Don't Scratch!

So a new painting, a new 'series' in the making. More than that a new departure this week: I left a painting unfinished and began another. Normally I like to stick at a painting - to prove I can see it through, to prove to myself I'm in this for the long run, but this time... nope, not so much. 

So what happened? Well, for a start the second idea had been bubbling under for a while - sneaking into thoughts I had about what I could do, cropping up in random and idle moments, jumping out from my sketch book each time I looked - basically it wouldn't go away. 

Okay, you say, but why not finish the other quicker - it would be more productive? Yeah... no. I mean, sure I would have finished it, but it really wasn't working. My initial idea had height, and pushed perspective to give drama to the colours, but this was cramped into a square canvas, and though I could've finished it, I would've been doomed to do it again... properly.

So instead, to avoid driving myself to the brink of insanity trying to make the unworkable work, I released the gremlin at the back of my mind, I looked around - no one was looking so I scratched the itch. Quickly the outline took place - the colours seemed to impose themselves without debate, and the magic realism of the piece solidified into reality - it was bliss.

Don't mistake me - there was still my normal reworking and neurosis about the lines, the intention and where it was going; but it instinctively worked itself out when I looked at the painting properly... it felt right. This is the enigma of art - any Art, that despite grand ideas and theories, nobel and ignoble intentions, ultimately there is a reliance of instinct, on gut feeling, and the confidence to act on it. 

So I gave up on the painting that wasn't working - at the moment I feel I should use the canvas for something else, and begin it again on another, taller canvas, and instead produced something else. I gave in to quitting, not out of failure, but because I felt it wasn't working, and I trusted myself. This, it seems is a bigger step than I first thought, a realisation that deep down I might be right.

Though of course whilst scratching is pleasurable - it's probably best not to scratch too much, it just makes it worse.

Dab, Dab, Dab.

Wash, mix, breathe, poise and dab - cut, hold... flourish! The line is done. I'm working on a painting this morning: a colour abstract - something I am returning to after a period of exploration in other styles and ideas. 

In many ways this is a quixotic project - something I thought I had done with, but as I continue I find myself drawn to the minute detail, to the pattern of the everyday, and to the precision of each stroke. The painting has been blocked in, and even the smaller details have been established - colours, shades and tones have been created. Now I find I am drawn to micro-sections, changes that happen with flicks and touches on the canvas, slowly building the images from what it was to what it will be. With each new section I find myself becoming immersed further and further in the logic of each fleck of colour and pattern.

Outside I am surprised - summer has begun. Skies are clear and azure blue with only the odd wisp of froth drifting through the air. Trees display their coats just as we dispense with ours. Shades and shapes of green punctuate the train tracks as I wait this morning. The palette of blue and yellow is blended as new buds and wiser heads combine to create a dappled corridor where the sun creeps through and dances in a steady breeze. Elderflower and cow parsley dot whiter shades around and shadow stretch long across the bleached stone and metal of the tracks.

Here time is slow motion - soothed by the cooing of birds, and the crackle of the station tannoy. Each moment stretches - it's own experience, with seconds that belong only and firmly to it. I bask in this feeling, this sense that the now is everything and there is peace - about the future, about him the past; there is just the warmth, the colours and the soft warble around me.
Today I seek the tangible, the present - the things that I can influence and make meaning of, and not the vast infinity of possibility and circumstance I cannot. Although I can't help feeling that in focusing intently on single view I can drift towards a myopia or dislocation from the whole. I run the danger of staring too closely at the looking glass, and, like Alice, falling through. 

Regardless, I once again raise my brush in salute… Dab, dab, dab.

Breathless.

Today I wake up and my lungs are playing with me - they tremble in quick motions - gasps of air that hardly catch the oxygen, before letting it go and seizing it again, a kitten toying with a mouse. I get a grip and force myself into deep breaths, in through the nose, holding the air until I release slowly through my mouth. The feeling continues though. A jumpy, twitchy rhythm pulsing through my chest. Even though I now know my breath is controlled the panic of suffocation has gripped me, and I can't shake the feeling that my body is against me. 

Frustratingly my mind has slowed, I can rationalise all this, but that doesn't make it go away. I'm up, dressed and on my way to work as I write, but still this sense has settled, a tingling, a quickening of adrenalin and a weight below my collar bone stays with me. I find myself deep breathing again, as if by dwelling on this I have forgotten, and for a second it subsides, though the ache remains. 

I began writing this to try and see if the writing would give me my usual catharsis, let me understand myself and see through what is happening. And it's working... kind of. I can slow and set myself against the feeling, convince myself it's an anomaly. Some sort of weird confluence between my subconscious and my physical being. But I can't control it completely, and I hate the thought that something's bugging me that I don't understand, that I can't control... 

And maybe that's it right there... 

I'm worried about what may happen, what could be.

It makes sense - after all so much of my life has been an attempt to control the future, to safeguard my fate - and those whom I love - especially them.

So I need to stop for a second. I need to know I love someone very much - and they love me. I need to see the wetness on the pavement, feel the water in the air - the humidity and notice how the world has turned subtle shades of grey in the damp - blotches of stone, tarmac and concrete, wet, dry and in-between; and I need to accept and live in what is now. I need to remember why I started this in the first place.

Breathe.

The mire.

Christ! Why do I get like this? Why do I let a thought - an idea throw me off myself, knock my centre off its equilibrium, send my mind racing in different directions - all that end in the mire. 
It's as if any goodness left in me is splintered by my mistakes; fragments of a broken mirror left to be crushed under foot by passersby, with no knowledge, no understanding of where they stomp their feet, or what else there was in the reflection.

I want to scream out loud like a petulant teenager, pound my fists, shout: "Why me?" demand: "Was I really that bad? So unforgivable?" plead: "Didn't I do anything good or worthwhile?" Because right now I'm not sure I did, or have, or will. 

And now I've resorted to melodrama, so my artistic integrity can take a running jump too... brilliant. 

This is the pause. 

The moment after it all builds up, the moment after the dam bursts and the villages and settlements are torn from their foundations, sent spiralling along the torrent, scattered down-river to further, calmer banks; where friends and family are dispersed - and lost. This is when my eyelids blink it all back, easing the current, letting the drift wood float ashore - the silent echoes of buildings from far away.

I am stable again, my sobs have softened, and my shoulders relax. My mind is steadied, but it floats still on an ocean of doubt and guilt and I check anxiously for gaps in the lining, for leaks in the boat - for I know there will be many, where the sea will enter in - a trickle at first, then later a gush, and I only have so many fingers to plug the holes. As I move from hole to hole the panic rises with the water.

I must set my shoulders again, turn my face to the world and look with steely eyes at what surrounds me, thump my chest and surge the adrenalin so that I can face what is to come. I must put hand over foot, clutch, scramble, sink, and slowly push and pull myself out of the mire.

Fog Lights.

This week waking up has found my mind full of a dull drone that is punctuated by 'need to do' commands that necessitates default actions. Muscle memory gets me out bed, into the shower, dressed and out of the house before I know it. It is a state of alert oblivion that tricks you with the pretence of experiencing the world.

Instead odd meanderings fill my head, obscure calculations and idle wondering, while each foot falls dutifully in its place, step by step by step - the mental equivalent of pulling at a thread relentlessly until you fray your trousers. Stopping to blog, or beginning the day by painting or drawing helps me to hear these thoughts, to notice the shapes and patterns around and within me.

There is a clarity that comes with rearranging the world by image, grammar, or rhythm. In order to reflect what you see or feel or think you must pick through the white noise in the head; pick out the melody or harmony that is straining to get your attention and really listen to it. Notice the flutter of notes, the hint of discord, the clever use of repetition - and crucially when the pattern changes; this is the detail that fully immerses you in the experience of the now: the changes in the weather, the demeanour of others in the carriage, a wince here, a secret smile there, and also what was bugging you from the start. 

In writing my blog or sketching from life this is my purpose, to shut myself up long enough to notice. It is a different use of the form compared to writing a novel, or painting a composition. These forms require the understanding of the moment, but they are larger - they ask us to talk to the world, to invite discussion and opinion; they are built from these daily blocks of seeing, feeling or consciousness, then seek to expand who we are over time and society. The long term project needs such fuel for skill and texture, but more it needs them as a feather duster for the tunnel vision that drives us onward, but obscures the road. 

When such weather falls fog lights become essential. Full beam ahead.

I can't stand the rain...

It's raining today. Really raining. The pot holes have become puddles - great lakes that make the pavements into islands, and make over-the-road into a intrepid journey that necessitates planning and provisions (I'm thinking inflatable shoes). 

Within moments of the outdoors my glasses are speckled with droplets, each mirroring the next, creating what I like to think of as fly vision - eighty worlds replace the one, and each one differs by the tiniest degree. For a moment I am astounded by the idea of the quantum, convinced the reflection of a reflection of a reflection is winking at me. I turn, expecting to see my head disappearing in front of me, but only succeed in a bad impression of Gene Kelly, and splash around like I was two again - naked in the paddling pool. I wipe my glasses and trudge onwards.

My coat, now wrapped around in a futile attempt to carry my home with me (Oh how the snails must laugh at our ridiculous permanent housing!), becomes sodden, the wet seeping through - a stealth cold that seems to chill the bone first, then settles in the fabric of your clothes, just in case you overheated. 

I squelch myself into a corner on the train, where the heat melts the cold to damp making moisture heavy in the air and fusty to the nose. Outside metal glints in the wet, slippery to the eye and foot. The new greenery bursting from the verges and banks hunches, waiting patiently, knowing it's time will come: and then just you wait - see what I can do? Rivulets form on the window, pathways that carve the quickest way to the ground, bouncing off those trapped by surface tension, liberating the bravehearts with the will to break free, to say goodbye to the fixed point, to find their freedom, to join the kamikaze slide to... well, where ever? 

I contemplate joining in the break for the unknown, smashing through the glass into another world and place, and Alice in Wonderland through the filter of Die Hard; when I reflect that, apart from the inevitable result of my failing to break the safety glass and rebounding embarrassingly onto my chair to the mirth/disapproval of the other commuters and considerable pain to myself, the rain has not made the world smaller; rather it has made me see anew and askance. It has made strange, and in doing so has made my day more rewarding. 

I stand up with purpose and await the opening of the doors with new vigour. As they open I take a breath, look out and... nah, still wish I was curled up dry in bed.

Wake up and smell the roses.

Routine leads to complacency, but also security. Falling into a rut lets us overlook what is around us, and insulates us against thoughts that take us into uncertainty and spontaneity. 

When I started these blogs I made a point to notice - to see the changes in climate, the details in the landscape. I was awed, and inspired. This was part of the new, the attempt to know myself better.

Yet here I am, on the same train: the sun is readying for summer, there is more ochre in the light, tinges of gold and buttercup drift over the trees and house. Shadows have become lazy, yawning to shake off the winter hunch and prepare for the sprawl of the summer. My big coat now seems to be a mistake, deceived by the morning mist. I have not noticed the change of the seasons, green has bust forth from the branches, now accelerating with alacrity, and my garden once again needs to be tamed. How did this happen? Why did I forget to look?

The pattern took over me, the relentless rhythm of sleep, work, eat, sleep, until we become insulated against what happens around, against what is outside our bubble, our immediate space. Routine is safe, a cotton wool that cuddles us, and mists our eyes against what is new to us; but routine is unforgiving, a pathway that treads heavier and heavier, until we cannot lift our foot onto the verge. As the weight builds, our heads drop, our shoulders set, our teeth grind, and we take on the faraway stare of survival, of grim determination.

Time too, bends to the pressure of routine, the days become locked into ticking off the boxes of time and deadlines. With each step onward each second becomes more and more precious, and seems to disappear that much sooner. Moments are not experienced, they are allocated for this or that as we attempt to pin down, to manage time, to make it work for us.

So I find myself writing this, with my head in a bucket of water - refreshing my eyes and my spirits; and realising that while I set my shoulder to the stone the flowers bloomed. Slowly their scent has drifted to wake me from my slumber.

Black Hole

Life has a way of making you dwell on things you want to forget. Dragging your thoughts and feelings into the pull of your personal black hole: the moments that weigh you down and bend space and time around a knot of gravity to the make them the centre of the universe, and in which you can disappear, never to be seen again.

Just as I find myself looking forward to a way of life that sets me free from past choices, past mistakes and general apathy in my attention to the pathway of life, I find I have doubled back, taken the wrong turn, read the map upside down, and here I am again.

No wiser it would appear, no more controlled, or settled, but actually back here re-living the moment as my blood boils, the acid of shame in my gut burns, and the frustration in my shoulders aches as I push against the stone of Sisyphus.

I feel the need to rage, to scream, but now this is all the more absurd as the context is there only in my head - and my need to vent can only be pushed onto an otherwise benign world. So I am forced to restrain, to dissemble, to drown out the drums in my head with chatter, with banality. I pump it into my work, in pen, in paint, in words, in daft hopes and dreams - anywhere, anyhow.

Then as I pump, as I write this outpouring, I find that I am able to drift out of the eye - that the force of gravity no longer pulls at me. As I return to the present I see the anger and the embarrassment is anchored to then, to the past, and is sucked down by the great chain into the dark mass that gnaws at the essence of who I am.

A lightness comes over me as I remain in stasis - outside the drag, but not yet in control of my movements. Although I welcome its departure I have no real sense of closure on the past, that is something I will need to address, but for now I will focus on my present, my achievement, and begin to kick some direction, to pull myself to who I am.  

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.