Wastwater.

We have driven here on the advice of last night’s taxi driver. A disembodied voice and a face that I never saw, but gave money too willingly. Full of good food and the bon homie that comes with wondering around the new - sating a built up wanderlust, oh, and a good bottle of wine, we take on board the authenticity of the local, and set out to see what we will see. Past beach and pathway, past new technology park and old nuclear power station, past village and valley we drive. And then we stop.

The mountain raises up, looming over the lake that ripples with the waves of the wind. The dark swathes of the slopes cut lines down to the water. Sharp and burnt there is another world that exists on the far shore - a world that cannot be accessed, a world that seems alien from the bank I stand on. A scorched earth crafted from rock slides. I find myself back in my A-levels, watching the lines of Wordsworth solidify around me: “Foster’d alive by beauty and by fear”. There in front of me is the fear, and it is beautiful.

I sketch. Semi-island rocks, craggy and etched into the paper, trying to bring out each nook and cranny. Mosses cling defiantly in the midst of water - almost hydrophobic. Behind the vast rock face other mountains look down. These are higher, but their slopes are more hospitable, fields and habitations dotted on the lower reaches. My pen moves quicker, sparse lines that signify such massive spaces, hatching that gives the burn its crust, dots of tree and bush. 

Waves lap, the aggression of the wind building, splashes breaking over the stepping stones and rocks on which children dance. My pen scribbles, trying to catch the water on my page - a colander, which sees the ripples trickle away and my pen dot and dash in a mad if futile attempt to catch them. But, like Canute I continue, each line working over the other trying to freeze time in a model of instinct.

I stop. That is as much as I can catch. The moment in fragments, the awe and splendour in snatches. I have caught the genesis of a memory if not the memory in full. My eyes have looked deeper than a glance, my mind has travelled further paths than my feet could manage. I am spent, and happy.

You like me... you really like me.

Daybreak. Beautiful sun, light gleaming from cut grass in the garden. A whirlwind of niece and nephew, packing and chasing.

Email - a question?

Email, hesitant response.

Interminal pause.

Email, enthusiastic acceptance.

Email, embarrassed joy.

So I’ve, erm, well, I’ve sold a painting. Which is great, but feels a bit weird. Like I can’t quite believe it’s actually happened. Okay, hold on, take it slow… 

I mean properly sold one, to someone who doesn’t know me, and is prepared to pay for the painting because they like it, and can see it in their house. The experience is good - it’s affirming, and puts what I’m trying to do in context. But I still can’t shake the nagging doubt that there is a sting. You know, have I missed something? Will this turn out to be my greatest work?

But then this probably says more about me than it does about the work, my inability to believe in the value of what I’ve done, which at a moment like this does seem rather churlish. I find my inability to give over to this kind of success in the moment really frustrating. Grrrrr! (And that’s how eloquent I am about the subject too.) The painting was up on display, and the buyer really liked it, they took my details and contacted me. Which is how it was supposed to work - it’s just, well, I was never sure it would, so I hadn’t really prepared myself for this to come off.

Then there’s the other part of me - the part that says, well yeah, but it’s just one, and I shouldn’t get too carried away, and to take it easy. Which is good advice, easy to take, and yet again raises the bar for a definition of success even further - great.

The truth is I am chuffed, I’m just scared that if I say that out loud the feeling will go away, prove to be mirage, a false dawn. 

And that doesn’t just scare me, it terrifies me.

Spick and Span.

Tidying. The arrangement of things just so. Placing the world around you in an orderly manner, making things easier to find and making everyday actions more efficient. This is what you do in Spring, or before the arrival of family - anxious to prepare yourself for the new year and get rid of the detritus from the past, or concerned that others may think you live in squalor (even if you do?). 

Or there is what I do. Moving things out of the way, hiding the higgledy-piggledy, the random, and the daily confusion of things and impulses that make up my daily life. These are the side tracks, the digressions, the meandering thoughts, and the half begun chores. This is the residue I stick in the loft, hide in the garage, or under the stairs; my collection of ghosts.

And why this approach? Well I guess a proper tidy requires thought, planning and execution; a ruthless approach to the end result, to the vision of living a different and a better way. I have no such faith in the discipline of life, or of myself, and so I apply the approach of the Tazmanian devil, a whirlwind of chaos, and attack the house in the final hours, cleaning, stuffing, propping and most importantly quarantining a room - "Don't go in there! Oh the humanity!"

Of course this is the room where the ghosts live, where they sip bourbon, play poker and mutter of the things they miss downstairs where 'They' live: those who bought and discarded them, those who have forgotten what it is was once done for them, what is owed. Occasionally the anger is too much and there is a crash - a book has fallen, a box precariously balanced for months or years has finally given up. I go to check, ah, it was a loose screw, it was the cat, or a wobbly floorboard. But standing amongst the things, the hidden, the trash, I am struck by a memory, a remembrance and something is liberated, is reclaimed, and the line of the tidy is broken with a random thing. 

The year begins to curl it's fingers once again.

The Infinite.

I've finished a painting - I've started another. The one I've finished I'm proud of, it's good; the one I've started I want to be better, to be my best - at least until the one after.

The problem with painting, with Art of any kind is that it is impossible to gloat for too long; that as soon as you complete a work of Art that you are happy with you then need to expose it to others; to the possibility that you might be wrong about how good it is. And, even in the happy circumstances that others also like it, there are the nagging thoughts: how are you going to top that? will you be able to do it again? is that all you have? With these thoughts comes the chill - is that the moment you have been building to? Is that it?

And this is why I start again soon after I finish, because while I am painting, I am creating, I am not done, not yet finished, I can focus on what I am doing now and not worry about whether it will be my last. True, works of Art gestate, they build through experience, influence and a mental pinball that can take you from A to Z through Pi, patterns, colours and a small nervous breakdown. This process is what keeps the artist alive and to some degree sane. It is completing what you have set out to do that leaves you feeling bereft, lost, struggling to hold on to the word around you; it is a if gravity has given up and you float free from any sense of purpose. So, one by one, you put rocks in your boots, here is structure, here is theory, here are politics, are rules; and slowly you are able to put one foot in from of the other, take the next steps, and begin the next journey.

The journey is an overused and overworked metaphor, but it is what we seek - a solution to the problem of nothing, the problem of the infinite. We look, we listen, we think and drink, we wonder what if and what next, and slowly hammer out boundaries and guidelines that we follow and ignore, until we find something that we can say, something that draws the cosmos close to us and explodes it out again so we can see it for a glorious second. A second only because soon follows the fear, the panic, the questions.  

So I begin my next painting - because it is my best idea yet - no, because there is something I need to say - no, because I am scared I will not be able to think of something else to say, and I need to speak, if only to stop the silence.

Tradecraft.

Foggy, grey, the day begins with a smudge, a wisp of espionage. Today things happen behind closed doors, whilst the streets set their jaw with a grim determination that life will go on. People walk by with their shoulders hunched, head downward - or laser focused on their destination, intent on listening to... well whatever gets them from A to B, and maybe back again.

This is Friday in the fog, the smog, the pea-soup or the pollution. It creates the paradox of life closed in, while around the corner, and the next, life teams and spreads. Buildings begin, but disappear before they can finish - only hinting at what might be; rearing out of the mist like drifting cruise-liners with their eerie crew of memories. This sense of the unknown makes the normal noir, and I sit in a coffee shop at a station nexus and have the everyday throng of work, travel, arrival and departure, the meet and greet all thrown together. Hi Viz and Hi fashion jostle in the street outside - passing secret messages from capital to labour, inside there are preparations for tonight, while others fuel for the day ahead.

The weekend looms in front of us all, the beat of hope of expectation - the optimist prepares while the pessimist PREpares. Some look for oblivion in sleep - or whatever, others look to make the last five days worthwhile, and we all seek to understand what we are doing with and to our lives. Suitcases roll by, their owners attached to the leads; buses punctuate the traffic trying to keep the city beating, despite roadworks and lemming like pedestrians - still under the thrall of Nocturne. On this day we all respond to the oncoming - some fighting against their natures, refusing to slump - though this is what they cry out for, others giving in to the sense of the carefree, the what-the-hell-I'll-do-it-on-monday, despite the foreboding it brings for Sunday night.

This world made strange lifts me, calling to my more macabre self and childhood tropes; riffing on the traditions of Bond, Smiley and the Cold War. At a time when nations seem determined to refashion alliances and national interests, when our understanding of privacy is exploded, notions of truth and betrayal are fudged and blurred, and in a stunning bout of pathetic fallacy we are cast into a cloying miasma; well, if nothing else, the idea of double-dealing, tradecraft and the world on the knife edge of Armageddon seems like something I can relate to. 

Night spiders.

Anxiety likes to strike when things are going well. It creeps up like a spider in your ear, slowly stretching out its feelers to tap softly at what you push to the recesses of your mind. In my case this is invariably in the early hours of the morning, when my stomach has decided that the late night snack was a bad idea, and that it needs some early morning manoeuvres to settle itself.

So there I am, awake, the room is dark, the only noise is the soft breathing of my wife. I cuddle in, an attempt to cocoon myself in her warmth, but the silence seems to rise around me and the spiders come out to play. Memories are disturbed, spun into a web of doubt and overthink, with time and tense trapped at nodal points, tracing my history of inadequacy.

I try to disassociate, to step outside, to see myself as a whole, but I find that I am stuck, and each time I stretch myself away I fall back - but on a different strand, a new worry or failure. In vain I hope for sleep, for once caught amongst this detritus of the mind the spider loves to play peek-a-boo, switching subjects as I drift away. I toss and turn, hoping a physical position can get  me out of this, as a physiological one got me into it. Eventually shear exhaustion will dispel the thoughts and send me into an oblivion that I will wake from hardly rested.

The light of the day brings morning, an oversleep, along with that hollow sense that sleep has been lost. Yet I am awake, and now able to control the spiders. I look around at April's gloom, a break in the showers that maybe precedes the summer bloom - after all there are green leaves on the trees. I note the receding of my head cold, and a return of clearer sight.

My cat purrs at me for food, and not for the first time do I see her hunting, and eating the spiders in the house.

In the shadow of Munch.

So it happened, the moment I've been waiting for, the overflow of self frustration that leads me to attack a canvas I've been working on.

It happens slowly. There's a section that's not right, it's different from the whole, so it's nagging at me. I rework it - first the colour, then texture. No, no that's not right - it's the lines, they're too thick, so I trim them - a process that involves two colours and time to dry. In the mean time I'll fix this and that, hoping to improve the whole by working on smaller sections - keeping my eye on the space of disaster. They're still wrong, but now not straight enough - do them again, carefully, slowly - Damn! wobble. Again, this time fast, confident - fake it till you make it right, don't give the paint a chance to deviate. Breath, and okay, go! Fuck, wrong angle.

And this goes on. And on.

Until finally reworking the same section my frustration rises. Why can't I do this - I know I have before, why isn't this working - how have I fucked this up, the idea should've worked, it should've been good! The line explodes over the canvas, with stroke after stroke of anger, words of venom childishly displayed on the painting, but aimed at myself. For this anger is aimed at my technical ineptitude, a feeling of failure and disappointment for what I had hoped to achieve. My inner Scream if you like.

I stand and look at it. My victory. I feel sick.

I vigorously clean my brushes - partly in punishment for their complicity in this disaster, and partly to use the adrenalin that has built up; but mainly to get me away from the monstrosity I have created - the flight of Victor Frankenstein from his monster.

I put the paintbrushes back. I look again and realise I cannot run - though I'd like to, I'd like to throw the canvas outside in the rain. With a paper towel I spread the new paint, words, the reworking and amendments over the scene, taking off as much as I can. I have now remembered what the painting should be.

I pick up my thinest brush. I work quickly - recapturing the sketch, the sense of the moment, bringing back the lines that danced, but could not be relied upon.

The image looks out at me, battle scarred, and world weary, but it breaths, and has a beauty. You can check - it's in the landscape section, the last one.

A Sentimental Journey

I've always been scared of sentiment. For many years I found ways to avoid it - irony, detachment and a derision of the power of emotion. This was mainly in my work - throwing myself behind theory, marxism and postmodernism, or art that focused on alienation from the world and lay securely in the realm of thought and analysis. This is not to say I didn't understand feeling, just that I was aware of how much it could overcome me, and of the paralysis that could go with that. I wanted to function - socially, academically, practically - I wanted to be able to 'get things done'.

I was helped by the idea of 'the sentimental novel' - the phrase sounds trite, and is easy to write off as something that is indulgent and given to a spring of emotion that always seems to make mountains out of molehills. Then came romanticism: swirling landscapes, pathetic fallacy and deep passions - this is emotion from deep below the soul, primordial, thick and a bit too much to live with really. After a while I was happy for Cathy to die in her fit of emotion and for Heathcliff to brood himself to death. Why? Because if I could remove myself from that sense of feeling I didn't have to subject myself to it.

Emotion is truly powerful. Not least because we are taught not to indulge. That we should manage our feelings, discipline our responses, that we should think before we speak. And of course we should, society cannot function if we don't. The trouble is that we plunge our feelings further and further down, so that when they emerge they erupt. I cry, quite often, but I would feel ashamed to do so in public - not least for the awkwardness I would give to others, but as much for the weakness I had displayed.

For a moment lets explore this idea of weakness. What might bring me to tears? Well much - an overwhelming feeling of love, a poignant story that echoes a feeling or memory of mine, a sense of fear, or of frustration with myself. Some of these feelings are outgoing, they express my empathy or my sense of connection but others are darker - they speak of my own inadequacies. To cry can come from many places, and some are more healthy than others - but surely they are all worthy of acknowledgment? For to deny fear is to let it determine your path, to deny love is to live without joy, and to let empathy be just nodding your head and stroking your beard is a mockery of the complex biology and psychology that goes into creating our emotional lives.

My journey has then been from detachment to sentiment:- from 'Tristram Shandy', to ' A Sentimental Journey', from wit to wisdom I could hope (though would not presume), and while I accept that I cannot let loose, I now know that I must engage with the power of emotion as it is who I am.

New Seasons

Saturday, the train throngs with people out and about. The day off, and the spring sun has brought out the desire in people to be out and about. All ages surround me, the very, very young, to the inexperienced and the older more considered faces that raise eyebrows and roll eyes, before breaking into grins at the antics of those who have it all to come.

Clouds have become wisps in the sky; the lack of insulation means that there is a chill to the brightness, and coats become a complex decision - with no sun essential, but quickly raising body temperatures when the clouds become distracted by the spring vibes.

By now sights have become familiar to me, and the weather change brings subtle differences - where once was frozen now has grass striving for the sun that in turn has mellowed and gives less harsh lines as well as a deeper tone, drawing the landscape together. Now I see scenes that connect, not patterns seeking to escape. This is the beginning of blend and smudge, as deep contrast and hard lines shy away for another year.

There is a determined relaxation to the those in town. Moving about their business, but taking the time to take stock of where they are and who they are with. The shopping itself is an excuse rather than the business of the day.

I meander around venues - stopping to glance at  private galleries (and the art of Timmy Mallet, a memory disjoint that I am still unable to fully reconcile even now), and make my way to a coffee bar. The rest of the morning is spent writing and enjoying the passing by of people, before my wanderlust returns.

I make my way to the cinema, and arty venue hidden away down an alleyway, and get a ticket for Under the Skin. It is a while away for the moment so I enjoy a Coke from a glass bottle, which leads me to consider the nature of texture. Why the glass bottle is more pleasing to me: how it seems more physical in presence, it's weight, and the clink as it is poured into a glass? How it is that all these features add to the experience?

This is a thought that nags at me as I watch the film. Under the Skin is intensely aural; the quality of the sound added to the visceral and metaphorical photography gave me a compelling sense of distance - and of empathy. The nature of things as presented on the screen is continually questioned: textures, sound, motivation and purpose are all made strange through the eyes of the protagonist, but more through my eyes as an observer. The film is distant, but not cold, for the emotion may be harsh, but is found through simplicity and by making what was familiar new.

Like the film the season change asks of us that we re-see our surroundings. That we find the meaning in the ordinary and who we are.

Lull-a-bye.

I'm having a lull. This means the annoyance of knowing I could be painting something, but the lack of real activity. It's annoying. Very annoying. What is going on in my head are fragments of drawings and ideas, wandering around like a bad film montage, under exposed and badly shot - so that what I want to see is just out of the frame - I just get a foot, or a wisp of hair. It's a mental itch that I badly want to scratch by getting it down on paper, but nope, apparently it's not ready and I'll have to wait a bit longer.

The upshot of this is that I have to dwell on real life for a bit - its everyday patterns, the social and political upheavals, and let my speculation drift over what is around me. In order to not go crazy (I mean relatively) I throw myself into sketches - you never know what'll turn up after all, and give myself a chance to read and drift into other people's imaginations. I do have a writing idea that I need to get down, which helps me feel at least a little productive - it's just the blank canvas is sitting in the corner of the room pissing itself.

I suppose given that the world stand on the potential brink of nuclear Armageddon, or at least (best?) a rather humiliating return to nineteenth century power politics, then this strange lull is not something to worry about - although to me it's my way of engaging with the world. To me when I'm not painting the world passes by with a lighter touch, so that I feel removed from what happens. This is odd, because I'm conscious that my work is not overtly political - and I sometimes feel it ought to be. I think this is because I have often felt that I shove my opinions too much into people's faces, and that because of 'who' I am this is counter-productive; I mean what right do I have to comment or to judge (equally I often wonder at the rights of those who judge also)? On top of all this I've always preferred guerrilla tactics against the pervading ideology - suggestion, parody or humour, something I think speaks to my inner (and outer, actually) coward.

So are there any politics in my work? Not obviously, unless the element of absurdist humour at our everyday lives, or utopian landscapes that fire up the imagination can be seen to be the rudiments of a critique of contemporary capitalism, which seeks to make us evermore efficient, and in doing so removes our capacity to dream?