Moments of Crisis

No matter how well you plan, how meticulous your thoughts and re-thoughts, the moment you come to start a new project is fraught with anxiety. I've just begun a new painting, and in my head I know exactly how I want it to be: where each line will go, how the paint textures will match and how the subtle blending of the colours will realise the subject profoundly.  

So dutifully I set up the space in which to paint - moving existing crap, choosing likely colours to make a palate, checking the brushes are okay and fighting with the child-lock on the Turps cap. I fix up the easel , wedging it where necessary in order to pre-empt its tendency to fall at exactly the wrong moment. I dip my brush and...

This is when it hits - the rush of 'what ifs': what if you miss the canvas? What if you splodge the paint? What if you get the line wrong? What if it looks like shit! For me, at least, the first mark sets the tone - and the confidence with which it is delivered determines the success of the painting. Sometimes this is because the sketch is spot on and the composition works. Other times it is becuase the first line tells you that it won't work - not on this one, and you change it. 

Yet begin with uncertainty and the mark stays with you, slowly the painting follows the horror of Dorian Gray - taking on your emotional vulnerability and warping into a psychological force that repels any attempt you have to bend it to your will. You walk away - determined that space will let you re-evaluate the situation and identify what's wrong; but the image taunts you, aware that it has possessed your personality, making you twitchy, paranoid, snappy. Until finally you barricade the offending object in your own attic, or chuck a tin of paint over it (depending on your ability to manage stress).

In that moment of readiness, that breath before beginning, is the fear and excitment of creation; the rub between triumph and disaster. It is when you know you are an artist, and you swallow, smile and start.

Splodge.  Oh shit!

Webspace and Wilderness

I'm never sure of the tone for these things - maybe really chatty, but how does that work? I mean, some of you I may know, but realisitically most of you I don't. Maybe you're interested in the work, maybe the blog, maybe you're not interested! Equally really formal wouldn't properly represent me - not that it won't creep in, I mean most of what i've written over the years has been some form of essay or disertation. On top of that I've had fun getting this set-up - linking with the web site - and almost obliterating the thing in the process (Ah the joys of touch screen and messy fingers!), which can alter the tenor of the piece a little, reducing the carefully worded thought into a hieroglyph worthy of  Julius Ceaser on the end of another thwarting from  Asterix.

I set the page and blog up quickly, before heading off for a holiday in Galloway, so found myself both fascinated by a new places - geography, history, culture - and, in this case, distileries, and mithered by the thought of what was going on with the site. I love to get to a remote place and sketch - some of which are on the site, it's why I went on about making a connection in the last piece. There's something about the concentration of looking, and then letting the information process through recording what you see. You notice the movement of the place, wind, animals, crumbling stones, the pitter-patter of life in even a tranquil place. Yet at the same time you enter a kind of meditation - for those twenty minutes, half an hour, you filter out the buzzing thoughts that pester more conscious moments and are left with what is.

Contrast that with the idea of setting up a web-site and blog, where the whole idea is to reach out to other people and opportunities, to engage with all the little thoughts and anxieties that nag everyday. In doing this you are shouting out (possibly into the void), screaming you oppinions, thoughts and observations, desperately trying to find what might be. I guess the drama queen in me wants to do this stuff and show it off, but the other part of me - my inner monk, sees it like coming up for breath after immersing myself in deep water.  I found the impulses at once at odds, yet strangely complimentary, the extremity of each impluse bringing a balance to the trip, although I'd like to feel that hoildays won't always need IT support.

Pick-Ups

So this is the first post on this blog... The beginning of a new venture and new experiences. Hopefully people will like what they see on the site and get in touch. Anyway my plan is to keep painting, drawing etc, and to keep thoughts and ideas going right here, so, who knows - maybe it'll be worth reading?

Painting, drawing, all that looking; watching, seeing how the world worlds and then trying to understand how I see it. I guess everyone goes through this stuff, but for me it's about what I'm looking to do, and I think it's beginning to make sense. The drawing - the detail of the seeing - engaging with the subject (or object) as it is, is meditation or contemplation. It is me trying to understand a relationship with what I see. The painting is the process of making sense of the world, of interpreting it, and thinking about how I perceive it. This may sound a little wrapped up in myself (or bleeding obvious), but today I was sketching a ancient burial cairn, and I realised that the space had a relationship to those people before it became a place of rest, and my act of sketching was about how I related to the landscape around me. That sketch is detailed, intricate, trying to be precise; however in thinking of the sketch as a painting I will translate that detail through the prism of emotion, feeling and general resistance to the world - where that will take me, as yet I don't know... but finding out will be fun.