art

In my last post I talked about the importance of allowing space to #notcreate.

Now I will contradict myself.

The thing is, I had such a blast making cyanotypes in the river, but then I hit a bit of a lull. It was partly because of rain. So much rain. Then I was packing up our house and moving out, lock, stock and barrel while we get a new roof. I’m not making excuses, far from it. I recognise and respect that this is life, and pauses are essential. But, I do get very angsty if I’m not making art for any length of time. It doesn’t have to be big or clever, it just has be a something.

Now I hope the following will be a helpful if not exactly groundbreaking idea:

I decided the best thing to do was to undertake a daily mini-project. Something manageable and restrained. Not too long, I didn’t want to have it drag on for weeks. I only wanted to work on it for 30 minutes a day. Then I could crack on with packing, plus the cleaning, preparing and moving in to the temporary one. Another important thing was to upload the results to Instagram. This was because I know me surprisingly well, and commitment and connection are pretty much key motivators, giving me the necessary kick in the arse. I didn’t want the project to be too inward looking either, more like a way to reconnect with making.

I decided a week was enough and planned to start a project of 7 days of summer skies – little watercolours in my sketchbook. In Prussian Blue, obvie. Oh yeah, that non-stop rain I mentioned. So 7 days of Payne’s Grey it is then. But the skies were a uniform, flat grey and that didn’t float my boat. Neither did the next three ideas I had. Side note: I enjoy making little mind maps and jotting down notes at this point. Bit nerdy, granted, but it helps me put meat on the bones of ideas to counterweight my proclivity to fly by the seat of my pants, so to speak.
Meanwhile, I went through the river cyanotypes I had made so far, and put the ones that I wasn’t happy with to one side.

At this point I need to stress something I think is important; the ‘not being happy with’ part relates only to the outcome. If I’m happy with the process, if I enjoyed the exploring and the problem solving, seeing what works and what doesn’t, that’s a success in my book. I’m talking purely about the final prints that just look a bit meh to me.
Oh yes, those old cyanotypes. Maybe they could be the launch pad for the project? I could work into a different print everyday. Try out new ideas, mediums, techniques, each one something new. Easy to implement and not reliant on good weather, or high energy levels, with just enough wiggle room and enough of a challenge.

• Day 1 (at this point Delia Smith’s instructional voice is replaced by the guy who narrates Big Brother) and I started with some really basic stuff to get warmed up as I didn’t have a scooby where I was heading. I simply made marks with white ink and dip pen, white gouache and charcoal.
• Day 2 Trusty scalpel in hand. I cut out irregular lines that represented the the light reflected on the surface of the water. Now we’re getting somewhere!
• Day 3 and a print I had badly creased in fast running river water. I accentuated the creases with white watercolour. I also cut some lovely speckled, textured blues from another print and cut little pebble shapes.
• Day 4 I folded a concertina form, with cyanotypes made on Japanese kozo paper also cut into pebble shapes. The simplicity and delicacy, the arrangement and scale, and the contrast of the heavyweight paper and fine kozo paper. A lot of good things going on.

• Day 5 I got in a right old pickle. I soaked 3 different cyanotypes and tried putting them through the mangle with bits of detritus I’ve collected from the river. Fail. Plan B then. Inspired by artist Coralie Barbier’s work I saw this year at Artistes à Suivre, I pierced tiny holes with a needle, varying the size, direction and pressure of each pinprick.
• Day 6 I tore up strips of blue and arranged them in a gradient, with the darkest at the bottom going upwards to the palest blue. Inspired by a window display I’d seen in Porto, of watercolour papers dipped in port wine and Japanese boro textiles.
• Day 7 I busted out the silver leaf I bought months ago and did eff all with. All I had that wasn’t packed away gluewise was some wood glue in the basement. I watered it down and painted it onto the cyanotype, then applied the silver. I did two versions, and with the second I thought I’d push myself even further and make a process video. It took ages, I got a lot of silver stuck to my fingers and messed up a lot. There was also a lot of my daughter swearing or chatting to the rabbits. I had to trim it down and speed it up, and add some music in iMovie. A whole new thing for me and bit dodgy in all truth. But still, I uploaded it anyway (see previously mentioned commitment.)

It was interesting to see just how far I could run with a very basic, limited idea. The scope for imagination and creativity was in fact quite large once I hit my stride. I was willing to try new techniques, play and experiment, and get them photographed, uploaded and captioned. Which to be honest I find a bit of a challenge in itself. I know I should use Instagram more, but sometimes it feels just too hard. Something I need to work on, definitely. It was also interesting to observe that the days I enjoyed making most also often gave me the results I like the most; I really liked the concertina, torn paper and the silver leaf ones on both counts.

Overall the project has been a great testing lab and springboard. I’ve generated some new ideas and quite enjoyed the daily focus, knowing I had to show up everyday even for just half an hour. I hope it inspires you to give a mini-project of your own a go if your feeling stuck, bored or just need to get moving again after a break!

{You can see the daily photos here #minicyanotypeproject}

 

Last December I felt like I wanted/needed to get a regular, figurative drawing habit in my sketchbook. All this abstractifying with my Prussian blue project has been and continues to be absorbing and wonderful. But the pictures are evolving and more realistic elements are appearing. Swimming women, mink, boar, fishes, birds and tree branches, but not as well as I would like, truth be told. I found a Hahnemuhle A5 Kraft book in the studio, because if anyone ever bought art supplies and forgot about them – reader, that someone is me. Off I went, but oh dearie dear, a few pages in and clearly I’m Not Very Good at this anymore. What I am pretty good at though is not giving up *puffs chest*.

So let’s start as we mean to carry on Suze. No beating about the bush. Keep the bar low etc. If I’m going to be awful I may as well own it, so I wrote in comic sans on the cover ‘The Book Of Shame’. In the spirit of vulnerability and looking like a total prat on my own blog ffs, allow me to present the best pages:

Yes, quite. Glad to see those art school years paid off. Clearly there was some work to be done, so I decided to make a daily practice. In fact so far this year I’ve also established a daily yoga habit, regular reading and flute learning, as I mentioned in my depth year intentions.

Once I finished the kraft book I moved into a large Moleskine sketchbook. No pressure time-wise, if I only have 5 mins to spare, that’s cool. On other days give it an hour if I like. The Moleskine is thin paper and quite bit larger than what I usually use. I thought this would be super helpful in making me loosen up and not be too precious. Shouldn’t your sketchbook be a safe place to play, to grow, to experiment and above all to mess up without judgement or preconceptions? I can use whatever I like to make the marks but to avoid block and/or boredom I set monthly challenges, thus I skirt round the paradox of choice.

January was a kind of diary; a pose from my yoga, perhaps something I ate/saw/did each day:

Not great, but I’m enjoying the routine at least. Then at the end of the month I went to see these two ballets. Please do yourself a favour and spare 1.30 minutes to watch the link. Yes I teared up. Yes I decided I want to be a ballet dancer when I grow up. I’ve started learning some of the Rameau score on my flute because of course I also need to join the orchestra.

Going off piste from the sketchbook story a bit here because I want to tell you a little bit more about the ballet. Funny thing is we nearly didn’t go but as we’d bought the tickets in advance we dragged ourselves out on a cold January night. Our seats were right at the back of the theatre, we had to crook our necks a little and when they told us no mobile phones we were royally peeved. What, no video or photos! How do we remember it or even prove we were there?

Thank God they did. We had a totally immersive experience, committed fully to memory. It was so sensuous; long sinewy limbs moving gracefully. Bodies creating curves and bends, sometimes with such intimacy and tenderness. The dancers weaving, rising, falling gently or crackling with energy as they exuberantly stomp and throw. The trust, collaboration and wholeness between them was stunning.

Meanwhile during the first performance, us philistines are whispering to each other “is that Michelle Pfeiffer? Oh that must be Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman”…

So February’s theme was dancers. Obviously.

Just as I feel like I’m starting to let go and improve, halfway through February I suddenly had no internet for almost two weeks. Sadly, there aren’t exactly troupes of ballet dancers wandering around my village to pose for me. Instead I had to look at books for reference, which meant veering away slightly from ballet, finding poses that appealed to me and just leaning into it.

That turned out to be a blessing; I found it much more gratifying and a deeper learning curve than working from flattened images on a screen. Figure drawing is such a great practice. I appreciate that dance, yoga or art photography poses aren’t very natural. For that I need to go outside, observe/sketch/stalk people going about their business. Awkward. In any case, for my purposes I’m looking for the graceful, fluid movements of underwater so I’m happy with that.

The figure drawing highlighted how absolutely pants I am at drawing faces, so I made that my March theme. The charcoal below was the first day, I kind of bailed by the time I got to hair.

Ditto drawing a hat. Life’s too short.

A quick sketch of John Singer Sargent’s ‘Portrait of Madame X’. You can learn a lot from JSS, even if (like me) you’ve never touched oil paints in your life and colour makes you nervous. Again, like me. The elegant, free-flowing, rhythmic lines of his sketches are sublime.

I’m just going to tell you exactly what I told Cherry. She wanted to know how my Sept went. Oh, it started off great. I had all sorts of fresh and new exciting ideas.

But one week into Sept and a sharp, tearing pain shot through my wrist. I yelped, rubbed it and carried on.

{It had already happened before when bike riding down the river’s edge to find the mink traps. I understand mink are merciless and squish our native species but seeing them dart silently into the water, all bright faces and the chocolate velvet fur makes me so flipping happy. The hunters toss these beautiful creatures on the bank to rot and I hate it and wanted to take pictures of them, to document it as part of the work I’m doing about the river. Anyways the bike’s jarring handlebars caught me a wrong ‘un and I wore a bandage for a week, thinking that’s enough rest. It wasn’t.}

So second time around, bandaged up, I spent days printing in the darkroom for a portfolio reading in Toulouse with two lovely people, Pangiotis from Photometria and Tania from Photon Festival. I showed them my Mérens project and they were generous and helpful, asking me to keep them updated…

Long story short, 2 weeks later and still in pain that was getting worse. X-rays show I have Ulnar Impaction Syndrome, the result of breaking my arm 15 years ago. It means my radius has shortened and now my ulna is longer (it shouldn’t be) causing it to bang against the bones in my hand. Bad enough, but I also have a tear to the fibro-cartilage complex down my outer wrist. And a bit of tunnel carpal thrown in for good measure. This is all my dominant left-hand by the way. Fun times.

I hope that doesn’t sound too whiny, but I have a Type A tendency to not sit still. In a brace for 6 weeks and trying to figure out how to heal myself without losing momentum. Obviously lifting cameras and darkroom work, and much even on the computer is difficult now – *she types this slowly with her right hand*

But I’m not the grass-grow-under-your-feet kind either, so I’ve been using a Canon EOS 500 autofocus film camera the universe provided a couple of weeks ago. It’s a light plastic body too so I can manage it in my right hand. And I got a polaroid so I can keep out of the darkroom. Typing up everything I need and printing it off rather than handwriting, even shopping lists. Reading, bingeing on videos, *walking lots, and trying very hard to be patient. That was easy when I was staying in the treehouse, 17 metres above the ground, off-grid in a forest in Spain but I’ll save that for another post.

 

 

*Taken on a hike in the Pyrénées

Canon EOS500 | Fuji Superia 200

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Last time I wrote on here we were heading full throttle into all that summer promises, and it scrubbed up good, my friend. I spent my days with my family here, fitting in work and friends and a whole bunch of good stuff as the days lengthened, yawning, stifling, dusty and hot. If you follow my instagram you will l know I indulged my passion for swimming in rivers, lakes and the sea; diving under turquoise crystal waters in Spain with little fish, urchins and octopus. I headed deep into dark and shadowy forests, and high up mountains, gasping in the thin air, but relishing the pay-off views. I hung around a lot of horses, got new cameras, and holed up in the darkroom. We visited exhibitions, flânned (I say that’s a word) cities and towns, picnicked our socks off. I had a portfolio review, an exhibition and a sprained wrist. I came this close →← to participating in a workshop at Rencontres d’Arles, but at the last minute they informed me it was digital only. Shudder.

Now a new season, one of mists and mellow fruitfulness as *Mr Kipling or someone or other once said. So while I try to hit my blogging stride again as we move into Autumn, I’ll leave it to the photographs for now:

*Calm down, I’m not a complete philistine. I know it was Keats but Mr Kipling is a purveyor of exceedingly good cakes

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