New Year

I'm excited.  I have dropped a day from my job and so I am galvanised, determined and full of ideas.  I promised myself I would blog every Friday come rain or shine, artist block or blank or blues.  Now there is room to breath and create.

Some lines and more lines from a morning walk....

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P.S.
One thing that I need to discuss - I started re-reading Steppenwolf over the holidays.  It's something I tried as a weird, depressed 17 year old and couldn't cope with it.   Apparently I still can't cope with it. The dark beginning coincided with my own grey, bleak reaction to life at the difficult time of Christmas (an annual affliction for me) so I sank deep down, horribly low.  I kept reading and I'm almost near the end, now completely enchanted and it's making me want to talk about it.  Has anyone experienced this bizarre and fascinating book? Is anyone nuts enough to have actually read it?!!!!

Barcelona

 There is always so much to absorb in Barcelona.  I have only ever been without my kids before and this time, with them, I had a much different experience.  Not always a smooth one either.......
Their agenda clashes with my hunger for any galleries or exhibitions.  How can it be that I have produced two people who 'can't be bothered' with a contemporary art gallery housing no less than five crisp, edgy shows of zeitgeist and aesthetic splendour.  We found a common ground outside, however. The skateboarders.  A constant pulse of moving wheels, tricks and slamming boards.  The kids watched in wonder at these hero-acrobats while my own eyes wandered around the marks left by an obsessive, repetitive movement.

Threshold

Work in progress responding to gateways saying stuff like:


                                                                     No Junk Mail
No Parking


                                       Beware DOGS

No entry
                                                                     private
                               DO NOT ENTER



Leave no leaflets                                 WELCOME


                                                                     no entry
Please close the gate



(thought if I made a little note on here it might force me to get on with the images...)

archeology of a mark

What is contained in a mark.  Unintentional, intentional, expression, damage, rhythm, pattern or even an essence or trace of the maker of the mark.

time

There are white blobs of paint on all these trees so that  with a change in the viewer's position, alternative lines and combinations of marks are revealed to create a new view.

  Visitor's feedback at Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives.

Jerwood Drawing Prize

13 Feb 2014 - 09 Mar 2014

Image: Emma Vidal, Anthropology I, 2013 (Charcoal on paper)

Been to see this today.   TWO GALLERIES FULL OF DRAWING!!!!!  

Plymouth Arts Centre 13 February –  9 March

Plymouth College of Art 10 February - 8 March 

'I phone' but I can also sketch.  Have waited soooooo long to be

able to do this out and about with my finger on a screen.  

Vague memories of Kate Smith and her notion of this 

screen contact; a direct, instinctive, mark rather than a 

divorce from a sensual experience of drawing

(a common perception of all things digital).

I have just realised the importance of documentation.   How many moments have I forgotten.  How much 'past' is out there in the ether, lost.
I always berate myself for not recording my work.  Not having enough evidence.  But in my family life I am too much in the moment to really want to record it.  I found this and some other little sequences in the dusty corner of my laptop and I have to say - I have regretted not recording more.
The paradox - miss the moment behind a lens or miss the moment forever......    

    (I can't get the video to upload on this post.   It illustrates my point perfectly, however, I am too full of red wine recently procured from a wonderful adventure with my little beasts in France to deal with technology.  I wish I could control this medium in the same way as a pencil. x

Long time no see!

I found this on a wall near our first house here in Devon.  The wall has gone now.  I'm glad I had the photo.  I keep trying to remember everything all the time, desperately document my thoughts and memories, clinging to ideas lest they evaporate.  It's very stressful!  Current learning curve - let it go.  If it's important it will come back.

I'm not creating a great deal at the moment. Professionally I'm off grid! Blogging has fallen by the wayside somewhat.  I have been working in a school with a boy who needs one to one support.  I'm so lucky because we are free to plan our timetable according to how he is dealing with his emotions.  This means we are not too restricted and we spend a lot of time using art to work on the things he needs to deal with.  Doubly lucky that he enjoys drawing as much as I do.  We're doing ok.

The other bit of lucky business going on is my role as mentor to another artist, Sarah Scaife.  This opportunity has been bliss.  We are very alike and understand each other.  Her way of working is incredibly original and I love it.  Although she considers me to be giving to her, I am getting so much out of it too.  Rather than getting sucked into the primary education system and wrinkling up like an old pot of cheap poster paint I am still keeping one large foot in the critical art world.  My faith remains in tact.

So things change.  Life moves on.  But I still feel at home, which is an important topic at the moment as Sarah's project is called Home Truths.  I'll elaborate as soon as possible................