral turn, and By Loch Long indicated the move to Scotland and painting full time, with of course, seascapes as well as landscapes.
The latest paintings are fairly abstract, though inspired by my garden, and were I to exhibit them together I'd title the exhibition after my favourite of this series The Yellow Shouts To The Pink.
Click on oil paintings to view...
THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2010
INSPIRATION FROM JAZZ
'You don't have to prove anything. You just have to play yourself' Andy Sheppard
'Do not fear wrong notes, there are none.' Miles Davis
Can these apply equally to your art? As a painter I can translate them into '...you just have to paint yourself' and 'Do not fear wrong strokes....'
Encouraging.....
FRIDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2010
MORE TITLES
My recent paintings are about the relationship of the colours one to another within the painting and produced such titles as The Yellow Shouts to The Pink, The Blues Sigh over The Turquoise and Chorus With a Pink Bass Line (click on oil paintings to view).
When I have a painting waiting for a title I hang it on the wall somewhere where I see it often, and just wait. Then one day I look at it and a title comes.
I very rarely, if ever, change a title, but I may call it I or II as in OH Rowan Tree I and Oh Rowan Tree II.
I love Christine McArthur's titles and own a painting of hers called Where There's a Fish There's a Lemon. I like the title almost as much as the painting.
Both David Hockney and Howard Hodgkin have great titles:
The Splash A Bigger Splash Japanese Rain Hockney
Enter Laughing Here We Are in Croydon Hodgkin
Rain, Steam and Speed and Harmony in Grey and White by Turner and Whistler respectively are wonderfully descriptive and No 8 1964 by Rothko, admirably straightforward.
next posting exhibition titles
WEDNESDAY 25 AUGUST 2010
TITLES
I know some people find it difficult to think of titles for their work, especially when the number of works gets into the hundreds....but I love thinking up titles.
Often the titles find me, and the painting follows. This happens especially when I am listening to Radio 3 while I am working.
Here are some of the titles waiting for a painting (watch this space!)
Lost in Blue
Seven Tears
As Steals the Dawn (Handel)
Savour the Spaces (Terence Blanchard - jazz is a great source)
Song of Summer
The Quiet Object/The Unquiet Object
and more....
TUESDAY 10 AUGUST 2010
I have a number of strategies for creating this tension I mention below - this 'unstable equilibrium'. In the painting I am currently working on I have deliberately put a too bright colour too near the edge of the canvas - now I have to design the rest to get back to a visual (near) balance - either by modifying something I have already painted, or by adding something new.
Another strategy, which I have mentioned before is, if a painting is looking good, but too conventional for me, I try to find the courage to load the brush, turn away from the canvas, and make a few marks at random - now I have a new problem, a unique problem. Painting can't be 'formulaic' with these techniques! This has worked well for me on a number of occasions (and ruined a promising piece of work once or twice). It requires a lot of nerve to do. I need to work up to the necessary boldness. But when it works? - love it!!
MONDAY 19 JULY 2010
GESTURE
I learned to work with Chinese brushes and to make gestural marks using my whole arm and with a totally relaxed upper body - not easy!When it works the shapes seem to have life and energy and fluidity in them that is to me magical.
The book I would take to my desert island is 'The Chinese Art of Writing' by Jean Francois Billeter. In it, Billeter uses the term 'unstable equilibrium' which is the best term I have come across for the kind of tension I try to have in my work - a kind of teasing tension in the composition which keeps the eye moving. I think it adds a little excitement - perfect equilibrium can be slightly boring in that you can, if you are experienced in looking at art, take in everything at once. An artist, through experience, can quite easily achieve this visual balance. It becomes predictable. (Too easy - I like challenges!)
next posting - how to create this 'unstable equilibrium'
TUESDAY 29 JUNE 2010
Back to art, and some notes I made about technique. Sometimes if I get a bit stuck I write a bit about what I am doing, and often get clearer in my mind about what I am trying to achieve and can move forward again.
TONE
At this point I want some areas of the painting to glow as if lit from within. How dark do I need to go to get this glow effect? I want to keep the tone medium to light, and the tonal range of the whole very limited.
Winsor yellow and Winsor lemon straight from the tube, then a touch of ochre added for a different tone, and a touch of cadmium green pale to the mix for subtlety and depth. Already there is a touch of movement in it - as in forward or receding planes, parallel to the picture plane.
I want this picture to be exuberant and scintillating. The exuberance will come partly from the way the paint is applied, the scintillation from the use of complimentary colours. It's not as simple as that of course. The exuberance also comes from the choice of colour and the composition, and the scintillation, if I can achieve it, will also come from the manner in which the paint is applied.
more on the role of gesture in the next posting...
13 JUNE 2010
I've just come home from a wonderful concert by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Sibelius' 'Finlandia' and Bartok's 'The Miraculous Mandarin'. In the second to front row we were practically in the orchestra and I was struck again by the essential differences in the arts - how different is the musician's life from the painter's.
The painter works alone, independently, privately, at her own pace, can make any number of attempts to get it right, or abandon the attempt all together if necessary, may travel but can choose to spend her whole working life in one place, and creates original work, which is then usually permanent. The cellist, say, in an orchestra works collaboratively with many people, in public and in private, at a pace, place and time of someone else's choosing, has to get it right on the night or lose his job, has to travel all year round, and is the interpreter of the composer's work, through the intermediary of the conductor (in today's concert the entertainingly balletic Garry Walker). The sound the musicain creates is ephemeral - once played (unless of course recorded) it is gone - he then may have to do it all again! I am so full of admiration for the skill, dedication and discipline involved in playing at this level.
The most striking difference is that the musician's creativity is in collaboration with others. I have just discovered that the choreographer Twyla Tharp (see posting of 31 Jan 2010) has written a book called 'The Collaborative Habit' which I have just ordered for the princely sum of £2.62. Can't wait..
SUNDAY 6 JUNE
THE DARING RANDOM STROKE
In watercolour painting I learned that, to avoid my compositions being too predictable (good, aesthetically pleasing, balanced - but conventional), if I loaded the brush and turned away from the painting and made a few marks on it, the dynamics changed. They might create a new compositional tension that is good, or the composition might need balancing again, but the result would be a more subtle equilibrium. Another way of playing this is to spatter, and to work on very wet paper. Or add the wrong colour.
Anais Nin said 'and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom'.
MONDAY 31 MAY 2010
After an exhibition and a short holiday, back to some thoughts on the subject of the creative process:
AVOIDING CLICHES
I like coarse old brushes and bits of cloth - they make unpredictable marks.
FEAR
Slight feelings of panic - summer flowers coming out and I am still trying to capture a particular snowy day.
In being true to myself in my painting I am moving away all the time from previous work, from work for which I am known, from the approval and understanding of those who like and buy my work. This is difficult. If I go off into a realm (abstraction) where no one, or very few, will follow, I will be lonely (and broke).
FOCUS
There are times when visiting other artists just muddies the waters (that includes going to exhibitions). Looking at other work I like, I'm off thinking 'Oh I could try this/that' - scattered, overstimulated. I can't work that way now. I've developed a different way, which suits me, so I mustn't be sidetracked. Staying clear and focused is important. It's taken me a long time to get here.
CONFIDENCE
The word confident has been used of my work. Good. I am. Sometimes. (Would I want to buy the work of a timid artist?)
I observed a long time ago that if you do something with conviction, for long enough, it will be accepted.
MONDAY 10 MAY 2010
Putting your work out into the world takes courage.
I always say that going to my private views is worse than going to the dentist. I get very nervous beforehand (though I always enjoy it once I'm there). I know my work is going to be judged, I am going to be judged. I stand and look at the work of say a year, arranged on the walls of a gallery for all to see, and I see a very personal journey. I remember the moment I was struck by that particular view, that light, that magical effect of colour and I know that no-one else can see this work in the way that I see it. I also know that I may not see some of them again.
I was very fortunate to get off to an encouraging start in selling my work. My first exhibition, at Beningbrough Hall in York was a great success and the red dots were going up rapidly on one painting after another. Instead of being elated, I was saying 'Oh.Oh.' in a despairing tone of voice as each new dot went up. Friends said 'What do you mean - Oh, Oh - it's wonderful!' But I was realising for the first time just how personal these paintings were - they were a diary of my year - and I was selling it!
However I have got used to it, almost, and am fortunate to earn enough to allow me to keep painting - which is the whole point really (but it's a crazy way to try to make a living!)
I envy my friend who is a writer, who can sell her work, and give it to friends, and keep it too...
FRIDAY 30 APRIL 2010
The exhibition is up! Andrew and Penny have done a sensitive job of the hanging and I think it looks very fresh and colourful and light light light - a suitable atmosphere for May Day. The painting 'Dragonfly' (see previous posting), in its outrageously elaborate frame sings out and is honoured by its own space.
The interactive 'Little Triangle' paintings will intrigue you, I hope.
The house and studio look so bare, it was a shock coming home to them!
I must immodestly tell you that I think these latest paintings are my best work so far; they are original, poetic and optimistic. Do come and see what you think (and I truly don't mind if you don't agree with me!)
Tighnabruaich Gallery 1 May - 5 June 2010 Open 10.30 - 4.30 Sundays 2.00 - 4.00
next posting - putting your work out into the world....
FRIDAY 16 APRIL 2010 
With an exhibition coming up, things get busier, and keeping up the blog has slipped a bit though I have managed to post weekly till now! I am looking forward to showing the new oil paintings at the lovely Tighnabruaich Gallery, in Argyll from 1st May till 5th June 2010.
If you've not been there yet you are in for a treat. The gallery is run by Andrew and Penny Graham Weill and shows mainly Scottish painters, and there is a constantly changing collection of glass, sculpture, prints and some beautifully designed textiles and jewellery.
The drive there is fantastic - stop at the viewpoint overlooking the Kyles of Bute for one of the most spectacular views in the area, then buy a postcard of it at the gallery - Andrew is a wonderful photographer.
I have been working on these paintings a couple at a time in a small studio, and it is always exciting for me to see them all together for the first time. I hope you will find them exciting too, and I'll be happy to talk to you about them if you can make it to the private view from 6 - 7.30 Sat Ist May - it will be good to meet you all!
Check out the blog once a week for more chat about how the framing and preparations are going - the run up to an exhibition is always a madly busy time.
Above is one of the newest paintings - a clearer, brighter, purer yellow in the original. It is called 'Dragonfly'. It is being framed in a very elaborate, carved moulding - I can't wait to see if it 'comes off'!
You will also be able to see two little 'interactive' paintings - a little bit of magic - you will see something which isn't there. Promise! Come and see for yourself....
click on 'links' for details of the gallery
FRIDAY 2 APRIL 2010
CLEARING ONE'S HEAD
I mentioned getting into the work environment and the work clothes and playing Radio 3 to clear my head and get into the right mind set for creative work, and I also mentioned doing 'pages' as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way - when you wake in the morning you pour out your thoughts onto paper - write three pages of whatever thoughts are rattling around without editing or thinking about it too much or re-reading them. Very effective.
Recently I have been writing another blog. Click here to take a peek http://livesimplysimplylive.weebly.com/ - I have come to realise that this is also a way of clearing my head and quietening down my chattering left brain, helping me to access my creative right brain.
MONDAY 29 MARCH 2010
PROTECTING ONE'S TIME
As anyone working from home will know, it is difficult to protect your working time, both from other people and from the distractions of home (even more so when you don't do 9 to 5, or any other regular hours). A 'do not disturb' notice on the door is probably the most direct way, but what if as I do, you are also working when you do chores around the place between brushstrokes, or when having a coffee. I am still in working mode inside my head and don't want to be disturbed. I remember a wonderful remark from the cartoonist and humorist James Thurber - he bewailed the fact that his wife didn't understand that he was actually working hard while lying stretched out on the sofa.
I love this quote from Picasso and identify strongly with it...
'For me, creation starts with contemplation, and I need long, idle hours of meditation. It is then that I work most. I look at flies, at flowers, at leaves and trees around me. I let my mind drift at ease, just like a boat in the current. Sooner or later, it is caught by something. It gets precise. It takes shape...my next painting motif is decided.'
I came to this quiet part of Scotland to paint full time and to have the opportunity of just this kind of quiet contemplation. To have it I have to give up other things, but that's my decision and I don't regret it (well, occasionally...)
On an everyday basis I protect my time by wearing my painting jacket - those who know me, know that when I am wearing it - they should leave me alone!
Sunday 21 March 2010
Being blocked means I am sure, different things to different artists. I have heard of writers and artists being afraid of the blank paper. I love the blank page or canvas! For me the experience of being blocked is more likely to occur when the work is going really well, but I am interrupted. Not for an hour or two, or a day, but longer than that and I lose 'it' - the mindset of flow - that optimum state for producing good work.
Getting back to work is hard. Where was I at when I left off? In my head I mean.
So, how do I get back? I get into my studio and put my painting jacket on. I switch on radio 3 if it's morning (I often don't like their afternoon music). Look at the finished and nearly finished paintings. This reminds me of what it is I am trying to do exactly. Read anything I've written about it. Or maybe make some notes if I haven't already. Move other stuff out of the studio (back door clutter). Clean up the table. Look for a bit of work where I know what is required. For example 'I need to prepare a large yellow ground' or 'I need to lighten the green ground' or 'I need to either reconsider the blue or try something else. DO IT.
There are a number of different subjects here - clearing my head/protecting my time/working on several paintings at once - I think I'll take a brief look at each of them in the next few weekly postings.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
The positive psychologist with the unpronounceable name of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the state of mind of 'flow' thus -
'Flow is the mental state of occupation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energised focus, full involvement and the success of the process of the activity.'
More simply put as on the ball, or in the zone or in the groove.....the best work comes when my head is clear, my time is my own, and I am in my studio with my brush in my hand.
Excited but still calm; confident but open minded about where the painting is going; focussed; oblivious to surroundings (don't hear the music in the background); daring but not reckless; switching effortlessly, and appropriately, from right brain to left brain.
For a fascinating account of artists and their right brains read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards - the most intelligent book on learning to draw. Useful too, to those who can draw but want to improve.
next posting will be about when the flow gets blocked (to continue with the metaphor)....
Sunday 14 March 2010
I don't do 9 to 5.
I mean this in the sense of working the same regular hours every day and working to someone else's timetable. I have worked my way over many years to now being in the position where if the work is going well I just carry on for as long as it flows. If the work is going badly I can walk away from it and do something else. It's why I'm self employed.
I know that some artists and creative people believe in the discipline of turning up at the same hour every day at the page, the canvas, or the dance studio, and that then the work will come, and I have done this too (and I have worked 9 to 5).
But where the creative part of the work is concerned I have come to learn not to push it. 'Don't push the river it flows by itself' as the saying goes. I have to push myself to paint the frames, phone a gallery, clean the brushes etc but when I am working on the painting itself I have become, I think, a good judge of when to keep going and when to leave it alone. When the ideas flow and the energy is high there is nothing like it.
Do you recognise this state of mind? And is it compatible with 9 to 5 work?
Friday 5 March 2010
One new inspiration, both read and heard - The Observer of 27.12.09 featured an article about the painter Carmen Herrera. But it was the illustration that caught my eye - spare, minimal, a white triangle exquisitely placed on a red rectangle. Perfection! So Modern! So graphic! I was very surprised to find that it was the work of a 94 year old artist, who sold her first painting at age 89. 'I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame a very vulgar thing, so I just worked and waited.'
Wow. (But I don't think I can wait that long....)
To get back to my original subject of words. How do I use words in my own practice, and do you use words in yours? The most obvious way for me is in notes for exhibitions; choosing titles is another - both for the paintings and for the exhibitions. I also, especially if I am stuck, write a diary - no, that is too formal a term for what I do - I write notes to myself on any old scraps of paper, or the edge of a painting, asking myself questions or making a list of what I need to do next. I shall enjoy gathering together and sifting through these bits and pieces and hope to post on topics like Artist's Block, In the Flow, Clearing One's Head, On Starting, On Finishing, Working Practices, Techniques and more. If you have any more ideas for topics, please let me know!
Next posting 'I don't do 9 to 5....'
Google 'Carmen Herrera artist' and choose between lots of reviews (New York Times : Carmen Herrera is Art's Hot New Thing) and You Tube videos.
Thursday 25 February 2010
More inspiration from You Tube...
Sister Wendy Backett I seem to remember from her television programmes from the 1990's, came into my category of critic who claims too much knowledge of what the artist was thinking and puts words into his or her mouth. However in these conversations with Bill Moyers (American journalist and commentator) I was fascinated when she talked about how to view a work of art, and what constitutes great art.
She speaks of 'being defenceless to the work' of 'forcing yourself to be utterly true to your own feeling'. You must, she says 'reach right down into your own psyche and pull out your own unmediated reaction...without you in any way defending the fragility of your ego'. She adds 'It is very difficult to do'.
She claims that 'real art makes demands' and points out that you must be prepared to spend time, and suggests how you might get to know just two or three works in a gallery, that being as much as you can perhaps take in.
'If you always come away enriched, it is great art.'
'You are more than you were before the encounter with that painting.'
'Art is a great means of getting perspective on all that's worrying, depressing, constricting in your life.'
I was also both encouraged and moved when she said that her life had got 'richer, deeper, higher and wider' as she has aged.
Spot on Sister!
Bill Moyers in Conversation with Sister Wendy Beckett Parts 3.4 and 5 You Tube
Friday 19 February 2010
From words read to words heard....A You Tube piece I love is the painter Howard Hodgkin being interviewed by Melvyn Bragg. Hodgkin describes the content of one of his paintings as 'a trembling little emotion' and the dark, painted frame as 'a great big fortress around it'. He often extends the painting onto the frame. This is something I am going to try with some of the 'lumina' paintings for my upcoming exhibition at the Tighnabruaich Gallery.
Framing is a tricky business! The main thing about these particular paintings was that the light seemed to radiate from them, but some, I felt, were diminished rather than enhanced by framing. Especially the ones on a yellow ground seem constrained in a way I do not like. So I plan to carry some of the yellow ground onto the frame, not in order, as Hodgkin does, to contain it, but to let it spread out of the picture plane, to let it free, to let it live....
Kandinsky described colour as 'a living force that directly influences the soul'.
See the 'lumina' paintings at the Tighnabruaich Gallery from 1 May to 5 June 2010. www.tig-gallery.com
Tuesday 16 February 2010
Still on the subject of books which inspire me...Reading artists' thoughts, opinions and reflections in their own words is the reason that one of my favourite books is Theories of Modern Art by the wonderfully named Herschel B Chipp. It's a hefty paperback (definately too heavy to read in bed), and my copy is pretty beaten up looking now. I think it is one of those books you can allow to fall open at any page and expect to find something that interests you.
Here is Cezanne on self confidence, Van Gogh on portraiture of the soul, Gaugin on seeing Buffalo Bill at the World Fair,(Did you think of them as contemporaries? Neither did I!) 'You must make all efforts to come and see it' he writes to Emile Bernard. De Chirico's Meditations of a Painter. Jackson Pollock explaining that the painting has a life of its own. Henry Moore in an article called 'The Sculptor Speaks' begins with 'It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.' Franz Marc describes how a horse sees the world and Francis Bacon muses on 'why some paint comes across directly on to the nervous system'.
All the greats of the late 19th and 20thC in letters, diaries, manifestos, memoirs, statements, articles from journals, recorded conversations and interviews in this anything but dry academic work which is lit by the passion of the artists' words - in fact I think I will take it to my desert island....
Which art book would you take to your desert island? Tell me at 'comments' at the bottom of this page!
Theories of Modern Art. a Source Book by Artists and Critics. Herschel B Chipp. University of California Press 1968.
All the letters of Van Gogh are available to read online at www.vangoghletters.org and the exhibition The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters is at the Royal Academy till April 18.
Thursday 4 February 2010
When I lived in York I loved to drive over the wild North York Moors to the fishing port of Whitby, to a bookshop I liked, where I found this book, 'The Artist's Way - A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self' by Julia Cameron, writer, film maker and poet, in about 1997.
A friend and I worked our way through the 12 week course, meeting for a couple of hours a week to discuss what we had discovered. It was a very fruitful time, and I felt empowered by what I had learned. Disliking such terminology as 'sacred circles' and 'artists' prayers' I nonetheless tried to follow Cameron's request: 'Please be open minded.' I ignored the bits I didn't like and took up some ideas which I use to this day.
Morning Pages clear my head before I start work, and fun Artist Dates often refresh me if I am a bit stuck or stale, and the book is peppered with inspirational quotes:
'Painting is just another way of keeping a diary' Picasso.
'The centre that I cannot find, is known to my unconcsious mind' W H Auden.
Adamant that everyone is creative and that many of us are blocked creatives, Cameron provides a good programme to share with a group of creative or would-be creative friends (or a sacred circle if you prefer!)
next posting...letters and diaries of artists fascinate.......
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Sunday 31 January 2010
I love the Quaker expression 'speaking to your condition'. I think it explains the way that you can read a book and find something meaningful in it, then look at it again on another occasion and get something quite different (but still meaningful) from it. Your condition has changed.
On my first reading of choreographer Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit, I was taken by the exercises at the end of each chapter - I did a 'creative autobiography'. The first question is 'What is the first creative moment you remember?' I think it was learning to write my letters - carefully, carefully copying the shapes and being so delighted when I got them right. I can remember the typeface and the dense blackness of the ink. Answering the 33 questions (quickly) was fun. Reading her answers mead me feel like a wimp! She is straight talking, totally dedicated to her art, a hard working professional to the tips of her dancing toes.
On subsequent readings - it is the kind of book you can dip into - I became absorbed in her description of her own creative life, of the amazing people she has worked with, and in the ingenuity and originality of her working habits.
My own best creative habit is to Paint First. When I start my day painting the chores fit effortlessly into the gaps in the work when I need to stop and think, or wait for paint to dry, or whatever. It works for me because I have something interesting to think about while I do the routine things. If I try to do it the other way round - I will paint when the household chores are done - I never get around to painting (running a home is never done).
One of the creative autobiography questions is 'When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, how do you respond?' I wrote 'I love it'. The woman is brilliant and if I could get just a smigeon of her genius to rub off on me by reading her book then I too could 'walk into a white room, and walk out dancing'.
Twyla Tharp The Creative Habit Learn It and Use It for Life. Simon and Schuster 2006
Do you have a good creative habit?
Sunday 24 January 2010
So what are they saying, all these words I have been collecting and squirreling away?
They are saying things like - this is what art is about, this is creativity, this is why I make art, this is what inspires me, motivates me, moves me, and sometimes, this is how I do it or this is how I see it. (The Way I See It is the clever title of one of David Hockney's books which I like.)
Immediately I notice that I like to read or listen to artist's own words - straight from the horse's mouth. Just as I prefer to see originals rather than reproductions. I feel as if I get closer to the truth of the art with fewer intermediaries, whether that be a critic or a camera.
It is very telling that people travel great distances to stand in front of original artworks, and to watch and listen to live performances. There is nothing like the real thing.
I love to read books by artists writing about their creativity, and from disciplines other than my own. Choreographers like Twyla Tharp, writers like Julia Cameron. The letters of Van Gogh are riveting stuff - the new exhibition at the Royal Academy looks wonderful. Or to listen to jazz musicians like Terence Balnchard being interviewed by a sensitive interviewer like Michael Berkeley, who allows his interviewees to speak! His programme on Radio 3 - Private Passions - is a real favourite. (Sundays at noon.)
Some critics too, have fascinating and insightful things to say. Sister Wendy Beckett being almost reverently interviewed by Bill Moyers (You Tube) expresses wonderful and original ideas about how to look at art 'defenceless to the work' and on how art can change you.
I think I will select some of my favourite things from each of the above to share, before I look at how I use writing to help me in my own work. So, Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit....how to choose...I now have a good excuse to read this book again, as if excuse were needed!
Wednesday 20 January 2010
‘Everyone wants to understand painting. Why not try to understand the song of birds? Why can people love a night, a flower, all that surrounds humankind, without seeking to understand it? Yet with painting, people want to understand. If they could understand that the artist works out of necessity; that he, too, is a lowly element in the world, to which one must not lend any more importance than one does the other things in nature that charm us but that we do not explain.’
Picasso 1935, being humble..
Searching for this quotation I realise that my ‘writing about art’ is scattered throughout the house, the studio, and the car, in various bags, boxes, drawers, folders, and pockets, written on scraps of paper, the margins of books, on gallery catalogues, backs of envelopes, on receipts if that was all that was in my bag at the time, in old diaries and, very occasionally, in notebooks. It will be interesting to collect them all, though I may be gone some time....
Essay by Picasso in Cahiers d’Art 1935 from ‘Picasso Master of the New’ Thames and Hudson New Horizon series.
Sunday 17 January 2010
Art blog/blog art/art of the blog/bloggy art/arty blog.
Whatever I decide to call it, why words?
I have always written down my thoughts about art - sometimes as a response to something I have seen or read, or want to remember, but sometimes as part of the process of making art (often when I am stuck!). Often for publicity for a show, or as a handout to guests at a private view. Words are a primary way of communicating after all, and I often find that just a few words about what I am trying to convey in my paintings, especially the more abstract ones, gives people an entry into the painting, a key, or a starting point that enables them to engage with it.
Having said that, I am often annoyed with art critics who get too wordy, or labels in art galleries which interpret the paintings for you, ('here the painter was trying to...' they say. How do we know?). When asked to 'explain' a painting I have beeen known to reply that if I could say it in words I'd be a writer, not a painter. But I love words and reading and writing....so I would like to share some with you here.
I plan to add postings at least weekly, but right now I am off to find that bit Picasso said about 'explaining' paintings..
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