Back again.

I haven't blogged for a bit - it seems I've been a bit lost in translation. The last few posts were a bit bleak, and then I was sent on secondment with work, so the last couple of weeks have been spent in a hotel and of course in my head. 

And what profound insights do I bring from this experience:- the clink of the breakfast buffet, the impersonal feel and smell of the hotel room, the way in which a menu can get old? The excitement of a hotel, the enjoyment of new surrounds, the way in which missing someone can grow to an ache? Amazing cloudscapes as the road or valley winds away - fragile wisps that are bundled unceremoniously out of the way by great storm juggernauts rolling in from the sea?

I'd like to think I'm that perceptive, but I think three weeks of letting my brain flatline was cathartic in a way. Sponge-like I absorbed the world around me, the menu, the expenses allowance, new routines and things to do. My job was different, which was nice, but my creative output was curtailed - between socialising and travelling I was only able to work on one project at the weekends; that and trying to make the most of being home for a few days.

I read, there was the world cup and comfortable beds. I sketched the odd thing, but mostly I let myself drift. A luxury? Perhaps, but maybe a useful moment to take off some pressure - pressure that I apply to myself. Achieve this or that, get the next thing done - after all this is my problem, I need to have another project, something to hold on to so I don't fly away, something that helps me grasp who I am, and not just what I do.  

By the end I was tired of being away, and back a day I've finished a painting and written more and... well here's a blog. I want to travel, I love to create, but I dearly love my wife and as things move on and hopefully up I know I always want to be with her as the day ends - even if she is in a mood about, you know, everything.

What am I doing?

The humidity has increased. Shine is replaced by cloud, and the temperature cloys, cloth sticks to the skin. The body is tired and the mind becomes restless.

It's been strange recently - I've felt pretty mixed up I guess. At times I have swings of optimism and projects for the future jump out at me and I can see how they might be done - what I need to say, to do, and then as quickly I feel I'm jumping from one to another and it feels hollow and empty - like I can't keep focus on one track. I'm teary too. Not quite sure why, but my thoughts drift to the melancholy and I find myself having to repress my thoughts quickly.

I feel as though desperation is building up in me and I don't know where it's coming from. 

The last year has been difficult, strange and exhilarating. I've produced more work than ever before - much of it I think is good, and some other people like too. I've begun to get my paintings on display and even into a gallery. I've produced illustration work and graphic work and even got some of it used by people. My writing has improved (honestly - don't just judge from these teenage posts), and I've got further with a novel than ever before. So why am I so scared?

I've always felt I have to complete something straight away, or else it won't happen. Patience has always been an excuse for not seeing something through. I don't trust myself to make sure something happens if I leave it - I have to do things today. And it's been a year...

So where does this pressure come from? I mean I have done work this year. Some work has even taken time. Okay my 'work' work isn't moving on - but then that was never part of the plan - did I think I'd be able to move on quicker? Am I still carrying the guilt of being in this situation and the impact on others (Even though on balance it's led me down the right path, it isn't as secure in other ways.)?

So I find myself considering moves - work based: do I do graphic courses - might be good for the CV, develop skills, prove I can do something I know I can? Do I look back to academia - a post grad? Lucky choices in many ways - and some more realistic than others. 

But my question is - why? When I stop and look in I don't understand? I have achieved things, so why do I feel the pressure to look for something new, as if I'm giving up on what I'm doing, why do I feel I have I tried and failed and need to move on? 

I don't think I do - entirely, painting is something I must keep doing, it is what I am about - it provides a method of expression I need. So this feeling is what - wanderlust, frustration, impatience, all of the above? Am I just too old for this shit?

Or is it because it might just work and that could make for some scary decisions? The thing is I worry I'll never feel good enough... and hope can only keep you going for a while.

High Noon.

Today's doors clatter open, but only bring in the rolling tumbleweed of ennui. A sense that today holds only more of the same. Whether this is weather speaking - dullness has descended and along with it that curious summer chill, which you know is not cold, but still sticks in the joints, hides under the skin and will not budge. I am up early, the coffee shop is deserted, but it feels empty, not just devoid of people. A tapestry shivers in the draft of the air con.

My soul is restless; I am in between projects - paintings are drying, sketches have been made, and need inking, but I know this will have to wait for a few days. I feel the desperation building within me - what can I do, what do I need to do. I am not without projects to work on - to attempt, but being prevented from beginning means I am forced back onto what I suppose I think of as 'the real world', what I do to get money to live. 

Before - last year, I became used to this feeling, a sense of frustration, of drifting, of going through the motions, trying to find ways to keep interested and focused; so this build up I find concerning. It brings back old concerns: to what extent do I listen to these feelings, and to what extent do I dismiss them as the product of not having anything to be working on? Are they a sign that I need to do something new, something radical, or just a sign that I am being paranoid, impatient, and generally need to get a grip? Change requires risk - and as I've mentioned before I'm basically a coward when it comes to things like that. Yet boredom builds frustration - it is not enough to exist - you must be seen doing it (Drama queen, me? No, you must have me mistaken! Photos from this side please.), and ideally make a difference in some way while you do it.

So I start to do the dance - checking adverts, looking at courses, counting finances, having long conversations that bore others about me (although this is pretty much a consistent part of my schtick anyway). Building up projects I'd like to work on, checking out opportunities that would 'further my career' - debating if this is a 'career' I'd want anyway. I start to rethink CVs turning experience into a magic wand that will enable me to do anything, even if the experience is not in anyway relevant. This is the fidget before the storm, the movements that become steps, become pirouettes, become lifts and hopefully - if I rehearse and see them through, become the dance in performance. I wonder if there's a career in extended metaphor?

I want the doors to have a dangerous gunslinger silhouetted against a blazing sun, a figure who sends us diving for cover, even if I hope that when the figure steps forward they deliver the mail - maybe its an interview?

We bloggin'...

I blog therefore I am? Descartes probably wouldn't approve - and I'm not sure I do, but it's where I'll start today. 

The famous quote about the nature of humankind - that defines our relationship to the world around us, and also manages to define us as a 'unique' species, and it posits that it is our conception of ourselves that gives validity to our state of being. In other words because we can think we can know ourselves as individual and therefore we are able to 'be' individuals in a collective society. In doing so Descartes also notes that our key feature as homo sapiens is our ability to conceptualise - or to theorise our place in the world. Okay this is a pretty glib definition - but them I am about to seagueway into talking about blogs, watch.

In blogging (see) there is also this need to define and express 'uniqueness' - but a uniqueness that is shared with others, to whom you paradoxically look for a connection. In this sense the blog is curiously public-personal, a form that asks for you to confess your inner quirks, show the workings of the mind in the hope that these will be echoed or shared by others whom you have never met. In many ways an art form that seems as dubious as reality TV - I mean my issues are my issues, how interesting can they really be? But I guess the content is not the point. I write my blogs to define my relationship to the world - an expression of who I am, what I am trying to do with my life, and as an expression of my emotional outpouring. I could as easily write to critique the body politic, the world military-industrial complex, to decry the criminality of world capitalism or to cry out for a sense of individual space in an online world. Equally my frustration with department stores, my love of food or animals are subjects that I could dwell on - though all I could create the architecture in which my ‘self’ can exist. 

It is all ego naturally. In all these acts the act of blogging allows the blogger to construct the world around them, and importantly defines their relationship to that world. My notions of success and failure, my moral laundry, all these place me in relation to a society that I recognise and reaffirm in my understanding. Of course to do that is to pronounce my own individuality, and in this way my blog screams 'look at me' it cries out the old refrain 'I am!’, but also asks the question - ‘am I?’

Pissing in the Wind.

Creativity is frustratingly in the eye of the beholder. It has no simple hierarchy of imagination that says this is better than that, or that... or that?

This is a degree of ambiguity that is designed to fuck with my mind - after all it is impossible to sit back smugly, or even with a degree of confidence, and declare my genius to the world. Rather I end up holding up a tremulous hand and enquiring if anyone would like some more. Yes, that's right I am the Art world's older and fatter Oliver Twist (sort of if Mr Bumble had eaten him I suppose). 

All I'm looking for is some sort of yardstick - not because I believe in absolute categories for Art - I am not convinced that style or medium determines quality, nor that it is purely the statement made that defines a work as Art; no, I just want something that lets me feel I'm not wasting mine (or anyone else's) time. 

I mean personal expression is great and all that, but is it any different from another's personal expression? Moreover is this enough in itself, I mean someone may stand up and begin pissing all over the passengers on a train, but I’m pretty sure we wouldn't sit still and applaud his (or her) personal expression. I for one would want a little more before I categorise such an act as Art, rather than just bloody inconsiderate. 

Now I'm not sure my work is as intrusive as the above example, but I'd like to think there is more to it than my inner id (or more likely my outer ego) screaming for attention, I like to think it could have relevance to others - and not just in the "well thanks, now I have to go and change" sense.

And this is why I want a simple scale that could reassure me. Nothing too prescriptive - maybe a few sketches that move from say 'Duchamp's good effort' to 'Da Vinci can't touch this'. Just so every now and then when I wonder which criteria matters today I could find something that would calm me down again.

Alas, I realise it's the debate I have with myself that creates the final piece, and that the whole gamut of tradition and society and technique has to be run to chisel, pound, sketch or dissolve with acid, until the image is made and we/I can begin to digest it's meaning.

Which is nice, and very philosophical and all that, but I'd still kill for art top-trumps... you know, for a while, at least till I'd trumped a bit.

A Typical Journey...

Tick tick, words ticking through my head. Less of a clock than a wind up mechanism, as if with each release I seem to wind down a little. But I am tightly wound at the moment so syllables and vowels are on the loose. 

They are cut with single frames of images and ideas, like an insidious work of propaganda - a nano second of the disturbing that you can’t shake and you don’t know why; but instead of being brain washed I am trying to pan for these nuggets in the water that sloshes about. I expect it's not very good for the machinery.

The images flow:- a train, the passengers - true, art imitating life, but the potential?! A spy bursts through the window having stolen secret plans, an adulterer texts sweet nothings to his lover, unaware they are being intercepted by his spouse who reads them late at night and seethes. 

Another traveller makes their way to a final interview, whilst the woman beside him is about to meet her next love. Two people stand up, one to explode a bomb - crying out for salvation and to be noticed, the other to offer their seat to someone who needs it more - yet only that morning they were diagnosed with a terminal illness. 

An old man cradles his only antique, it reminds him of his wife, but now it must be sold so he can stay in his house. Further down a youth with ear phones is editing her short film - on her phone; it tells the poignant story of teenage - all of it. Though trite it will go on to garner her fame and fortune. 

The driver contemplates his food for this evening, and hopes that the line is clear - he knows it's only a matter of time before one of the obstacles placed with reckless abandon will get him. A businessman glances again at his watch and laments that today of all days his car broke down - not knowing his son disabled the engine, hoping it would give them more time together.

All the while I see this ballet dance it's steps, the punctuation of doors open and closing, and the stations passing by, aware of the inner adventures of people's hopes, and the helter-skelter of my words-eye view.

The Maltese Canvas.

It was late. As the light turned to blue-black the path was the domain of the slugs and snails, an’ they had business of their own to deal with. The day had held moisture - the sort of humidity that makes you think of Mint Julips, neat bourbon and Tennessee Williams, in the distance the streetcar clanged away. My shirt stuck to my back as I made my way home, and I was glad to get rid of it quickly when I got in.

The haze was low and the rain attacked when it came. The day had built tension, provoking the slamming of doors, the clinking of glasses and the exchanging of words, but the night had begun to cut through the heat. I was ready to head up, to hit the sack, but hadn't dragged my arse from the sofa. 

Then I saw it, putting my plate down, the glint of white caught the corner of my eye, and pulled. The canvas was ready - sitting on the easel like a neon light was fizzing overhead. I blinked back to the TV, trying to lose myself in the rhythm of the news. It was no good, I couldn't shake it, so I did the only thing left to do, I gave in.

Standing face to face the brush began to tingle. Quick strokes cut through to reveal the outline. Now the path was set. With no going back I blocked in colours - shaving lines, and started to balance out the whole thing. I couldn't say where this would going, but I knew I had to see it through to the end. Jagged lines contested with curves, colour tones mixed on the palette, then again on the canvas - flighty, and fickle too - didn't take much for one to blend with another if my hand slipped for a second. 

The whole game worked itself out, layers and patterns building, until the riddle within a riddle started to make some sense. There was something bothering me though, something that I couldn't put my finger on. 

I felt the palette droop, and heard the splash as my brush sunk in the turps. It was enough for tonight - I needed sleep. Maybe tomorrow it would become clear, in the mean time there was something about the chaos, and the unfinished, a beauty only I'd get to see. This was where I lived, where I did my stuff. I stood a moment to take it in, knowing tomorrow I would have to destroy it.

Erm... er, okay.

The painting's done. The last dab, final flourish - and I've even done the bit I always do after the date. It's done. Phew.

I like it - maybe even more than that. It tries to say something, and may succeed in articulating a couple of syllables... probably vowels though. It is more 'photo-real' than normal (though of course I have to muck about with that), but there is a reason. Anyway, I'm kinda proud of the detail there - its not easy, but it is a little pat on the back in a 'I can paint what's in front of me too' sort of way. It addresses some of my thought's about politics and society - not coherently naturally, but it raises some of my frustrations.

So in general I'm pleased.  Obviously it bares no relation to my other work - yet again I seem resistant to the idea of building a body of work that relates to each other! But I'll just have to hope that develops over time.

It's been a busy few days, the irony is that as I finish this new one, this fish out of water (I'm hoping it'll be a salmon), I've finally managed to get some work into a gallery - earlier stuff, some colour work, some slapstick and the dinosaurs.

Not my finest hour as I went to show my work - a bumbling impression of an overweight, bespectacled and bearded Hugh (Huge?) Grant. I entered the gallery and tried to make eye contact with the owner: "I've... well... here's some... its just something I've... what do you think... they're rubbish, right... shouldn't have come... I'll take them away immediately"; my anti-pitch.

Well at least that's what my head did, fortunately I shut up and let my wife do the cool bit - "Hello's" and such like, make the connection, take away the panic and then... well, I got the paintings, we looked, we talked, and there's no guarantee that people will buy, but they will be able to look, to think, and well, you never know? I made another step - one that tells me more about where I'm going, and how much I'll need help and love to get me there.  

So a weekend of newness, a weekend of fear and hope, a weekend of trying to work out the various bits of myself - my voice, my expectations and my pragmatism. Amazing how two days can seem longer than a month, but now it's Monday and there's a new week to face. "Hi-Ho, hi-ho..." 

Morning of the Coffee Drinkers.

Early Saturday. The city is yawning around me - the shops wiping the sleep from their eyes, shutters rising, chairs being put out. The sun creeps down on us, illuminating shade with the reflected glare. The dribs and drabs who emerge squinting or be-shaded stretch facial muscles to awake the mind and clear the sight - last night was a big night. Coffee is ordered, breakfast confronted, and slowly the world begins to release the beauty of the day.

The delightful chill accentuates the warmth - the weather and the weekend giving a sense of calm, of relaxation to the figures walking across the square in my sketch. The people next to me sit languorously across their tables taking in the day. My hand moves, placing the world on the paper - orientating the buildings, vehicles and the ornamentation in relation to each other - watching people come and go, holding for a second to the world around them, then flickering to the next thing, then the next - the busy beginning to grow.

For this time a person lives in their movement, their gait, their stance, a facial twitch - a raised eyebrow is everything. Immediately personality, prejudice and point of view are reduced to a slight shuffle in the left leg, or the way in which they hold the weight in their shoulders. This is the joy of sketching the world, watching the everyday become a playtime for the imagination - more people creation than people watching. 

Staying still for a moment, seeing the world continue around me, feels like I am divested of time - I am free to watch, to notice. What is to come, what there is to do is for another person, for another place. The worry of obligation and self regulation is gone, shelved for a while and instead of the tick-tock of the clock moments pass with a look, a sip, a shrug. Words and pictures jumble, drifting in and out of focus as thought gives them a free reign, lying - sprawled,  in the field of the timeless and purposeless. For today I am Odysseus and my quest has been derailed so that I may see the end anew. 

This is a Saturday for the Lotus, for the noticing of things. Boy is it hard work. 

Windmills.

The morning is damp and humid. Ideas buzz at the back of my mind - a hive of the future, of possibilities and decisions to make. There is a fluttering, a scritching of paper and wax, something is building.

For the present though I am unsatisfied, I feel as though the me I am trying to build is another facade, subject to the fears and concerns of the future in the way I have already been; and grasping to too old ways of coping - head down, shoulders hunched and keep going - the Boxer approach to life: ‘I must work harder’.

Make no mistake, painting is joyous, something I can willingly give myself too; but I begin to wonder to what end - my constant fear of my relevance, my ability and my appeal orbit ever faster between each work and I begin to feel dizzy, nauseous even as I take up my brush. 

I fear art makes me selfish of my time, giving over what is spare to what is an individual and somewhat narcissistic pursuit. Of course the time that is not spare is there to fund my attempts, and as the one flounders the other takes on the air of necessity; thus the windmill must be built.

I feel lethargy creep in, a lack of purpose and belief. I am becoming good at something that was supposed to keep me going until... again. A pattern that worries me, it provides a safety blanket, a support - in short it stops me needing to succeed in what I want. 

I am a natural coward I think, someone who does not look for or enjoy fear and danger. I may also be a sloth, indolent and seeking the easy life until threatened, until that danger makes me move out of need.

So if these posts are introspective, and even melodramatic and self-obsessed, it is I feel because without the bravery to risk all for my art, I need to create my own windmills; not for building or the endless source of power and toil they provide so much, but to charge at, to prove myself - to keep my art alive.