There is nothing as satisfying as a sharpened pencil touching soft paper. As I was drawing today in the museum someone asked me if I found it boring. It is not. I am in heaven.

The pace of the mark being made, one, two, three, four, five creates a rhythm. It is a meditation. Whilst my hand is busy and my eye watches (without leading) my mind is free to consider the effectiveness of the piece confirming back to me with glee that the ideas are working. I can also catch those threads of further issues and themes arising from the process and pursue the new ones. And they are coming thick and fast. The temporality is an exciting aspect. I am struck by what is a static mark being animated by me over and over and kept moving, still recording, keeping in the present. We measure a lot of things. Time, space, quality. As I am working I realise this piece is so anti measurement. I have been challenging the measurement of time, of space and especially quality. What conventions can be used to judge this work in terms of quality? Not composition, not representation, not style, not skill. So why does it appeal?

The installation of One Step Beyond began last week. Puzzling over problems, settling the theories down within the space. I am constantly negotiating with myself. Questioning absolutely everything.

It's obvious to me now I have been on a self destruct trip. A rather dangerous but effective device for pushing your practice! That I will be drawing in the gallery is a huge step out of my (excuse the cliche) comfort zone. That I will be creating a work that is potentially very challenging in public is new territory. That I continuously choose to react to the space rather than hang a finished work all points to the underlying (subconscious) method I adopt of suffering through and for the work. The work usually stands alone without me. In my darker moments I imagine the direct onslaught of negativity from viewers, feedback usually tempered via the medium of a comments book. This need to authenticate work with evidence of its duration, struggle, devotion and humility is another subject but it is ruminating underneath. As I said a very dangerous, but effective method for pushing your practice. Work travels, how much we direct it and how much we react to the journey is a delicate balance.

Maxim for the day via Rachel Clarke on the Drawing Research Forum: One rule is to practice failure, to get used to failure and revision.

OHP

the start of some new experiments into 'marking space'

I have been pondering Christopher Thomas' item in Debate from A-N (Feb). He questions the current obsession with success, with finished, marketable objects of art and describes MA programmes as finishing schools. Something I value dearly is the space and time to experiment and I am fortunate enough to have tutors on my own MA who advocate research, experimentation and expansive thinking. This is an old debate but it's obviously still alive. Thomas turns to the blog on A-N, Projects Unedited, as a place where art making is being described daily in transparent warts and all detail. Where failure is reflected on not dismissed. I liked this article. It confirms my belief in process art and also my choice of MA.

The drawing I have posted is a rubbing/trace of the studio wall I was in at the time. It brought a whole question of authorship to the work. The space virtually drew itself but my mark (print, residue) was still evident. I am investigating how far I need to go to eliminate the artist as author. My mark is informed. No matter how random and undirected I make it I cannot divorce from some aesthetic choice. I need to automate a standard mark or add some element of chance (John Cage revisited, no thank you). A conversation with one of my cohort led us to decide that even if a piece of work was handed over to a public interaction, inviting people to make their own marks, for example, the artist would still have the responsibility/accountability and ultimate accreditation of that work. How to take this further is keeping me awake at the moment.......

I gave a little talk yesterday to the Year Zero students at Derby. It was a good exercise in reflection. I'm used to talking to my MA cohort but I present current work and they all know my practice. Delving deep into the past to give a history of how I arrived 'here' is like double-digging. It's fertile down there.... but the surface has been broken and it doesn't feel so solid anymore.
Current work (under the title DRAW) is begging to be pared down. The interpretation of the engagement with space has included a physical reading of surrounding space and wider drawing propositions but how far can this go without just substituting each space for a new one when I move on to a new piece. The uniqueness of each site dictates the content, obviously, and by definition makes a different subject but historically I have been notorious for this repetitious model of working and it is something I am constantly trying to break out of.
All this before 8am ....... :)