Graphite :)

Had a marvellous day this week, think it was Wednesday? With Gillian on the stereo and the sun shining through the window I let rip with the pencils and the graphite and tried all the little ideas that have been bubbling frustratingly in my head.

The material culture. This phrase struck me. It was in reference to museum archives being material objects. Capturing the history of culture in a physical sense. Don't know how this links entirely but whilst I was drawing I was so conscious of the materials. What they tell me. How they speak. They capture the sense of idea. This thought process needs to brew before unravelling because I can't even begin to explain this and in a way this is a note to myself. The concepts are so immaterial that to make them solid with words almost destroys them. Something happens that transcends the physical.

The Ego

After attempting to paint "how I feel" onto canvas it became patently obvious how difficult this was going to be.

I haven't painted for ages. I haven't painted how I feel since I was a teenager! Bearing this in mind there are also lots of levels to this difficulty.

Being averse to imagery an abstract sense of my emotions emerged and perhaps it's a little too vague or subjective to access. When I look at what I've made I can't make any judgement of quality. I have no reference points for this. When I'm drawing I am researching, it is ongoing and temporal and in process. Painting on to a canvas with oils is so determined before you begin. I am constantly searching through the painting activity but it's all so finite and there is the end product contained in that dreadful, ominous, rectangle.

It would be fair to say I am struggling. Struggle is good, however, today I am reeling from reading a very old review that I hadn't seen before and it wasn't a very generous one. The woman reviewing my work and the event it was part of was incredibly dismissive and complaining, almost whiny. I abhor that sort of criticism. It's difficult enough to read glib comments about contemporary art being pretentious when it's written by Daily Mail bigots but from one of your own, a fellow artist, well that is harsh. I took it completely personally, naturally and have been obsessing about this badly written review based on opinion rather than sound reasoning all day (incidentally, uploaded onto a forum at least a two years ago.... get a grip Heaney).

It does leave you open, this art malarky. Not everyone is going to approach the work with the same integrity and dedication that it was made with and it would be impossible to reach all audiences (first lesson in self preservation). And maybe it's ok for folk to hate it. But hate it with style - PLEASE!

As a small consolation there also exists a very thorough, intelligent review of the work in question so I might just go and read that again to boost my ego.........

Brand new year. I woke up with ideas about drawing feet and walking and a buzzing need to research. My new obsession - Sylvia Plath. It's so funny that my teenage self was so absorbed in her journals and letters and word craft that I completely missed the importance of her passion for visual art.

I've rooted around a little. Trying very hard not to get too excited and carried away lest my enthusiasm peaks too soon and the 'what's the point' voice chimes in... I've found a bit of writing about how wide her creative method was. She combined visual responses with lyrical expression, she plundered her own teenage drawings for inspiration and sourced ideas from favourite painters.

I'm experiencing a real familiarity with the dilemma between following art or literature. I often have to be strict with myself about using text in my drawings (and have attempted to explore a wider concept of how text speaks more directly than marks....a later discussion of this might arise from this research?). The other startling discovery was, as I returned from a cold, unyielding Dartmoor visit with the dog was (apart from her poem - New Year on Dartmoor) a quote - which I'm afraid I can't provide any reference for - in which she discusses another dilemma of mine: the use of the personal in a work and how to refrain from making this a turgid, indulgent navel gaze.

“I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathize with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is. I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences—even the most terrific, like madness, being tortured, this sort of experience—and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed and an intelligent mind. I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn't be a kind of shut-box and mirror looking, narcissistic experience.”

I think this is the tip of a lovely big, interesting, engaging ice-berg for me. I don't know if you're reading this anyone but right now I am soooooooo happy. Sylvia Plath has given me a project.

The last day of 2011. Of course I am creating an inventory of what I wish to take with me into the next year and what must be dumped. Not resolutions, as such, more of a mental spring clean.

I'm shedding the martyr (the mother who feels guilty for absorbing herself in art when the children are so demanding). I may ditch the rational treatment of my drawing in aid of pursuing a more personal response to the world. I might also take with me the fact that I struggle with the most debilitating depression and finally bring it out into the open (I said might......). I am also definitely going to bring along this little ditty -

"There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way"

On a more intellectual note, the drawings of Sylvia Plath - which I have just become aware of - are simple and observational and communicate only the visual representation. It is difficult to define her emotions or thoughts through these drawings. Her words, however, craft a sharp, intense, economical sense of idea. Incredibly painful, dry and clever poetry.

Perhaps she used drawing as a meditation, a release, an occupation for her hands but not as a tool for communication. I may be barking up the wrong tree entirely because these are in the end the only images I have seen but it did make me think.....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/23/sylvia-plath-ted-hughes-art?intcmp=239

Have a wonderful, creative and abundant New Year everyone.

PS Drawing Taster Workshop at the Mansion, Totnes on Friday 13th Jan 11-1 - Tell Yer Mates!

First batch of mail order drawings.

A pilot for a project based on posting a sketch made in words to artists around the country with the instructions to render the words back into a drawing in pencil marks.

The writing of the 'word drawing' has been very problematic. The initial stage of a drawing is looking and I wanted at first to describe the scene as I would interpret it to draw it. In a flattened series of lines.

As it happens the text has now become a description of a further stage. That of the mark making and a thought process or two down the line. It almost tells the story of how the drawing comes into existence. Not really happy about this, it needs to be far more vague and objective. And so I'll wait for the first batch to be returned and analyse the findings. Terminology aside the scope for pathways into discussions around cognitive drawing ideas and on another track the collaboration involved in this one (eventual) installation - which will raise questions around authorship - are already causing me to lose track of myself. So it is potentially a very exciting and full project for me.

It has taken such a long time to get to this point though. Took me six weeks to suss out what type of paper to send to the artists for them to draw on!!!! It's so fundamental to the end result.......

The project is intended for an exhibition in Sheffield called Pandemic (http://pandemic2011.blogspot.com/)

My son drew along the lines of his palm and it inspired so many further 'lines' of enquiry for me.

When I will get the chance to follow them, I do not know, but I thought if I documented it here they would stand more of a chance of growing to fruition than inside my head.

Apart from the visual research what intrigues me is the pragmatic reduction of a superstitious activity of reading palms. If I dealt with narrative in my work I might be tempted to pursue this idea but as it is there is enough in the simplicity of it being a negative of a print.....that the lines are readymade......that the drawing is now gone........that the drawing is worn.....that his father is a tattooist (yikes!)

I'm going to take some inspiration from gardeners now. I am planning my year, as though it was a plot, as though time itself was physical and manageable.

First, having prepared the ground (found my studio, hurrah) I will sew some seeds. Some will flower, some will fail and some will produce. There are about six beds to tend. The most tender is a drawing club project at Markeaton Primary. This needs nurturing and growing gradually, not forced. I'm trying to remember to take baby steps and appreciate the small details. I was getting a bit panicked about not being able to provide an exciting enough drawing experience to the group of junior school kids but all I have to do is create a space for us all to try things out, learn, talk and share. It's hard to take the pressure off yourself but this needs observation of process not production.

I have had a lot of ideas that haven't germinated. They don't die, though, they lie dormant until the right combination of conditions allows them to spark. Keeping the garden tidy, tending the seeds that are emerging, waiting, learning from experience are my new motos for 2011.

Let it grow. Move with the seasons. No hot housing....

No studio. Drought. Some ideas but nothing coming out. What if my well is dry forever?

I have been interested in the documentational aspect to all drawing. It records. It all records. Lovely mentor Kate's work is ALL documentation. Tracking her moves, marking her time. I thought mine was but it seems to be a material. The drawings become pieces of sculpture, or installation ingredients. What is documented hasn't been the focus. The space and the changing/altering/highlighting of that space has shone over the mark itself. I still cling to objects. The paper and pencil and the mark - all objects. What is the distinction between that and a drawing in a frame. We look past the medium, don't see the pencil mark we see the idea or the image being conveyed.

However underneath it is all still documentation. A record of an idea of an image. A proof of the moment(s) in time in which the exchange between artists hand and material happened.

I'm just fretting about where to take it now, this awareness of archiving. Cause right now the only record of these ideas is in my memory and that isn't too reliable. Time to get drawing. Make a space. And don't get me on the one about whether the photographic documentation of work creates a new piece or merely records the original one....

Marking Time | Reviews | Interface | a-n

https://www.a-n.co.uk/reviews/marking-time

This lovely artwork has been produced for the Derby Big Draw brochure, it's by Emma Reading.

The more I look at it the more I see.

The festival begins on the 1st October with a launch party and opening of 'Scribble and Scrawl'. Kate Smith Jane Dearden, Tracey Meek and myself all showing work at the Crompton, Crompton Street, Derby.

We've worked so hard to get everything off the ground and there is still so much to do.

The exciting bit will be occupying an empty shop for the month with No Parking (my creative family) and turning what was La Senza - a knicker and bra store - into a drawing space. It's 48 St Peter's St Derby.

I've had lots and lots of help lately, generous people giving time and energy and skill to this project so I am really determined to give back somehow.

Derby is brimming with talent. We need to show more of it off. x

The Archers' Omnibus

Kate Smith has introduced me to this software. Drawing with sound. Sort of. ....this is Jennifer and Brian discussing their troubles...There are lots of other links like this on the Derby Big Draw website - www.derbybigdraw.co.uk