Don’t Think About Making Art, Just Get it Done
“Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art” – Andy Warhol
Old plum tree – collage and mixed media
As I write, I’m socially distancing from the piece of collage I’ve been working on this week and wondering how close to completion it is and how best to escort it to its final destination. My eyes roam across my new creation, trying to decide how I feel about it and asking myself, where is it still underdeveloped and whether I can take the stabilisers off and let it stand alone? Have we (the piece of art and I), arrived?
I know that at this point in the creative process, some reflection time is needed and plenty of Earl Grey (in a pot, of course). I’ve been with this piece for the past three days, on and off. During that time I’ve found, torn up, positioned and glued down 400 paper scraps and probably found, torn up, positioned and then discarded 8 times that number, in my search for the next ‘right piece’.
I started with one solitary idea, to create a garden collage. I decided to set the scene by splashing some acrylic paint across my board. I ended up with areas of vibrant colour: shades of greens, from sassy, baby-leaf green to a somber, shady-shrub tone, one streak of uncompromising red and a dash of blue.
Then, I propped up my two reference points for ongoing inspiration: a drawing from my sketch book of my old plum tree and a picture from a magazine, which simply caught my fancy.
Next, I held in mind the three elements that were none negotiable for me and that would definitely appear in the picture: a plum tree, a red flint wall and a bunch of daisies. The rest would be up for grabs, depending completely on what paper scraps I found along the way.
I’m realising that having some kind of limited remit is important – it gives me an anchor hold, but at the same time allows me to drift with the tide. Also, having some guiding sketches, that I’ve made for myself (however briefly done), feels essential. It acts almost as a statement of intent, as if to show I have skin in the game, as I get started.
And that’s as far as it goes. From then on, I leave the development of the piece in the lap of the gods and intuition. Quite frankly, I can’t control what I find (I’m like a beach comber or a scavenger at a car boot sale). I go with the flow and make it up as I go along, depending on what I find to play with.
This sounds a bit like life itself – having yourself a few key markers and inspirational sign posts, then just getting started and being prepared to adjust, remix and possibly re-route as you go along. Once we have set a vision or life direction, big or small, there will be no hope of reaching that horizon from the safety of an arm chair. We have to strike out, step by step, or one paper scrap at a time!
Imagination is fed and watered while taking the pixie-steps that move us forwards. It’s by following the crumb-trail that emerges from a thousand small actions, that we proceed through the maze of life.
It seems to me that, all of life and living, is a creative act and keeping the door of our creative self WIDE OPEN, is crucial. Creativity keeps us all pushing at our own self-imposed boundaries of what we think we’re capable of doing, it challenges us to dare to go out on a limb, take risks, re-invent ourselves and even disappoint others to be true to ourselves.
To keep my own door of imagination and possibility wide open, I need to stay connected to those who truly inspire me, by hanging out with people who call me out and challenge me to become a bigger version of myself and learn to ‘deepen the mystery’, as Francis Bacon said.
So, am i finished? Are the stabilisers coming off? Well, as Scottish artist Paul Gardner once said, ‘a painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places’. And this seems like an interesting place!
Creating From a Place Beyond Rules
Paper collage made with hand torn scraps
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up” – Pablo Picasso
From over my garden fence, a conversation suddenly floats into my consciousness. Two children are enmeshed in debate. One says, “No Ben, no…that’s not in the rules…that’s not the way you play the game…you can’t do that!!” The voice is insistent. Then the Ben voice makes a weak appeal for some compromise, but he is silenced in a nano-second by the leader, who fires back with confidence, “You don’t know Ben…it’s my game…and my rules!!”
I found myself grinning, then cringing. I’d witnessed this scene so often in my years as a teacher and it never left me feeling great; watching one child dominating a game and making a little troop of play-palls tow the line. It never ended happily for anyone.
Conversely, it’s a true delight to watch children engrossed in an imaginary play setting, lost in the creativity that comes from sparking ideas off each other and working collaboratively together. Adding and building on to what the other has suggested and enjoying working as equals.
When I was teaching I had a colleague who was renowned for producing reception aged children who would leave her class able to colour amazingly well, between the lines. Every afternoon her class sat for hours colouring in, as neatly as possible. They knew that a sticky gold star would await all those who played by the rules and pleased their teacher.
Children learn at a very young age if their art work is acceptable or not; whether it gets the thumbs up from adults. For those of us who hated the tedium of colouring sheets and being told what colour to paint a tree, I want to say, ‘Lets take heart… it’s our time now…let’s create from a place beyond the rules’.
I’m convinced that art and creativity are essential for the human spirit. It draws out our feelings and responses to life. For a child, art and making things, is the first place where we begin to express what we feel about the world around us.
Van Gogh once said, about his own art work, that he was ‘in it with all his heart’. I like that. And that is what I see when I watch children absorbed in their making and creating – they are in it with all their hearts. There is a wonderful intensity and commitment that envelopes their whole being, as they make a love-response to the world. Yes, you heard right, a love-response.
My big discovery this week has been the art work of the national treasure, Maggi Hambling. I was particularly interested by what she said about art and love. “Art is all about Love (she said)…so you have to get into a place where all your baggage is got rid of…then the truth of what you’re seeing can come through”.
All that I learnt from her this week has brought me back to children and how they are bursting with imagination and how they live from a place of freedom and how I want to recapture that for myself.
My young friend and her art work (permission to post was given by her parents)
Maggi drew my attention to three things for my art practice…with her quotes added.
Make experimenting and taking risks central: “You gotta keep experimenting…all the time. Everything has to be an experiment, otherwise it’s dead”.
Stay authentic: “Your art must come from a place of integrity” – don’t fake it.
Strike out, even when you don’t know where you’re going: “You don’t have to understand what you’re doing – you’re attempting the impossible”.
And, let love flow.
Sketchbook study of Elderflowers
Give Your Ideas a Chance
Take an idea that’s living inside your head and give it a chance
Midway through a cupboard clear out, I came across a Pot-Noodle-sized container that I’d bought at least 5 years ago. It had a picture of some happy children on the side, with the words, ‘Grow Your Own Giant Halloween Pumpkin Kit’. I was in a cathartic, cleanse-my-life mood and everything that I came across had a very small window, of a few milliseconds, to make their case for not ending up in either my bin, or the tiny recycling pile.
I held the pot in my hand, trying to remember why I’d bought it, while deciding its destiny – should I bin it, or do something with it (nothing was simply getting their old places back in the cupboard)? For some reason my curiosity won the day and I made a split second decision to give it a chance. And why not, I told myself, I had the time.
I read the instructions, opened up the kit and laid the bits out on the floor, in front of me. Gosh, it was basic – a small cup-sized amount of soil, to fit a cup-sized plant pot and 7 pumpkin seeds. I stared at the seeds. They were wafer thin and as light as tissue paper – in short, totally unimpressive!!!
I did some calculations – if I’d had them 5 years and they had either been in the shop or in a warehouse for 5 years, they could be 10 years old. What chance was there that they would still be able to do their thing, the very thing they had been created to do?
For a week or so they lived on my kitchen window sill. I watered them every day, gave them light and my love (just kidding) and shot them a glance once in a while. I thought they had about a 5% chance of remembering how to germinate and I wouldn’t have put money on those odds, to be honest.
My patience wasn’t great and one morning I’d decided to discreetly deposit the sweaty handful of soil into my garden and forget about them. As I tipped up the pot and the top clump of soil fell out, I heard myself inhale and a smile appear spontaneously on my face, as there, beneath the top layer, a miracle was taking place… life was doing its thing!!
No longer dusty old seeds, but new creations
I was amazed!! From these crusty, unpromising old seeds, life was bursting forth. I truly felt impressed and humbled. Suddenly, I wanted them to succeed and was ready to do all I could to support them and get behind team-pumpkin.
And now, some weeks on, I’m so pleased, as I’m watching them thriving, that I gave them a chance. I’m so pleased I didn’t toss them away impatiently.
My giant pumpkins are on their way (Note: one didn’t make it!)
It made me think of all the ideas, projects, dreams and potential brilliance that we all have wrapped up within our DNA, waiting to be released, waiting for the right conditions, waiting to have a chance to get started and to be nurtured into life.
I’ve been wondering why so many good ideas in our lives get shelved, ignored, dismissed or left unexplored? For me, it’s a combination of lack of self-belief and fear of failure, but maybe it’s also one other thing…Maybe, its about not making time to have intentional conversations with myself, which might start something like this..
Q. So, what ideas are in your mind right now Jane? What can you hear? What’s percolating in your thoughts? What’s getting your attention in your daily life and in your art practice? I know there is a lot of noise generally in life, but when you look under all that noise, what do you hear?
For ideas to have a chance, we need to find them first, bring them out into the light, examine them and decide if we want to get behind them. We have to decide if we want to own that idea. And that idea checks us out too.
In my art practice I’ve been making more time to check-in with myself and the ideas, as they have come to me. I’ve realised that having support around me is vital. Whether I’m starting a new adventure, a new idea, a new practice, or life-project, I need ‘team-me‘.
Chatting this week with my art coach, who is part of team-me, I came away with these sweet nuggets of encouragement…
Don’t be afraid to try new things – give your ideas a chance. If it’s bonkers, you’re probably on the right tack.
Don’t rush your thinking processes – its a long game. Change comes over time. Set a vision, but live in the now.
And…most of all.protect and nurture where you are, right now.
The seed of an idea for a blue bell wood…!
Finding a Response
“It’s so difficult to know HOW to respond to all that’s happening in our country and in our world right now”, said a friend. Too right, I thought.
Everyone I speak to is trying to make some sense of their feelings towards long weeks of isolation, social distancing, fears about their job, now and in the future, their health and watching their emotional inner roller-coasters soar up and down.
Life is on amber alert and we’re all struggling, to various degrees, to process our thoughts & feelings and muster a response. At times it feels impossible to make sense of any aspects of this pandemic and the titanic impact it’s having around the globe, but I think it’s necessary, even in some small way, to find and make a personal response – expressing HOW we feel – and find a vehicle to help us construct that.
For me, I turn to Art as my chosen language of expression.
I have been asking myself some very direct questions this week, to help me focus on my feelings, as a way of lifting me from the fog of Covid-numbness and find a kind of healing in the process.
This week, amongst various home deliveries, I received some stunning flowers from M&S. The bouquet was a feast for the eyes, but so too was the box they came in, which was covered with an array of plant prints – ferns, grasses, blooms & sprigs.
I put the box to one side, but it kept catching my attention. It seriously was too pretty to toss away! Then I had an idea… what about constructing it into a canvas, by cutting and gluing it to make a patchwork surface. I set to work and quickly created a shape I liked. I could feel a simple joy rising in me, as I suddenly knew what I’d use it for – a background for a burst of wild oxeye daisies.
It seemed a perfect ‘coming together’, a response to two things I had been experiencing…
RESPECT: An awareness of an escalating dependance on and accompanying respect for Home Delivery People – working tirelessly under vulnerable circumstances to bring us all our wants and needs at home. And…
DELIGHT: My response to the explosion of wild flowers, grasses and glorious weeds that had delighted me on my lockdown walks.
So, after the M&S box, I started working with other boxes that arrived. Firstly I deconstructed them and then I reconstructed them, to create a tableaux/canvas that I then pastelled some bright, bold daisies on to.
Each time, during the week, I’ve taken it a stage further: experimenting with the versatility of the cardboard and how it responded to black ink, with my own painted plants and added pastels. It’s just a start, but it’s been fun and certainly a great project for adults and children alike.
I especially enjoyed working with a box from, Who Gives A Crap, that arrived with 48 loo rolls inside. #whogivesacrap www.whogivesacrap.org
On the side of the box were the words…
“We believe in the afterlife…at least for our boxes – we’re still not sure about humans. Please re-use this box to give it a happy ever after. And when you’re done, recycle it”.
YES, THANKS… I WILL!!
In its simplest form, I think ART is about discovering your own unique way to make a response to something you feel deeply about – human trafficking, pet portraits, tropical fish or Alpine views. And you’re saying it because there is something healing about finding a response that is bigger than words…and bigger than me or you.
And Me
Focus of the week – a glorious weed called Cow-parsley
Yesterday I found myself transported back to my past life as a teacher and to one particular memory…
I’m in my classroom sitting on a ridiculously low chair, surrounded by a wriggling mass of tiny 3 & 4 years olds. It’s the start of the day and time to allocate the first activity of the morning and everyone is eager to find out where they will begin their merry-go-round of fun and play.
Close to me and almost squatting on my feet, is James. His hand darts up and down with exuberant delight and uncontrollable excitement every time I announce an activity. His small hand punches the air in front of my face, his body lifts off the carpet and he calls out… “And me… and me” (always twice). James is 3 and these are the only two words he knows and they get a lot of use.
He’s telling me that… he wants to rush to the painting table, he wants to make Easter bunnies with toilet rolls, he wants to run to the Wendy-house and he wants to play in the mud tray in the kindergarten garden. He wants to do it all and he wants to do it NOW!
Even now my heart wells up as I remember this sweet boy, with a massive hunger for life and saying YES to it all.
I wonder where you are now James? Did you manage to keep holding on to that irrepressible joy, set in a happy heart? Did your love for all things creative survive, or did it die under the weight and demands of the academic system? I hope your creative kernel grew roots fast and sustained you through, what we call, the education years.
I want to imagine you as a creative engineer now, bursting with enthusiasm, using your skills and passion each day as you work on the crisis to hit us next, after this pandemic – the climate crisis! I see you stepping up to the task and saying, “Hey, count me in…And Me…let’s do this and face what needs to happen and create the technology, right now, to save our planet”
A child’s approach and attitude to all things creative, is so instinctual and so blissfully impulsive. No time is wasted in hesitation, or self judgment, they just plunge in with one driving impulse – to lose themselves in the experience of feeling fully human. It’s intoxicating to watch.
It’s been a bit of an, ‘And Me’, sort of week for me too. On Monday I walked home from the fields with a bunch of cow-parsley and it has sat dominating my kitchen table for most of the week. I’ve sketched it large and sketched it small, I’ve married it with collage and bathed a rather tight ink drawing (bamboo pen & ink wash) with some bright, ballsey pastels. Cow-parsley is the most glorious weed I know and I adore it throughout all its stages of metamorphosis, from April into the deep of Winter.
Its striking simplicity has kept my attention. When I haven’t been drawing it, I’ve been marvelling at its intricate dainty flower structure and getting ever-so slightly addicted to its heady scent (a friend tells me it’s poisonous…really?!)
And…what I’ve been noticing is that, like James, instinct & intuition needs to be everything in my creative practice. It feels like they are the only weapons I have, to keep me focused and heading in the direction I need to walk, to enter my creative zone (the place where I begin to ‘let go’ and start taking risks to grow wings). If I don’t hold onto these two, I start to drift. Then I realise no one is at the tiller and before long I’ve lost my way.
Falling into the power that sits within my instinct & intuition seems to be the place to head to. Here I can sign up for all that’s going on within my creative journey and do my own versions of punching the sky and saying, “Bring it on…let’s go…And Me”.
Art Helps us Heal
Art making with my grandson
“Creativity is a powerful medium – art helps us to heal, thrive and survive. Especially in these difficult times” (Sonja Smalheer).
Every part of me agrees with these words. In fact my heart lurches with a visceral response… YES, yes, yes!
I’m sure that even those who have lived as strangers towards their own artistic selves, would agree that there appears to be a primeval, almost sacred healing that can occur when participating in art – of any form. I remember the sweet, heady elation I felt the first time I sketched in the rain, squatting on a rock overlooking the breathtaking Borrowdale valley in the Lake District. I was 18. As I tried to capture this wonderful assault on my senses, I experienced a baptism of joy and what I can only describe as ‘a healing’.
In 2012 Robert Redford said…
“The country is so wounded, bleeding and hurting right now. The country needs to be healed – it’s not going to be healed from the top, politically. How are we going to heal? Art is the healing force”.
Wow, such uncompromising words… shooting straight from the hip and as true today as 8 years ago. Art is a healing force!!
If this is true, then we all have a secret weapon of healing at our disposal. Around us people are hurting and struggling internally and externally and we have a tool for healing that we are carrying around within us, with the ability to release us from the hand-cuffs of fear and limiting mindsets.
So often we self-judge whatever we create, demand instant excellence, fear judgement from others and view what we make & create as needing to be ‘of use’ (saying to oursleves, “why bother making something that isn’t useful”). All these reactions keep us from experiencing the generous healing power of art.
Instead of valuing our remarkable ability to express ourselves in the arts (as children do) and view this as an essential requirement for our mental well-being, we stay un-healed.
This week I discovered the work of Renee Phillips, the founder of the Healing Power of Art + Artists (HPAA), a community of artists, writers and advocates from around the globe. She believes that art is a powerful catalyst for positive change, not just for the individual, but for the world.
It made me wonder what a world would look like if we all took our art practices seriously and bathed in them every day, to become healers of ourselves and the communities we live it. I love that idea!
There are different obstacles to finding our way into the healing space of art… and they are all in our minds. They range from, “I can’t pick up a pencil or brush, because all I produce is rubbish (in my eyes)”, to, “I’m ok about what I produce, but I’m terrified of sharing my work with others”.
To be honest, the only questions worth asking myself are, “What do I enjoy doing?”, “Is it liberating me from the incessant noise of my frenzied mind?” and “Is my art practice helping me to enjoy relaxed-attention, which will release potential in other areas of my life?”
“Art making has the ability to move people along their journey of grief and loss, into a more balanced place of healing and hope” — Austin Kleon
Art helps to repair dis-ease, and grow an inner sense of self. It brings bits of ourselves together to create wholeness and it heals places that are difficult to reach any other way.
This challenges me, once again, about my propensity to neglect what I know to be good for me. My dearest friend has on his desk these words, “Write or Die”, in order to keep him serious about his writing practice. I think I need a similar call to arms… “Make art to heal, to stay in balance, to thrive and survive”.
Shaped & Influenced by Everything
I’ve got myself a little cycle circuit now. It takes me an hour to peddle it twice and I’m pretty bushed by the time I get home, but I love it. When I was half way round my country-lane route today, I was suddenly struck by the sky to the south. A heavy moodiness was definitely brewing and by the time I was careering down the home straight, past my precious oaks, rude gusts of wind were bumping at me without warning.
I felt a transition in the air; change was coming.
I started thinking about my own art work and wondered if a transition was coming there too.
After a few weeks of intense collage work based in my studio, knee deep in multi coloured paper scraps, I did a 180 degree manoeuvre this week to outdoor sketching, with my pot of ink and bamboo pen – as if I’d been fleeing from slow, focused, sedatory work, to the freedom of light’n’breezy studies, that took little time to complete.
What came first I wonder? The need to escape the intensity of the collage work for a while, or was it the pressure of the pandemic crisis and the affect of it on my inner world?
In the space of two months all our lives have been turned upside down. The unbelievable has become a reality and we are having to make peace with uncertainty on a daily basis.
I guess the truth is that everything around me is playing a part in shaping and influencing how I feel about my art, consciously and unconsciously, and influences every choice, decision or direction I take. Whatever fills my head each day, great or small, will influence the choices I make: the colours I select, the medium I reach for, the mood I inhabit and the posture I adopt in my art practice.
Wyken Vineyard in the Spring
Everything will be influencing me from,
The book I’m reading by Carla Carlisle called, A Thousand Acres – writings from Country Life.
My new found love for watching tractors ploughing the earth.
The striking new painting I couldn’t resist buying, of a Cornish landscape, by my artist friend Tim Steward, …and
The visceral experience of Hares boxing and cavorting in the fields near by.
And whether it’s bonfire smoke drifting across my lawn, the smell of freshly picked chives, singing with my granddaughter Juno, or making chocolate flapjack… I can see that it all influences the journey I’m on, wherever I’m going.
Everything – all that absorbs me, thrills me, or pulls at my heart, will inevitably shape and influence me, however gently.
I want my art to become my heart-beat, my pulse, influenced by the moving landscape around me.
My sketches this week spoke of my response to all those influences. Maybe I needed to feel more grounded in nature, to make time to marvel at light on tree bark, drink in the apple blossom, celebrate the end of a long cold winter, feel the sun on my face, hear the cuckoo and yell, “I’m alive”, “I am free” …and “Thank you”.
Breathing Deep, Free From Our Cling-ons
Taking time to play – green food colouring, bamboo pen and wax blobs
A couple of days ago, whilst cycling during our delicious ‘break out of isolation exercise hour’, we rounded the corner at the end of the village, turned right into Market Weston Road and instantly met a small gang of tree surgeons. They’d obviously been at it for a while, as wood chippings lay dusted across the road. My first thought was, “OMG! not the oaks!!”, but as I slowed down I quickly noticed that they were not in the process of felling this glorious avenue of 15 oaks, but engrossed in something much more hopeful.
Since we’d arrived in our village two years ago, I’d bleated on incessantly about how the dense ivy was running amok through the majestic bows of these great elders and was in the sure process of strangling them to death. I felt powerless. It seemed inevitable that these ghastly ivy-triffids would win the day and destroy their mighty hosts.
But salvation arrived wearing hard-hats and wielding chain-saws and I wobbled past with joy, catching sight of the severing of these life-sucking ivy stems, which were as thick as my calf and running in dense criss-cross tendrils around each oak’s trunk. At last these suffocating parasites were being cut from their source and given their marching orders. The stranglehold of these invaders must have been immense. They’d been at it for years, slowly, slowly encroaching on the trees, determined to possess them at any cost.
Dramatic language I know, but it got me thinking about how creativity can get sucked from us over the years, almost without us noticing. Or maybe it’s more that life intrudes so aggressively on our lives that we forget what we’ve lost and can’t remember how to breathe deeply, free from our cling-ons.
This week, troubled by the news and alarmed by the suffering that COVID-19 has brought, I’ve found it hard to breathe with ease in my art practice. I noticed that I could only work for short stints and I was struggling to make instinctive decisions and focus. At one point I retreated to the kitchen, pulled out some food colouring and had a play, just allowing the inks to run free and then adding marks with my bamboo quill. My collage work had felt intense and claustrophobic. I needed to step away.
I’m only a few weeks into this process of observing my creative journey and I’m aware that a tightness to ‘stay in control’ and ‘get it right’ is starting to muscle its way into my thinking. So I’m cutting that free right now.
My lovely friend Louise put it perfectly, as she described how the pandemic was affecting her in all aspects of her life, when she said, “I’m fighting for sunshine and light, everyday.”
Food colouring, cold tea, black ink & wax
Don’t Get Too Close
My treasure trove of blue scraps
I left my art room last night pleased with the thought that when I returned in the morning I’d have some interesting paper scraps to work with. In the October 2019 issue of The Simple Things, I’d discovered a delicious burgundy/chocolate colour which I reckoned would be just the thing to bring depth to one area of my collage that was floundering in the shallows.
It’s a nice feeling to turn off the light knowing you’ve got a clear starting point ready for the next day – but not something I’d want to shout about, as it sounds like I should get out more.
Anyway, this morning I cracked on with my new found colour, feeling pretty confident this discovery would do the job and move my piece on.
But alas, No!
After 20 minutes of my head down, I eventually stepped back and instantly realised that it wasn’t working. I so wanted to ignore my gut instinct, but by now I know that it never pays off to march on, ignoring the little voice I’m getting more acquainted with. Frustrated, but heeding the dis-ease, I peeled off the sticky scraps and then instantly felt rather lost and caught up in my own disappointment.
I wondered what I could learn from this simple situation?
Up close
Keep stepping back. Don’t get too close to anything for too long or you’ll lose sight of the whole picture. When everything is zoomed in on one isolated spot, you end up losing sight of the bigger perspective. As I sit back, I can keep asking myself, “So, what does the rest of the picture make of this new arrival? Does it enhance, bring balance and greater harmony, or throw things out of kilter?”
When I’m up too close I get too self assured and de-coupled from my wiser instinctual brain, that knows best.
It made me think that getting too obsessed and up close to anything takes away the ability to view the ‘whole’, in any area of my life. Stepping back makes me slow down (and calm down), take stock, assess what I’m doing and helps me get clear about…
Stepping back – getting perspective
2. What’s the question I’m asking? – about anything, to be honest. But here I’m thinking particularly about art and the process of making and producing one’s own work.
Getting clear about what I’m intending to get focused on next, is a vital skill. Having discovered what question I’m asking, I can then go in pursuit of an answer.
Right now, as I’m gazing at my collage, I’m aware that I have 4 or 5 thoughts bubbling about, but they are more like general musings, such as, “That area isn’t holding together”, or, “I don’t know where I’m going with this background”. They are vague, unfocussed responses, not questions clearly formulated.
So, what questions could I be asking, to focus my thoughts?
Let’s think!
Which areas of this piece are working well and which areas are not?
Are there any paper scraps that need removing, because they are not enhancing this piece in any way… in fact they are distracting?
Have I understood and captured how the ground undulates in this lower right hand corner of the piece?
Are the trees the right thickness, or do some need to be thinner?
Is the overall colour balance of the picture going in the right direction, or have I weighted it too much towards orange?
I can see this will be a useful practice to develop in all areas of my life too. Emotional responses to anything give a clue as to whether our feelings are doing their job. But just being left with a feeling like, “I’m restless and bored”, could be followed by a question, such as, “What always brings a fresh dose of endorphins into my system when I feel like this – sluggish and heavy hearted?”
Questions bring focus, direction and nudge us towards an action. And positive actions always move the game on. They make us look beyond an inner road blockage moment and help us to grow more robust & resilient – something we all need in abundance right now.
An Invitation to Imagination
The drawings in this blog were made using a quill-pen, made in 3 minutes from a garden bamboo cane, plus a little ink wash
I’m aware that my art work is so often filtered through a censoring machine. Censored and checked, again and again, to see whether it’s either ‘appropriate’ or ‘sensible’.
What would happen if I just allowed my art to have its own uncensored voice? What would be revealed if it had free reign, like my thoughts? Free to dive off in any direction, experience being inappropriate and off the leash. Free to run amuck, free to express and explore in any direction. Free to run uninhabited without restraint or questioning.
What would occur then? And what would be seen in the light of such freedom?
The desire to choose to frolic into freedom is, however, only the starting place. As one might gaze over a fence at a prime patch of meadow and daydream about buying it and building the eco-house of your hearts desire, so it is with art.
The gap between such a wild and delicious thought and making that reality come true would need a plethora of plans, diggers, mess and patience; a mountain of it.
Anyway, today I just want to acknowledge that I want to walk into a future where i have awakened imagination within me, to the point where it is at liberty to take the lead and speak more freely.
The power-house of imagination within me has been slumbering for so long and probably has never been incubated into independent life, if I’m honest.
So, lets start here in my sketchbook. Come and play here imagination, where you know you’ll be safe. Come and play here every day, experiment and grow strong. Let your creative muscles grow bold and find confidence and joy, until a new reality is learned and believed in. Then, lets see where it will lead.
But let’s not worry too much about what’s down the track, just stay focussed here…sketch with a stick, or paint with fingers, draw in the dark or with a blindfold. Read about how artists took courageous steps and follow suit, just don’t stay on the sofa and do nothing.
Imagination is like a muscle – use it or lose it! A bright, lean, switched-on imagination is like a Kenyan runner – at home with heat and hardship. A reluctant imagination will need waking up and coaxing into its running kit, with loving-kindness, patience and non-judgement.
As I catch a glimpse of the mountain range ahead of us all, a range that keeps getting obscured by the changes that COVID-19 is breathing down upon us, I know that imagination and a nimble, problem solving mindset, will be crucial. So here is a good place to start – awakening imagination in our art practices day after day. Taking risks, exploring ideas and allowing our awesome creative instincts to kick in and do what evolution has equipped us to do, to be extraordinary imaginative creatures and go on thriving, even under challenging and harsh conditions.
The quill-pen can be re-sharpened with a Stanley knife when it becomes blunt
Back in the Slow Lane - Why I Need to Make Collage
Beginning
It’s been 3 months since my last collage piece and I’m wondering why I’ve been keeping this art form at arms length. I just haven’t been able to find my way back to this medium that had so intrigued me and had taught me the most about myself and the process of making art.
When I collage (verb), I create a picture using a host of paper scraps from all manner of places – glossy mags, wrapping paper, carrier bags and bog-basic cardboard; anything frankly that happens to catch my eye. I then use this stash of papery resources to create a new picture.
Over the months I’ve heard myself making all kinds of excuses to keep me from getting back to using collage. It’s ridiculously slow work and quite frankly the mess in my studio gets to me. But this week I suddenly knew I needed to return to the slow lane.
Middle
Why I love collage:
Collage work is a slow burn and progresses at a snails pace. It’s only as good as the paper scraps you find and the endless problem solving you are willing to stick with.
Collage allow you to take risks and experiment as much as you like. You can rip off scraps from the paper if you suddenly have second thoughts about them, or simply paste over… and move on.
You can’t plan too far ahead, because you don’t know what you’ll find as you flick through your magazines, so it keeps you in the moment and very present. But nothing is lost or discarded, because that scrap you have just put down might be just what you need tomorrow.
And because you can’t mix up or create the colours you want, you have to be very patient and stay searching for something that will work. You stay open and expectant that you’ll find what you need, so you are adapting all the time. For example, a silver spoon might become the plough behind a tractor (see my landscape piece on the home page).
Collage invites you to use your 3rd Eye (as if you’re squinting and taking in the whole), it doesn’t call for literalism. So this keeps you playful, ready to be surprised and delighted by any chance discoveries (like a beach comber).
This way of working takes you to a sweet place, where you are resigned to slowing down. Your movements become careful, your heart slows, the world slows too, as you allow the work to evolve and blossom in its own time.
It’s the best therapy ever!
End
Oh Heck, Where Next?
I made it to my art room by 10.06 a.m this morning, with a tray of tea and my mobile (all distractions and interruptions were going to be welcome).
Yesterdays work lay in the centre of the room, in crappy splendour and sullen posture, waiting for a decision – to be binned or redeemed? I could feel my eyeballs rolling with a, ”Oh heck, where next?”
During a recent week in Cornwall, I’d felt seriously energised by the stunning coastline and achingly rich colours, but now, back on home turf, I was stumbling and bumbling about and feeling disconnected from the vibrant vistas I’d left behind. I felt like a skippy foodie returning from a gourmet cooking weekend retreat, to the somber realities of an empty larder, tiny kitchen and the limitation of a microwave.
I hugged my tea and disconnected my brain, hoping something would wash up on the beach of my imagination. Then I remembered that today I was expecting some art supplied from Jacksons – 2 boxes of soft pastels, (Yellow/Green & Sea Blues) and some super-robust, indestructible water-paper in a variety of landscape colours. This 360 gsm weighted paper should be able to withstand anything I hurled at it.
So, a rescue package would be on its way!! And with better utensils for the job, maybe I could strike out with more confidence.
I have to confess that splashing out on decent kit wasn’t my idea, but my artist friend Tim. While in Cornwall he’d been gently nudging me towards investing in some quality materials and not skimping.
He’d also said, “get outside Jane, there’s no better way to produce art than being out amongst nature – feel it, absorb the rawness, fall into the whole glorious experience and it’s the only way to get out of your own way.”
So, I mused on these 2 thoughts… Buying good materials & Immersing myself in nature.
I’d certainly felt a new awakening while sketching on the clifftops in Cornwall, exposed to the elements and lost in wonder and now it was time to make this a habit, not an exception. I packed a few pencils, a jam-jar of ink and my sketchbook and headed for the door and instantly I felt a different person; joy returned. I knew where I was heading next.
“Art is a sort of painkiller, a truce, a pleasant uncertainty which gives peace and tranquility” — Henri Matisse
Start Where You Are
Out on the Cornish coast
The storm had been raging all night and now, in the wee small hours, I watch the tail-end of ‘Dennis’ making its final assault on the mighty trees next door. While the rain lashed all in its path, the giant trees bravely took their beating, bowing their noble heads and digging deep. I was mesmerized by the spectacle and the ferocity.
Then, without warning the sassy storm flicked its tail and was gone and a sudden gift of calm arrived in the neighbourhood. After days of high winds, we all slipped into a puddle of stillness.
It felt so unexpected.
I found myself reflecting on the events of the day before. I had applied, for the first time in my life, to join a local group of talented artists, but had been unsuccessful. As I stood at the window, I felt the sting of disappointment.
I was determined to accept the decision and move on, but then I remembered that tepid acceptance of life’s situations can leave you feeling empty and leave the door open for self-pity to sneak in. So, I challenged myself…
“Ok, this is where I am…start from here…and make something good of this”
I started making a list of the good that might come from this rejection.
Not being accepted into the art group would give me more time to get back to experimenting and going with the flow of my new underdeveloped ideas.
Not getting the thumbs up might actually mean I wasn’t ready yet…was this a blessing in disguise?
Thinking back to the storm, I remembered how intense and relentless the rage of it had been. I had imagined the ferocity would last for hours more…but it didn’t. It blew itself out and moved on.
Stepping over stormy disappointment works best when we can find a way to learn from the situation, take the good from it (honestly), and knit it into the calm that will follow.