beauty as a manifesto, calming as a practice

“It is [the] spiritual and evolutionary function of beauty—the power to generate life-affirming change—that is so vital to the visual arts and culture in general, and it is what is intentionally absent in much postmodern art…. Restoring the centrality of beauty in art may signal more than visual relief from the tawdriness of today’s art. It would also be a confident assertion that the future we seek is connected to our desire for beauty and to an appreciation of how beauty can help lead us to a more perfect tomorrow.”                     Carol Raphael       “The Beauty We Create” – See more at: http://ulaeinstein.com/category/art-blog/page/2/#sthash.nlrKMWNQ.dpuf

I have been very lucky with finding some new artblogs recently – particularly as 3 of my regular ‘go to’ blogs are slowing down on posting, having slices of life I presume.

Ines Seidel http://ines-seidel.de/2013/09/wunderstockchen/?lang=en

and Ula Einstein  http://ulaeinstein.com/kosmos/

both make work I find inspiring and motivating, and make me the tiniest bit panicky 😉 I can see we have similar concerns and each have ideas they are working on that mean our work would really make a dialogue in a gallery (drags self back from delicious fantasy 😉 ) but if I don’t make more of the work in my head soon, it will look like I am bouncing off them at best and copying them at worst, when really these are ideas I have been growing for  months and years…

Fibromyalgia means I have to work much more slowly on production than I like, and anxiety is really bad for that, as it increases adrenalin, which increases cortisone, which heightens the pain, which reduces my ability to make…nasty vicious circle, that.

Taking time out to meditate, to skywatch and flow watch (Daoist practices) will be key, and silliness like lifting big tubs of plants or bricks to weight mulch because I am so frustrated that the other flats won’t come out and help in the garden has to stop. The chiropractor put my collarbone back in again on Thursday and said I would feel much better afterwards, and I do, but I’m so annoyed I let myself down again…

I have done a little knitting of cradles and crocheting of the connectors, and already the pain is worse. So I have had a hot shower and a painkiller and an icepack and a nectarine and orange smoothie with organic ginger tea and now I am ready to plan rotations of activity to alternate muscle usage, brain usage and rest.

Thinking/reflecting/musing/’seeing’ work all help me feel creatively active, and, as importantly, help me with planning artist statements at the different levels they are expected. One of my resolutions to come out of the courses at Nottingham Contemporary was that I would modify my statements to reflect my permaculture beliefs and not spout high flown art-speak. I make good work, that to a large extent, speaks for itself. Thanks to altermodernism, it is less necessary to enfold the art in conceptual smokescreens, and simply to say:

I make art to inspire others to think outside the norms of capitalist consumerism.

I make art to call people to beauty, who may have lost hope in this sick system that it could be possible to live more harmoniously.

I make art to present something so real and so compelling, that previous disbelief is replaced by hope and trust in healing and beauty:

a beauty with wounds that are being treated, issues that are accepted and worked through, but a beauty of balance and sharing and richness of texture, colour and line, that makes you want to reach out and touch, to take home with you, and to live with, a little more each day.

agoraphobia and exhibitions

– a short film made by the Nottingham Contemporary crew about the course and how it affected some members, at 3 minutes they did well to fit in the WEA assessor, Chris, Daphne and Stephen, though you can see more of us in the backgrounds, of course. It’s interesting how huge an experience it’s been for some of the group… I think I felt that way about the Art Access course I took 97-99 with Charlotte Finlay-Broadbelt and Chris Lewis-Jones (yes, the same!) and then the City & Guilds Machine Embroidery with Chris Standen, that my art making skills expanded exponentially. This should feel as transforming to me, it has been my ability to take my art into the world that has grown…and I realise I am not remembering to celebrate it enough!

I’m finally walking through the wall I identified in therapy in 2000…the agoraphobic barrier that stopped me or punished me for even trying to broach it is now a pile of rubble I am picking my way through. I watched my fibromyalgia spoons soooo carefully during the installation, trying to rest as much as I could (my new homehelp had a baptism by fire today 😉 ) but agoraphobia-wise I have been really struggling when I am out this week, with high anxiety and tearfulness and reluctance to go out… a bit of oversharing too 😦  Luckily my new doctor is an absolute sweetie and handled it! The rubble is pretty big, and I am getting very tired and wobbly, but…I’ve just walked through the Berlin Wall of internal barriers! Wow!

 

The work we did on presence and presentation:

nottingham contemporary: definition for recognition

was hard for me, but has really paid off. By comparing myself to Banksy I set myself free from the agoraphobic/ fibromyalgia issues of maintaining  presence in spite of rising adrenalin/anxiety because, bingo! I used a variation on his anonymity, I extended the singingbird avatar from yarntagging to my facebook profile and promotion. It made things a lot easier, and though I had to still be very pushy, sorry, I had to be an efficient promoter of my own work 😉 I didn’t have to see my name over and over again. I don’t know how well this would work for other agoraphobics, but I’m talking about this just in case it helps anyone else. Cold calling is my worst nightmare,  to the amazement of lots of people who have seen me being very confident! Aren’t we all interesting mixtures 😉

Lovely Suella prodded me to approach Nottingham Castle about linking up with the lace tagging… and in my new expanded space, I did. Being able to assemble images so quickly and email them for free (sending slides used to be so expensive and time/effort consuming, the internet really is great for this) and with the extra freedom/non-attachment to results that gave me I already had a big win, but to my delight she liked the images and is keeping me in mind to link up with fibre/thread artwork in the future! Which means I can send her updates as new pieces complete in their slow and meandering ways, without triggering the huge anxiety of cold calling. I was nearly crying as I told the doctor about it…

overcoming post show slump

So in the cab back from the art in the park picnic, I started talking about post exhibition slump and how to avoid it…it is an odd feeling, all this effort (and now I have fibromyalgia, I’ve skimped on so much to free up energy spoons for the xhib) around one outcome…that is now winding up.

The tree monkeys will deliver big bags of fibre art and signs etc to me, I will hand them vegan treats and later I’ll go through making sure stuff is dry and ok to store until its next outing. Keith will send me more photos and I will make the slideshow and ponder how to use it to catch the attention of art venues. And while I’m very glad the chores are over, there’s always been an after-the-party feeling, a Christmas tree going back in the loft feeling after a show…because I only exhibit once every couple of years for a solo show. I feel that may be changing, that now, ironically, when I have less energy for it, I may have acquired the promotion skills/mindset to springboard better and set installations on mini-tours 😉

It feels different this time, that I have kept the faith with what I want to make next AND where I want to show next, that while I feel tired, I still have momentum. My computer skills are enormous compared to after the 2011 showing of  ‘Pushing Buttons, Ringing Bells’ and that makes me more confident to approach the Council, having jumped through the hoops for the H & S this time, I can do it again…

There is a process of embodiment that goes into making art/craft, an idea becoming physically present in the studio, and then when it is seen and shown, in the world. And the urge to make it  and the question it answers are satisfied, so it starts to separate from me and the more it is shared, the less attachment I have to it, maintenance and organising more exhibitions are almost a distraction from the next ‘real’ thing, the next question that is being asked and answered in the process studio. It became its own thing, can’t it do its own organising?  😉  And the ‘chores’ are dull by comparison with making, though the birthday party bit is fun 😉 so part of the slump can be the list of shoulds and oughts, this piece deserves to be seen more widely, all that work…even the praise that pleased me so much can become a burden! Because the new shiny thing is in the studio!

But then going in the studio is often quite hard straight after an exhibition, because all that praise was for that answer to that question, this question is new and tricky and has to be thought about and felt about and not answered slickly or later it will show up as shallow…and the temptation to repeat what got praised or to repeat “so they get it THIS time” any pieces that felt missed or undervalued, all that has to put to one side…it can all feel a bit sticky…

So what works?

What works is work!

Turning up at the sewing machine…getting my hands all painty, running my fingers through yarn and fabric, working on what I never stopped working on, newly tinted by what experiences the show has given me 😉 watching the tree monkeys climb up among the branches, trying to take good photos under the thick canopy of blossom

and new leaves, the smell of fresh mown grass and rainy soil (so different from hose watered) the sound of the traffic and tramworks, the smell of tarmac, the overpoweringness/fibro-fog/agoraphobic  jostle that only an exhibition would make me face, the interesting chats blurring into babble on the super tired way home on a bus when all I wanted was to be back in bed….

all that will be in the next piece

All the help I got from my lovely friends, and then the new friends I made on Contemporary Conversations, and through see more and sea change being installed the same day (looking at you Anna R and Clare C!) and reconnecting with Jay H through facebook promo stuff, the chat with the family in the park about slow living, the way I felt telling visitors, “yes, I made this!”…. all strengthen my conviction that art is what I do best and that fibro isn’t going to stop me…

and will be part of the strength to negotiate more showings of sea change…

while I get out the components for Cradle for Stones that I have been looking at, thinking about and planning for but not allowed to touch for a month 😉

I didn’t set out to re-write my relationship with post show slump, but it seems to have happened, very wu wei 😉 daoist sages laugh near me 😉

see more @ contemporary

I’m feeling a bit wordless and foggy after lots of talking to strangers at the park/installation and over facebook, so this will be  a brief catch up post. See More went off very well, I arrived all in a fluster because the cab driver had jammed the brake on my rollator and I could see my day getting hideously complicated, but Sofia and Daphne were lovely and Helen from Contemp helped get my giant ikea bags of sea change carried down. Once I had handed my bag of gardening kit to Sofia (as props for her performance) and handed over things for the refreshment table and set up my book on the plinth and artist cards and flyers next to it, I could sit down, take a breath and see that the others had everything in hand and very interesting things were on show/happening…I forgot to keep up with photos of the performances, but Sofia would weave among us, metamorphising from a jaded office worker to a happy peasant, all of us in the Space were invited by performers in the Studio (visible through the window wall) to ask ourselves if we saw more; Mary showed sword form (Tai Chi Ch’uan) and Daphne wore a costume with props for activities and rotated from her stand of more props round people (eg opera glasses). Then there was Stephen’s installation:

– sorry for poor photos, it was too big for my camera- and this is Colin’s piece about Google eye and how we will be the Big Brother watching us, how people want to see and not be seen…lots more! My piece you know about (see slideshow for more pages)

– Charlotte’s quilt really held its own in the darkness, it’s a very unusual theme, bats for good luck, and with her clocks makes an interesting conversation about what time means to us, what worth we attach to what we do and the way values are influenced by culture and personal situation

Kateline’s hug station had a lot of takers! here she is laughing with Colin and then Daphne…

Eulane held people enthralled with her poetry and her performance of Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s ‘The Invitation’, a lovely note to end on as it sent people out with thoughts of what they could do on a course like this…at least 2 visitors had come because they’re interested in attending the next class, and seeing how different all our responses were, but how much we had all enjoyed it and benefitted was really encouraging for them. We were lucky that Kevan, Gail and Claire could come too, though Anna was abroad still and other Chris’ new job is too far away for nipping by on his lunch hour… Chris said what an interesting group we were to tutor and how friendly we all are and Vesse (from the class I went to before xmas)  agreed what a happy bunch we seemed, some groups just gel better and this was definitely one of them!

see more slideshow

Boom! I finished the handmade book SEE MORE and I even knocked up a couple of flyers for the SEE MORE @ Nottingham Contemporary Space, while doing necessaries for SEA CHANGE…might need to lie in a darkened room all weekend 😉

so, you can see it is much shorter than the books I have made before, and is very focused to the theme of seeing with the new eyes art can give us, by simply teaching us to pay attention…the Thich Nhat Than quote is spiritual rather than creative, intended to teach the interconnectedness of all things, but is in the same vein:

PoetrySue says she likes it more for having such a strong centeredness, so that is food for thought…my favourites are the little reward bundles, the paying attention to small scraps, the discarded, that can become beauty:

– even the cufflink style button is upcycled, and the centre of the bundle is the chopped off ends of the peacock feathers from another page…but they make a delightfulness! I am so looking forward to getting to work on ‘cradle for stones’ where there will be lots of this 😉

Having been released from the tasklet of making a flyer for SEE MORE, I just thought I’d have a play with Stephen’s idea and when I’d sorted out my master copies of SEA CHANGE, I set the printer to making a gift for the class, invite cards they can give to friends for next week 😉

and in black on white card, coloured card too, but the white looked very chic and like the concrete walls of Contemporary!

Hope they like them 😉

SEE MORE @ Nottingham Contemporary

Soooooo…the Contemporary class curve balled me, and extended by a week, meaning I will have an interesting challenge on managing spoons of energy…On Friday 10th May, we are having a 3hour performative art share, SEE MORE, 11 – 2, when I will promptly hustle into a phone booth and twizzle 3 times, emerging as Wonderwoman (sshhh! my secret identity, tell no one 😉 ) and whisk away to Queen’s Walk Rec to sit and instruct the installation team on how to hang all the components of SEA CHANGE. I really need to get my head round this because I hang in a happy process daze of flow, and having to choose and explain every little decision is super tiring and induces fibro fog. And I need to stay fresh for the picnic the next day 😉

Ermmmm…

Well, obviously, it will be a day of taxis and ready meals/sandwiches. Then I have already done myself a big favour by choosing to make a handmade book, to be shown on a plinth. I think the class is supportive enough to accept that I have no spoons to herd cats and help curate the space by class consensus, instead I will volunteer to sort out flyers and a couple of posters to attract visitors from upstairs at the Contemporary to The Space, where we will be showing. As I am doing all my flyers and posters at the same time, this is minimal extra energy, while saving the others a deal of stress. I can drop the flyers in to Contemporary by friend delivery (looking at you Robyn 😉 ) on Monday/Tuesday and then arrive about 10.30 on the Friday, with SEA CHANGE carried by bearer (tbc!! but hopefully Cherise) and plonk SEE MORE on plinth, sit and smile and enjoy the art. Mary is using some sword form in her piece, ages since I’ve seen good tai chi ch’uan, so that will be a highlight for me and very centering/calming…

It’s interesting how different people interpret the same theme, I think Mary may be the most holistic of us, she is very elegant and moves beautifully and her piece may encapsulate somatics, performance and aesthetics, while exploring the class experience…we will have to see! I have chosen seeing more through internal adjustments, the quotes from creatives and the bringing in of non-traditional elements, embroidery and embellishment bundles, metallic and neon marks, not your average material for an international gallery 😉  A daoist chuckle at resolving the chip on my shoulder about this by quietly bringing in what I believe should be more acknowledged in the age of altermodernism, that art is non verbal philosophy and can be “decorative” [read: visually interesting in a harmonious way] without losing its edge…may even be more powerful for it… (heresy!!! pass the smelling salts!!!) There will be inter-active elements as well, so altogether, an interesting event, if you happen to be in Nottingham that day, come on by 😉 and I will take photos on the day too.

I’m trying to think out a way to prepare some of SEA CHANGE so it can be easier to install on the day. I went to Poundworld (like a dollar store) yesterday and lucked into some green gardening mesh, so am beginning to see a way to lay out some of the chains and stitch them down (it’s a VERY windy site) so that section can be unrolled like a carpet and then tent pegged in. I got some glow-in-the-dark tent pegs to edge it!!! I’m not totally convinced the batteries will work still, but it could be great…

Lovely Eleanor set up a Facebook page for the event, in particular for the bring and share craft and  picnic event that’s standing in for a private view, and as she has an enthusiastic following, the invites (it’s open to all, it’s just a way of letting people know about it) are creating a buzz already 😉 This inspired me to set up a page for the week, and bring it to the attention of non-fibre artists, and already some accepts are trickling in. Fingers crossed the weather plays nice, a good forecast will do wonders for my stress levels 😉

https://www.facebook.com/events/339029339553244/?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/events/129778170550504/?fref=ts

Feel free to check out the links and send good wishes across the sea! I hope they work, my, my, the learning curve I’ve been on in the last couple of weeks…

sea change

I am very excited! Sea change has been accepted by Nottingham City Council for exhibition in a Green Flag winning park!

This is my first municipal showing; I had to learn some computer stuff at top speed (ahem…wing it?) to get around the council postmaster (email portal) refusing work in open document format; the health and safety format is very different to what I learnt 25 years ago on Supervisors training for Gateshead M.B.Council and again to what we learnt at South Notts on the City & Guilds in 2009/2010…I had to buy a rollator simply to get around the site, I had to grow my patience waiting for my escort and installation team member to get back from Scotland and to her diary to be able to confirm arrangements…it’s been a steep learning curve and well worth it 😉

To be able to show something I have made in 10-30 minute segments, over more than a year, in a place where hundreds of people will see it, much more than in a gallery, because it is between a school, a sensory garden, a community centre, an outdoor bowling green, on a historic walk that links The Meadows where the crocuses (a local crop) were grown, now a large housing estate, and the main railway station and city centre….this is an amazing feeling!

Of course there is a lot to be done, so posting may be a bit intermittent with a strong focus on art and exhibitions for a month…the art class changed its end of course date so I will be hanging work there in the morning and at the park in the afternoon of May 10th!

How am I managing my fibromyalgia? Well, the rollator is getting used every time I go out and I am learning the art of sitting down BEFORE I am tired 😉 I have a little sit every 100yards/metres and a long sit every 5 minutes. The buses here are very good, so often that sit is on the bus. I am extremely lucky in that 2 friends with H & S training have volunteered to hang sea change for free (they will get happy vegan boxes of approved foods goodies and cookies 😉 ) another friend is going to film it (choc n nut cookies for him!)  When yet another friend has finished her finals she can  take my posters and flyers to the student colourcopy shop  and various peeps are being given a handful to put up and a bundle to hand out. Cherise signed me up to facebook nearly 3 weeks ago, so I am able to use social media to promote an exhibition for the first time…Now Eleanor has finished being a film star she can show me how to get my facebook settings right for promotion! All this helps me lie back and relax, avoid overdoing it or fretting, and therefore avoid burnout.

Because of the art class at Contemporary, there is a new way of  thinking round things, and as I often slice through time wasting in class (there is something so freeing about turning 45 or getting fibro, I just tell excited clusters of peeps to shut up and listen to the tutor, who is waiting politely for them to realise it is their own time that is draining away) I may not be the most popular, but I am useful!!! And mostly appreciated 😉

At home I am using more convenience foods, part of the budget I allow for showing is for more  expensive fruit juice and pre-prepared meals, and getting things picked up by friends who can’t help “directly” with the shows…counting spoons means it all counts to me, as I explained to PoetrySue who drives from Skegby to see me and then takes me to a supermarket and then on Thursday tried to help me make my printer work before saying, no, it really IS dud cartridges!! Less stress is less adrenalin, less cortisol, less lactic acid muscle pain, less fibro fog, less neurological pain, less exhaustion… it ALL counts 😉

I feel the way Andy (my late husband) helped me get out into the world and make more friends in spite of my agoraphobia, and the way I focussed on maintaining that after his sudden death, and my own daoist approach of finding the next thing to be delighted by has played a large part in what I am now harvesting. I have tried to be a “merry widow” and a matter-of-fact disabled person and a process artist with an invitational and possibilitarian approach, and that way of being has made it easy to help others and be helped…and accepting chronic fatigue and high pain levels as part of the deal, without wasting energy on wishing it away, has kept me positive. Working with what I am fit for/ A fit for (ie suited to by skill and attitude)  and finding ways for the other things to get done without draining me is the daily question, and how to make it fun, is the icing on the cake 😉

see more at nottingham contemporary

The title/theme for our end of course art share is SEE MORE. I have really broken through a lot of personal barriers on this course, perhaps not in the way I expected, but in ways that matter deeply for how I will approach presenting my art to others, particularly art world gatekeepers. I realised that I get wound up by jumping through the hoops of gallery and exhibition proposals because I bend myself out of shape to fit into art speak, to prove I may be an outsider, but I can speak your language…No more!! Because I have such a bad taste in my mouth while I’m doing it that all the joy is lost. Bit hard to be a singing bird while I’m sucking lemons…

So I have rewritten my artist statement to be more directly from my true/heartfelt process, I have kept some terms like inflection of surface, because to be honest, there is no other way to describe what I do, the mixture of texture, colour and dimension that make a single plane multi-faceted or many surfaces one colour field is something painters care about, and not many others, like Flemish bond is a bricklayers’ term because they really care about sticking bricks together…but I have shared more of how I want to catalyse others to reclaim their creativity, which always felt taboo, as direct appeal to the viewer veers dangerously close to beauty/hobby painting/ elvis on velvet 😉 I’ve always felt art theory is a bit like psychology, there’s a defensiveness, trying to prove it’s a respectable discipline by being unnecessarily wordy and impenetrable… when really they both involve the the ineffable, the use of what looks like magic to bring people to a better appreciation of how to live…at their best, anyway.

So my art will be seeing more of me, sharing more of what matters to me, being more playful and taking risks with being pleasing on a more superficial level…less abstract, but informed by my love of interesting surfaces, allowing more decoration even (eek, eeeek, such a taboo in fine art) and fusing art/craft elements more…and so this end piece is more elaborate than Chris asks of us. The minimum requirement is to spend 3 hours on our end piece and obviously people with family and work commitments will be very relieved at that, but me, I have more time and…more stash!! So I have dug out lots of leftovers from City & Guilds and elsewhere, brusho and quote albums and new techniques like the stippling…and am making a book. I am using a lot of found objects, they just happen to be my own leftovers 😉 and I have let myself work in a very decorative way, I’m enjoying it and I will be pleased with it, it will be worth the spoons…

So, eye candy time:

persistence and pacing

So today I have overdone it, I got on the wrong bus (attention! expensive when not paid) and walked just a bit too far and then I was leaning over to listen to someone speaking softly in a super-echoey place and now I ache and feel stiff as a board…ggrrr… The good news is, the new home help made my kitchen and bedsit all lovely and fresh again and when you are this tired, getting in a freshly made bed with fluffed up pillows and shaken up duvet is bliss, curled up with the cat, both purring 😉

The art class was given a guided tour of Surface Gallery in Nottingham http://www.surfacegallery.org/ today, the volunteers were lovely to us, lots of info on how they make it work on sixpence and squeak as my granny would say…they make a lot happen and are invaluable for the exhibitions, including students’ final shows, the collective members’ workspaces and affordable studios, the gallery hire fees are fair and they seem very enthusiastic. They took the chance to ask us for feedback and it turned into a very friendly idea share (yeeeesss, that would include me sticking my neck out as usual 😉 but I will only offer criticism if I can offer a suggestion too, and it was a very minor point about making the gallery look more welcoming, it belongs to the council and suffers from frosted glass making it look shut) and they were very welcoming of our ideas…and that is so nice, because some places I have volunteered were really set in their ways and closed/ defensive about longstanding issues. I feel fairly unattached as to whether people use my suggestions, as long as I am allowed to offer them, as an outsider there are often conditions applying of which you know nothing, after all.  I got the impression of a really healthy organisation trying to keep their focus during tough times for artists and galleries. And congratulations to them for winning some funding, they obviously worked hard for it. They are already doing a lot, and have really positive, exciting ideas for the future, it was so nice to be somewhere with such a good atmosphere. I realise I haven’t talked about this exhibition, but you should go and judge that for yourself, it’s on till the 16th 😉 The others enjoyed the tour, I was sensible and stayed downstairs and borrowed a pair of scissors so I could do my 10 minutes art for the day.

I had been across the road to David’s Fabrics at Sneinton Market (pulled by the giant electromagnet that draws me to places with cheap materials and tools for making!) and while the others were oohing and aahing over light filled studios, I was ripping into 4 metres of industrial remnant lining fabric. I made a snip and then tore down the length of the fabric and crochet chained the resulting strip, I got 5 lengths, so 20 metres by 20 cm+ (no rulers were disturbed during the making of this component!!) using my arm as the crochet hook…oh soooo satisfying! Sadly it only takes 5 minutes to rip and 5 minutes to chain £4.80 worth of fabric like that, but it was very pleasing getting it out to show Eleanor at Knit Nottingham, she laughed at the chain and recoiled in horror at the tackiness of the other fabrics I bought ( 5 metres in ‘speciality’ fabrics for £9, giant square sequin effect in scarlet, green jungle and brown desert nylon camouflage wtf? but when they are cut up, shifu style and chained, they too will be pretty…promise!)

So, I foresee a weekend in bed playing with scissors and making silliness 😉 which is a good way to rebalance my spoons and forks (tiredness and pain) while I sigh in contentment over the freshly hoovered domain and eat risotto till it’s gone..I have a big pot to last the weekend 😉

Some ugliness, definitely a before and after 🙂

Do you see how the green is picking up the red sequin shine though? I should have more to show you tomorrow or Sunday ….

loosening up

Barbara Kingsolver: The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof

-from Animal Dreams, a stunning early novel of Kingsolver’s I read till it fell to pieces…and I am a careful reader 😉

And I took this to heart, and I worked on myself, and sh*t kept falling down, and even so, within 10 years I had started painting, and had found my process and wrote this in the artist’s statement for my 2003 exhibition ‘No Such Thing As Empty Space’ :

I paint because nothing else calls to me the way the making of paintings does. To prepare a painting, to move paint over a surface is the most interesting, compelling, spiritually opening, deeply satisfying act I know…the best use I can make of my life, an act that centres everything and gives me a place to stand, just as I am. To pick up an oilbar or even a brush loaded with primer and to feel a momentum building until I simply have to explore what is possible in this moment, given the time, energy, ideas, feelings and materials to hand – what could be better? Paintings are both a space and a time, an object and a process, painting/s, noun and verb in one…the newer works are also love painting/s, paintings made for the love of paint, its materiality, physicality, presence…sumptuous surfaces dance, dazzle, drift…too complete to be empty, too active to be empty, too full of possibility to be empty…

detail Hsien/Celestial Dee Fairchild 2003

What do you do, when you can no longer do what made you most alive?

Cherise asked me what makes me most alive now. Getting lost in making, assemblage and embellishment makes me forget the chronic pain, and I do enjoy it. The best is probably making machine cords, creating amazing combinations of colours and textures and making structures and fabrics out of them. It’s not the same as painting though, it’s absorbing, but not as directive as painting was –  I used to floss my teeth because I was a painter! It was in everything! And working on the self promotion and marketing side of being an artist was hard then, but the last few days I have felt so sad…because it’s even harder when I don’t have the same backbone about my installations that I did about my paintings, I just ‘knew’ that they had followed process and come to resolution, and that this was how they were meant to be. I can feel the conviction of following process, but hard as it was to get respect as a painter, fibre art is so ignored by the conceptualists, it just feels twice as hard now… and I feel disempowered in how I’m handling it…

I hoped the Friday class would give me some …. confidence? some techniques to manage the stress? I’m not sure now, because it’s such a long time since I signed up. I did hope I would feel more confident tackling proposals and approaching galleries. And the class has been excellent in many ways, and I really admire Chris Lewis-Jones for juggling the different (hugely different 😉 ) expectations of the class members, but right now, right now, I feel really sad… I feel very reminded how judgemental and prejudiced I find the artworld mindset. I feel as ignored there as I did in my family. I feel no encouragement to be an artist, no welcome…the artists I would get on with are far flung round the globe, and have to fight their own corner…

I know that naming the problem is a vital stage of working through this, I know even writing this is already changing how I feel, that empoweredness is rising up and refusing to be drowned in negativity… 😉

I see I have already identified a shift I need to make in practice, the installations are needing to find a new form, and when I think of how I laughed for joy making this piece for my City and Guilds:

– then I can get a handle on what to do…this is so not what was expected by the tutor or examiner or visitors 😉

I do wish that galleries could be a bit more excited and a bit less dismissive, I do wish the originality of what I’m doing was more important than whether the Park keepers feel its presence in their lovely park is a threat to green flag status (tidyness?) but I can also feel the momentum returning…if galleries offer no support and cost lots of money to exhibit in, then…guerilla art and pop-up exhibitions are the way to go…

I return to the memory of a visitor to the 2003 exhibition. He came across and said, “Oh, I needed that!” He’d been standing for a few minutes in front of ‘with/out’, an abstract of yellows, oranges and golds while his grandson toured the other 47 paintings…”It’s been a long winter, I needed to remember it’s always summer really, somewhere…”

And a friend’s husband visiting  ‘Pushing Buttons, Ringing Bells’:  “Don’t tell me what it’s about, I see my own meaning…it’s all the lost memories, when the mind’s gone.” Yes, that is what it was about…dementia and memory and respect for what’s still inside someone, that they can’t communicate anymore…

Thread painting is still painting, inflecting the surface and playing with planes is still what makes me happy and I am lucky to still have this possibility. When I tune in to the process and follow it mindfully, I get the affirmation from the public, and the internet has made contacting the public directly so much easier. Galleries and those who love the jargon are not set up for the direct experience of vibrant, engaging work that invites touch and the unravelling of rules… so let that side go, set myself loose and go play 😉