chicken on the nest

Happy Anniversary Wolfie!

2011-10-06T03:46:00.000-07:00

The thing about writing a blog is that i don't. Or at least not very often. And unlike other activities i also don't do much (like ironing or going to the gym) i always know exactly how long i've not been doing it for. Each time i check in here i see how long it is since i last wrote anything, i end up feeling vaguely silly and run away. Months pass...

September is the cruellest month. It's the month Summer ends, sometimes slowly, but always inevitably ceding to Autumn. It is the month my children go back to school and we all pick up the threads of our lives, after that close and precious holiday time. To me September has an ache of melancholy to it. Once i've let go of Summer i can enjoy Autumn but the letting go, of our family time, of my children and of long, warm, lazy days is hard.

On the positive side September is the 'start' of the year for those of us still dominated by the academic year. It is the time of fresh starts and new beginnings. A few years ago i decided not to make New Year's resolutions any more (you can guess why) but Autumn seems a good time to plan my year and look ahead a bit, and to make a few decisions about how i want the next year to be. So that's what i spent September doing and now here comes dear old October.

It is almost exactly a year since i was diagnosed with Lupus. The list of things i haven't done or have missed is long - projects lie unfinished, blog unwritten, photography 365 project shamefully uncompleted, novel still just scraps of ideas in a tatty notebook. I've spent days in bed or on the sofa, missed parties and get togethers, had weeks off work and struggled to find the energy to do anything at all at times.

Yet when i look back at this year i'm surprised at how much i've achieved and at what a great year i've had. I've completed one big project, held a successful Open House, did my art course and produced my best work so far for the end of year show, and made sales of both my photographs and drawings.

My consultant said to me this time last year "Give yourself a year to accept and cope with this disease" and she was right. It has taken me this long to accept it and begin to manage it effectively. I now know i will have about one awful week to two better weeks, and my drugs are still helping me to improve. It's not bad. Not bad at all. I can get enough done in my two ok weeks to see me through my bad week. And i'm working on ways to enjoy the 'bad' week more too. The photograph above shows my bedroom window, which i love to look out of when i'm poorly. It's good to lie there and think how lucky i am to have such a great view, always changing with the seasons and reminding me the world is there for me to step back into when i fell better.

Looking ahead i feel only optimism. This must have been one of the toughest years of my life and it was brilliant! Next year can only get better... Happy Anniversary Wolfie.

p.s. Sorry for banging on about Lupus but October is Lupus Awareness Month, so i feel i ought to mention it. Next entry will be disease free :)

Bungaroosh Gallery Christmas 2010

2010-11-25T04:09:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Open Houses are a familiar part of Brighton life and this year i am lucky enough to be showing some work at the Bungaroosh Gallery. As well as some large framed photographs i have been experimenting with applying digital ground to reclaimed antique papers and making inkjet prints. What i love about this process is the introduction of brush marks to my images, which give a sense of gesture. The mottled, aged patina of the papers i print on (usually the endpapers of old books sourced from charity shops) also add random marks to each image which not only makes each unique but also give a lovely aged feel to the image. It's as if my modern images are having a conversation with the history of the paper they are printed. A favourite example is a flyleaf that said "Wishing you a Happy Christmas' in beautiful old fashioned handwriting which looks great under an image of a snowy tree. As a photographer the aim when reproducing work is usually for every print to be identical, so it is lovely to be working with a process which is more experimental, and one which rejoices in the imperfect and the random.

Dancing with Wolf

2010-11-09T03:57:00.000-08:00

illustration by Miranda Vincent

There is a new man in my life. He is a Wolf, he is mean, hurtful and dominant. He has been here for over a year, his name is Lupus. At first no-one recognised him, so it was worth getting that second opinion at the hospital, the one where the consultant said the 'L' word and told me his name. I think i already knew, i'd felt his claws gripping my limbs and felt his breath on the back of my neck whenever i tried to do something and found myself too tired or in too much pain. But now i know. Sort of... it may take a couple of years to get a firm clinical diagnosis, but it's highly likely Lupus is the name of my new companion.

The thing is i am very lucky. Some people with this disease are so ill, i have only a mild form. Yet still the Wolf tries to make me change my life. I have to miss parties and events i am too ill for, at times it takes all my effort just to get up. My trainers gather dust as i cannot run. Sometimes it hurts to hold my camera. I'm a photographer but i can no longer do weddings as i can't work more than half a day. At my lowest point it took all my concentration to remember how to swallow. What should have become an automatic response became an effort of will. It was terrifying and I lost my appetite for a while. It's fine, i can still manage about 60% of my life ok. Some days i feel ok. So i am grateful for that. I am not dying, i am not disabled.

It's the little things that get me sometimes. Who would have thought you'd miss painting ceilings, nit-combing your daughter's hair (a vile job but i get tearful when my fingers ache too much to hold the comb) emptying the bin and lifting heavy things like the recycling? Yet i do... the frustration at not being able to do those things is huge. I feel so pathetic. In those moments the Wolf has won and i loathe him.

So i am refusing to dance to his tune. His teeth may be sinking into my joints 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and he may make me poorly at times, but i shall not let him force me to give up. There is a whole new me he doesn't know about. I am finding new ways to live that he cannot prevent me from enjoying. Sometimes i find myself filled with a new intense joy springing from a heightened appreciation of all that i can still do. Now i am living a different life but i take delight in planning it. Do we not all moan we are too busy with no time for quiet reflection, for rest, never enough time? Not my problem any more. I have time enough now that the Wolf drags me to my bed in the afternoons. I am redesigning my life and it will be better than before. I have time to write, think, read, draw, rest, i can even watch a film in the middle of that day if i want to! Such decadence!

I wrote to a friend of mine that i was thinking of buying a chaise longue and some seriously glamourous lounge wear so i can recline decoratively and receive visitors, or maybe dictate a novel to a handsome young literature student (if you know one please send him to me). Perhaps i can even start other decadent horizontal pursuits like smoking opium or embroidery, really the world is my oyster. Wolfie cannot stop any of that. I shall take rest to new and glamourous heights.

When i wake up in the morning, often tired from a painful night, i stretch and feel the Wolf's teeth sink into my elbows, wrists, knees and ankles. Every little joint in my hands complains as i walk slowly and painfully to the bathroom flexing them. But i am smiling. He thinks he will make me dance a sad little dance of defeat but i am not this body. My breath, mind, heart, joy, love, family, friends, photographs, words and memories are all beyond his reach. The birdsong in the garden calls me to the day, my day. Behind me lurks the Wolf, but i shall surprise him by turning to him and reaching out to welcome him. Then he will have very little power at all.

Blogging Boot camp here i come!

2010-11-08T03:10:00.000-08:00

I was amused to read a message on Facebook recently in which someone had appealed for help starting a blog and a friend had replied saying 'Write often' repeatedly throughout his other suggestions. Every second sentence was 'Update regularly' or 'Write often'. The phrases were repeated like a mantra throughout. I thought with some regret and even a touch of guilt about my little blog and how very long it is since i have written anything. It barely started before it just dwindled away. Writing regularly is a thing i must do i told myself (i have been experimenting with some fiction writing and thought the discipline of a regular blog would be a good way to encourage the writing habit). Then in one of those lovely little coincidences that life sometimes gives us as an unexpected gift, i received an e-mail about a "Bloggers Bootcamp'. Too good to miss i decided. So i have enrolled. It hasn't started yet... but i have.

Photo:

Winter Tree from a series i will be showing at the Bungaroosh Gallery this Christmas:

http://bungerooshgallery.blogspot.com/

Blogger's Bootcamp:

http://zenhabits.net/bootcamp-kindle/

technology is a wonderful thing

2009-05-19T04:36:00.000-07:00

Self portrait in a digital age

Does anyone else miss polaroid photographs? i know i do. Luckily help is at hand, for i have just discovered www.poladroid.net. This is a great site where you can download free software to make any image you have look like it is a polaroid. Try it - it's serious fun.

Another useful piece of software i've just discovered is Silver FX Pro. This is a great program designed to make digital images look like they were taken on film by mimicking the main characteristics of certain film types. So those of us who are missing grain for example can just select a classic grainy film type and voila, the digital image is processed to look as of shot on that film. You can chose from 19 different film types. So far i've read rave reviews of it in all my photography mags and heard good things from other photographers.

Now much as i love this and will definitely be forking out for it soon (how i long for the grain of Kodak T Max) i can't help thinking there's something wrong here. In the past few years, like many photographers, i've traded in most of my film cameras and spent thousands getting a great digital kit together. Now i need to spend just a little bit more so that my images will... look like they've been shot on film!! Hmm. Is it me or could i not just have saved myself an awful lot of time and money by missing out the middle step there? Technology, it's a wonderful thing...

digital art

2009-05-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

i was reading a book of ideas for photos recently as i'm doing a photo-a-day for 2009 and was feeling a little bit uninspired, and i came across the idea of photographing your own art work but with camera movement. i thought it was a bit of a daft idea until i tried it and not only got some decent photos but also got re-inspired about some of the pieces of art. The nice thing is how some pieces came out as pure abstracts whilst others still have the human form clearly in them. i also liked the sense of movement that the camera movement gave to the figures. It's one of the joys of the digital age that you can mess about with this sort of thing to your hearts content with no cost or wasted shots thanks to being able to delete. i am now going to use the digital photos as the starting point for new drawings, thus bringing the process full circle. Great fun.

every mark matters

2009-05-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

My art teacher was saying recently that we ought to be braver and less timid with our art. She said we ought to remember that 'every mark matters' and then just go for it. Her words were inspiring, if a trifle daunting, but i decided she was right and that i would give it a go. i could hardly wait to get back to my easel where i splashed around ink and watercolours, and layered chalks, charcoals and pencil with a delicious sense of abandon. This was it - i was an artist now, my materials flowing onto the page as i created my master work. i stood back from the easel, having really enjoyed applying my marks so deliberately and confidently, to find myself looking at one of the most appalling unappealing messes i've ever had the misfortune to put on paper. i was stunned at how childish and amateur it appeared. i saw teacher heading for me. Usually i think of her as a friend, someone i'm rather fond of in fact, but now i felt like i was back in school - how could i hide from her or at least hide this rotten drawing? Would she be cross with me, i'd been doing exactly as she asked hadn't i?! She looked at it in surprise, made a few suggestions (i think rubbing out over half of it was the main one) and then mercifully moved on to the woman next to me who was paralysed by the thought of every mark mattering and so couldn't begin. Thinking about it later i realised that my teacher is right - we should know every mark matters, we should be less tentative. i also realised that the huge gap between our intention and our abilities is hard to bridge. When i watch my art teacher draw i marvel at the confidence of her line, her sureness of execution. For me, what my brain wants and what my hands can do are two very different things. i try to practise as often as possible in the hope this will change, but for now, i must live with it. It was nice to draw for a day as if i believed i could, even if the results were as flawed as ever!

One good thing did come out of the lesson. My terrible drawing (even my teacher, usually gentle in her admonishments asked why on earth i'd made the arm look like a sausage) was rescuable. Taking her advice i rubbed out, drew over, rubbed out and drew over until i at least had something i didn't feel had to go straight in the bin. i decided i would photograph it and post it here first. At home i would have given up, but i found that being told to keep reworking until it was better is a possibility. Learning to push through and redraw was a good lesson.

Every mark matters, and if you don't like the ones you've made you can always make new ones.

top: the offending drawing, post rescue

left: detail of the face which i quite like and other drawings from the same day in class.

hands (EDM 10)

2009-03-17T02:43:00.000-07:00

My art teacher gave everyone in the class a lovely long accordion style sketchbook and told us to draw the same thing everyday until it is full. Such a simple idea and so useful. So i've been drawing my hand everyday, trying to use different materials. This process is great to promote a daily drawing habit and hopefully it will help me see an improvement too (i still have a lot of pages to fill, so that's a lot of hours of drawing practice). Also it has helped me realise my love of line is partly a fear of shading (!) so i need to get past that. When the book is full i'll post the last four hands. It will be interesting to see how different they are, if at all, from these first four attempts.

Cup (EDM 4)

2009-03-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

Not the greatest drawing of a cup but this is part of my new resolution to post regularly whatever the shortcomings of my drawings, otherwise i'll never improve. So here it. A cup. by me. Hmm!

my first drawing done in public

2009-02-26T06:20:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is... not the best drawing i've ever done, but the first one i've done in public since i was a child. This is my husband in a cafe in Paris a couple of weeks ago. Fortified with a glass of Kir and my beloved's faith in me i got out my moley and voila! The really great thing was nobody even noticed. So, next time won't be as bad and i might even get finish the drawing!

the smell of the metro

2009-02-14T03:02:00.000-08:00

Is there any smell sweeter than the smell of the Paris Metro? That musky dusty indefinable whiff that fills your nostrils as soon as you descend into the white tiled tunnels listening for the trains, for the sound of French people (talking French!!) and reveling in the knowledge you are back here, about to get on a train in Paris, France.

This is the question i posed to my old man on our arrival at Gare du Nord last Friday.

'Plenty' he observes dryly and i know he's right. The smell of a baby, milky and sweet. The smell of a stew that's been cooking gently all afternoon whose wine rich aroma greets you from a cold winter walk. The smell of baking bread or fresh coffee. The smell of the sea all briny and fresh scouring you with the knowledge you are oh so alive. The smell of jasmine tucked into the dark oiled hair of women in South India perfuming the air around them, a moment of olfactory bliss for a traveller's nose still getting used to the pungency of a place with a less than perfect sewage management system. The smell of your Mother so familiar. A tiny white chocolate scented fist held up by a child to be kissed so that you guess she's stolen a bit of the Easter Egg she bought you. The smell of your love as he lies next to you in bed, a smell that long ago made your knees weak and your heart turn over and is now a sleepy safe man aroma between the warm sheets. The calming smell of tibetan incense as you climb onto your meditation cushion and prepare to be with your own breath again.

Yes, there must be many smells nicer than the Metro. But for me it is one of the sweetest. As i stepped onto the train last Friday i listened to the music of the droning note signaling the doors are open and waited for the silver doors to close with that satisfying metallic click. And i filled my lungs with the smell of Paris. A smell that takes me back to when i was 19 and lived here, here in Paris, for a year. A time when i believed anything was possible and perhaps it was.

On this visit my Mother has asked me to find a Guerlain perfume for her she'd read about in a book. In the beautiful Guerlain shop on the Champs Elysees we found it. We squirted, sniffed, saw the price and put it back on the glittering glass shelves. It was nice but far too expensive. Yet i admit i would pay the same for Eau Du Metro should any parfumier ever decide to make such a scent. But perhaps it wouldn't be the same bottled. It is a smell that places you precisely in a specific geographical location (though not precisely in time, as for me it transports me back to many memories of falling in love with an exciting foreign city for the first time) and that is why it is so special. Perhaps, like that interesting new liquor discovered on holiday and tucked in a suitcase to be shared with friends on our return, it just doesn't taste the same at home.

After our lovely weekend of museums, food, wine and love we parted. My husband went off to a conference on the edge of Paris and i headed back to Garde du Nord. i took a last long inhalation of the Metro and climbed up to the main concourse. There was a sign for the 'Salon de Grand Voyageurs'. That's why i love Paris. As i looked for the Eurostar Terminal i took comfort in knowing i was no mere tourist, but a grand voyager, and one who has not just casually sniffed but has fully inhaled the heady scent of the Paris Metro.

shoe (EDM 1)

2009-02-12T04:34:00.000-08:00

EDM challenge no1!

well, i've got to start somewhere, though i doubt i'll do them in strict chronological order. In fact i think i've done this one before but something about it being a new year and a new me made me want to start again...

i've been admiring everyone's drawings and blogs and have been working hard drawing and writing, but it's still daunting to post sometimes. The idea of having artistic aims for the year instead of resolutions appealed to me, so i formulated a few of my own which include:

1.Being brave enough to draw in public e.g. cafes.

2.Continuing to draw AND being brave enough to post the results whether good, bad or indifferent - it doesn't matter.

3.Acquainting myself with a wider variety of materials and experimenting more.

4.Enjoying the process of drawing, photography and writing, just playing and not worrying too much about the end result until later.

5.Meditating daily. Writing, drawing and photographing often, daily when possible.

6.Not worrying about what anyone else thinks. This is hard!

2009-02-04T01:56:00.000-08:00

I got tagged on Facebook to do this '25 things about me' and, like the person who tagged me, i originally thought it was a bit of a pain, but actually found doing it was great fun. i also loved reading hers and it was interesting to see how people reacted to mine. Now i'm looking forward to seeing what all my friends write. Ezra Pound said that many people do their best writing in letters because they are just writing from the heart and from their real experience, not trying to create great or perfect art. i was surprised how this flowed and was so enjoyable, maybe because i just saw it as a bit of fun, and so didn't fret over it. This is the beginning of me writing more i think. i've included the rules here so you can see what was sent to me. And if you feel inspired, consider yourself tagged! Don't forget to send me a link to your 25 things - i'd love to read them!

Rules:

Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. I'm a Saggitarius, apparently freedom loving, optimistic and honest, and intellectually and spiritually advanced (ha ha) but also overly expressive, subject to frequent burn out and known for a lack of tact (yes!). As a free spirit i demand not to be fenced in in a relationship but am also big hearted and passionate. And my symbol is that man/goat thingy. So i'm half human/ half beast. Hmm. Not sure i believe in star signs.

2. I fluctuate between being extremely hard working and incredibly lazy, and enjoy both these states immensely.

3. In 1977 when someone stole the silver jubilee celebration banner from the hall in Fairlight Middle School, i confess, it was me. It was meant to be an anti-royalist statement. I've never forgiven myself for not standing up in assembly and admitting it but i got scared. Sorry everyone. I loved that school...

4. Until the age of about 5 i was almost completely happy in my own skin apart from being plagued by nightmares. I really believed the world was an abundant joyous place. Then i turned 5. Since then things have been harder.

5. I've been a journalist, playwright and a social worker. Now i'm a photographer. Wonder if i should've been a doctor?

6. My dream job: i'd like to be the woman who is the voice of Bart Simpson.

7. Sometimes i love my friends soooo much i have to rein it in a bit - you know, play it cool in case they guess how much i LURVE them. Still don't know if anyone else feels this way?

8. If i had to choose between Frank, Johnny Depp, and David Bowie i wouldn't. i'd just have them all. i'm greedy i guess. (Frank, if you're reading this i turned the other two down flat - that's why i'm with you Babe)

9. I read too much. If i read less i might DO something, maybe even write myself. Reading is my drug. When i was a kid books more real to me than life and infinitely more pleasurable.

10. i meditate most days.

11. Sometimes i think i'd like to have been a man. Especially Picasso. He just drew and shagged all the time, never had to wash up, make the packed lunches or remember people's birthdays. He was totally selfish and everyone adored him. oh, and he was a genius of course. How cool is that? My kind of life.

12. At college i used to write letters to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Pretentious? Moi? Never.

13. When i was pregnant i ate tuna and banana sandwiches.

14. I was far too good when i was younger and now it's too late to be naughty. I missed my chance and i do regret it. Someone please remind me of this when my girls start being teenagers...

15. i often feel a wave of pure joy when i hang out the washing and see it against the blue sky and think how lucky i am to have people who go in those clothes, and a home to wash them in, and a sky to hang them up against. Bliss.

16. I'm an agnostic but i wish i wasn't. I'd like to have the confidence and conviction of atheism, or the comfort and security of belief. I have neither, and if i accept God may or may not exist, i must live my life as if either possibility may be true. It does my head in sometimes. How much easier to be born something - jewish, muslim, quaker, buddhist; i'd like to be any of those!

17. i often feel a complete failure. i struggle with this almost daily.

18. i didn't used to be vain and now i look in the mirror and realise it's too late!

19. i hide chocolate from my family and eat it at 2pm when i listen to the Archers.

20. i can't understand why anyone watches brain rottingly awful soaps or reality tv. (The Archers isn't a soap - they're real people ok.)

21. i can't bear the 'C' word. i think C***ts are lovely so it shouldn't be used as such a vicious word. Gay friends say they can't comment on the loveliness or otherwise of C***ts so they're allowed to use it. I say one may not worship at the altar of the Sacred Yoni, but one can show a little RESPECT.

22. I love drawing even though i'm not great at it. i want to push myself as far as i possibly can by drawing daily, so when i die even if i'm still not great at it i'll be the best i can possibly be, and i'll have had all the joy of those hours of drawing...

23. i think about things too much

24. i want my children to be happier and more secure than i was (am?) i don't want to hand my insecurities on to them. i want them to see themselves for the talented, clever, beautiful creatures they are. I know the only way to teach is by example. i'm trying really hard.

25. i've searched my heart and i genuinely don't care about money and fame, but i would like to do something worthwhile. So this year i'm trying something new - no goals, no pressure, just a bit of creativity and play, and relishing everyday, minute by minute.

portrait of my daughter

2008-12-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

My daughter

watercolours, aquarelles, felt tips, pencil.

self portrait in pencil

2008-07-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

pencil self portrait

the artist and the ego

2008-07-21T02:46:00.000-07:00

One of my all time favourite songs is "Pablo Picasso' by the divinely kooky Jonathan Richman.

The main gist of the song is how supremely cool Picasso was, encapsulated in the lines:

'Well the girls would turn the color /Of the avocado when he would drive down the street/in his El Dorado/He could walk down the street/And girls could not resist his stare/Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole'

Wonderful stuff!

I've been thinking about the artist and the ego. Having been almost crippled by lack of confidence for years it's great to be finally developing a bit of belief in myself and producing and showing work. Yet i'm troubled by it too. I don't want to end up full of myself, yet i need some self-confidence to produce work in the first place. Even writing this blog is sort of alarming - the sheer arrogance of thinking anyone will want to read it, the guilty enjoyment of all the positive feedback i've had so far (am i fooling all these people? why do i love praise so much? shouldn't i be able to evaluate my own work without needing confirmation from others? etc etc). It's all quite strange.

Recently i showed some photographs and looking at them up on the wall of a local cafe i was struck by the fact that ANYONE could have taken them. Yes, absolutely anyone. But that didn't matter, because no-one else did, i did. And it felt good. I looked at them and i thought perhaps some photographs just want to be taken and they don't care who takes them. What seemed more important to me at that point was the images, the work, not so much me.

Of course i am not ungrateful that i took them. And i am conscious that i need to be grateful also for the two years i spent studying at college, the expensive, professional kit i have, the brain i have that thought of the idea and my ability to talk to and connect with people which i needed hugely in this particular project (taking portraits of complete strangers requires a certain bravery!) In other words i do appreciate that i brought myself and all that entails to this project and in that sense no-one else could have done it. Equally true however is my previous statement that anyone could have done it, and i don't feel that detracts from the work at all.

So for me, at the moment, it's about a balancing act to do with appreciating the gifts i've been lucky enough to receive, having the confidence to keep putting my work out there, and never forgetting that anyone could do it - i'm just bloody lucky when it's me!

As for Pablo... Well, he was a genius obviously and i'm not convinced anyone else could have done what he did. He's always been one of my heroes. However, having read a bit about the man recently, although i'm sure no-one ever did call him an asshole, sorry Pablo, big fan an' all that, but maybe they should've done!

collage

2008-07-10T04:03:00.000-07:00

Boots (EDM 1)

2008-07-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

One of the drawing 'challenges' from the Everyday Matters Group - shoes (well in this case boots).

line drawing with black pen toned with mud scraped from the soles of the boots.

what makes an artist?

2008-07-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about what makes an artist. What (or who) is an artist? i joined a daily sketching/visual journal group called 'Everyday Matters' (the book of the same name by the artist Danny Gregory is inspiring and wonderful) and i've watched with interest a discussion about who should call themselves an 'artist'.

The group seems to be mostly for amateurs (a word which should be simply descriptive but already sounds judgmental) and i am happy to count myself as one. The label 'artist' is more difficult. Someone writes that we should all call ourselves artists because we draw, paint, sketch, create. Her words seem so positive, celebratory and a recognition of the effort made by us all in our creations. People reply to thank her, almost as if we need permission to use the word and she gave it to us. Yet another member made an interesting point that having a camera doesn't make you a photographer (i would definitely agree with that!) just as having good kitchen equipment doesn't make you a chef. It is almost as if both of them are right and i am wondering how two apparently opposing views can both be true.

Coleridge said that the primary act of imagination is perception. In other words just looking at the world around us and interpreting it through our senses is an imaginative act in itself. The secondary act of imagination is re-presenting this initial act of perception in a work of art and holding it up for others to view. This is what the artist does in the process of creation. When we read a poem, look at a painting or photograph or listen to some music that makes us see the world in a different way, even just for a moment, that's art. At that moment we are looking through someone else's eyes and from a different viewpoint.

Perhaps the discussion over at the EDM group may ultimately be about the difference between amateur and professional rather than artist and non-artist. i know i am a professional photographer but an amateur artist and this is not just because of my lack of artistic talent and relative competence at photography. In many ways the process of drawing and photographing is very similar for me. In both activities i seek to look carefully at something and record it. If anyone wants to look at what i've made afterwards, well that's fine with me.

We may not all be artists but we all have our unique take on things and the sharing of one's own vision or the privilige of looking at someone else's (and therefore having access to a way of seeing not possible without them) can be a real joy.

i haven't answered my own question yet. i'm still thinking about what makes an artist.

May you be well, may you be happy, and if you're feeling inspired may you be artistic too.

collage

2008-06-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday June 17th

what i wish & what i do...

2008-06-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

'I don't do what I wish, I do what I can'

These are the words of George Braque. The words with which i comfort myself whenever i am confronted with the gap between my ideas and the reality of what i manage to produce.

The phrase 'Mind the gap' also comes to mind, for on bad days it is not so much a gap as a yawning chasm, into which one might easily fall. There are ways to avoid the gap, or at least live with it, both honest and dishonest.

The best way to avoid it completely is to never finish a project. That way it can always have the potential to transform into something better at the last minute, to suddenly catch up with the way one saw it intially before it was realised with all its imperfections. This way is favoured by many artists and photographers i know and i have frequently used it too.

The more honest and difficult way is to finish something and stand back and look at it. This takes a bit of courage.

Recently i took part in SoFoBoMo (Solo Photo Book Month) which required photographers to shoot and produce a book in just one month. When i had finished my project (portraits of local traders and business people in my local area) i showed it in a local cafe. I stood and looked at it and realised it was full of mistakes. I didn't like the prints (too grey) the wall on which it was displayed (too flowery) the way it was shot (too hasty) etc. etc. In fact i didn't like any of it. Except that i loved it. Really loved it. Mistakes and all. It was a sweet project with its heart in the right place, shown in an ideal venue for the subject matter and one that seemed to really speak to people and got a great response. It was full of mistakes (that no-one else seemed to notice or mind as much as me) and yet it worked.

What i learnt from this experience was not to let myself fret over the gap, but work towards closing it in the future. If i had assessed my work before showing it i would never have put it up. If i had not done that i would not have been able to look at it frankly, to listen to how people reacted to it and to learn from all the mistakes.

So, like Braque, i did not do what i wished, but i did what i could. And the remarkable thing is, i think that was enough.

my first post

2008-06-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

I used to think i started taking photographs because i couldn't draw.

Now i find myself drawing because i can't take photographs.

And here i am writing perhaps because i secretly know i can neither draw nor photograph. Not to my satisfaction anyhow.

Perhaps eventually i shall stop writing too and just try and live.

Mind you, i never could get the hang of life...

The other day i went to a drop-in meditation group. I didn't know many people there.

Between meditations we went round the room just saying our names and a short sentence or two if we wished. The woman next to me said: 'I'm R-----, I'm with Death.'

Just like that!

'I'm with Death.'

It made me feel incredible. I almost expected to see him sitting behind her, scythe at the ready.

It seemed a wonderful thing to say. So refreshing to hear someone talking about something so real, so important, so HUGE. I felt reassured to know some people take the time to think about these things. These real, important things that most of us avoid until they are forced on us.

Someone once said you spend your whole life trying to learn how to live and then you realise you should've been trying to learn how to die.

So, that's me at the moment. Trying to photograph, draw, paint, write, live, love and die well.

It is a rich and painful thing i am living. And i embrace it.

May you be well. May you be happy.