art

Come and go

May 24, 2018

On the surface, it may seem that I’m having a dry spell. It’s true that lately I’ve not been producing work that I want to show. But there’s been quite a bit of busy stuff going on down below in the nether regions.

That’s the thing about creativity, and particularly I’m talking about making art because that’s what I do. But these things apply to various areas of life. If you’re like me, art IS life, the two cannot be separated. And I have a very holistic approach to art, which is something I’ll talk about more another time. Sometimes you can’t knuckle down to work. Maybe physically, emotionally or mentally you’re just not in the right place, not ‘feeling it’ Or maybe your life just isn’t giving you the actual space and/or time you need.

Can I please use my river as a metaphor, again? Thanks ;)

Sometimes it flows beautifully clean and clear, brimming with life, things bubbling happily as the light dances. It’s utter magic. Then there are times – coincidentally these often happen after a period of torrential rain – that the debris brought downstream clogs the river. The fallen logs, rocks and stones build up at the edges and create contained pools. As the water level drops the algae, sludge and ick build up. It gets smelly and stagnant.

It’s similar with my art if I don’t keep moving. I can’t budge the muck and get back to the sparkling joyous place of activity. I too get icky.

Recently I’ve had a breakthrough. I’ve learnt that creativity, like most living things, is cyclical or at the very least non-linear. And the shift to quieter days are not inherently a bad thing. They are a necessary part of the process, and process is the quaffle rather than the golden snitch, which is where the fun lies.

As I see it now, pauses are essential. They allow for idea germination, resting and relaxation, other creative work or projects away from art, pondering the next move, or simply just taking a big step back helps me to look at the entire forest instead of focusing on a particular tree. The key is to just keep the energy softly flowing, in whatever way works for you, until it circles back around to the exciting making art bit.

I’d been a bit untethered since coming back from Madrid. It was a great source of inspiration but it also took a lot out of me and longer to recover than I thought it would. I’m still struggling with issues in my body, my movement and my emotions post cancer remission that I hadn’t banked on being so difficult. So I’ve been doing a lot of me-work, trying to get stable. An unexpected blessing came with a visit from a friend, that marked the start of an extended period of commitments that will take me away sporadically from my art practice for a few weeks yet.

I acknowledge these interruptions and instead of getting annoyed by them, just accept them. With my friend here (and luckily she’s a very like-minded one) I found I was able to cultivate an ‘inner’ practice, and find other ways to keep my brain-radio tuned in to the Suzie Art Station. We visited art exhibitions – the fantastic Eduardo Chillida in Toulouse and the annual Artistes à Suivre; pottered around exploring my local area, viewing through her eyes was fun and refreshing. Of course, there were many walks in the hills and forest, or by lake and river. And above all, talking – swapping ideas, seeing things from a different perspective. With my friend’s insight I’ve gained some clarity on a goal of mine.

During this phase, you are often absorbing all sorts of information that will be of use at some future point, percolating ideas or just giving yourself a chance to be still. I’m going to allow this ebb and flow to happen, without force or strain. My new yoga instructor gently reminds me to not dwell on the past or ponder the future, but to keep prompting myself to remain in the present when I catch my thoughts drifting in either of those directions. And as I said earlier life=art, art=life. The interconnectedness of everything.

“It will come and go, and you must let it come and go” – Elizabeth Gilbert

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Cyanotypes by the river

April 27, 2018

There are two aspects I love most about art. First is the process, more so than the finished work. I lose myself in exploring, experimenting, trying, failing and succeeding. You probably know this already. I’m indeed an artistic Jill-of-all-trades so to speak. Usually when I’m in the zone I’ll narrate to myself out loud too while I go along – I adopt a kind of Delia Smith cooking voice. No idea why.

The second is making work directly outside in nature. In short, nothing beats being completely absorbed by this creative flow while connecting to something much bigger. The very thing that inspires me. Besides, outdoors really is the best artist’s studio of all.

A few days ago I went down to the river with a heavy backpack, a rough plan and a dog I should have left at home. My river has been super important to me over the past year. As I’m recovering and building my strength and life, I’ve begun to notice just how fundamental art is to both this AND how I coped with cancer. I’m still very much a work in progress in this respect. But I will say this, art has been as crucial to me as the conventional treatments and integrative medicine and self-care on my journey, and this is definitely shaping my future.

Anyway, back to the river. I’m still working on my Prussian Blue project, but I’ve also been thinking of other things to try. I made cyanotypes three plus years ago, but that was working with digital negatives. This time I wanted to work more directly with the water itself; attempt to capture and distill the movement and light.

The day before I prepped the various papers with the cyanotype chemicals, popped them in an old photo-paper lightproof bag to keep them safe overnight. Thankfully the next day was a beautiful sunny, peaceful one. At the river I tried first sealing the paper in a cellophane bag with duct tape and putting it in the water.

But trying to get the paper into the cellophane, then sealing it with duct tape was a real pain. I wasn’t quite happy with the results either as the light didn’t pass through as well as I hoped. Washing the paper in the river was lovely, though. Meanwhile, Delia was chatting away while I problem solved.

So next I decided to see what would happen if I just put the paper directly into the edges of the water. Let the water lap, let the leaves, gravel, stones and debris create the images without too much intervention from me. Although the dog trod on one of them. But that actually created some interesting detail with the disturbed grit. Oh and and a mozzie landed on another, shortly before biting me on my builder’s bumcrack. Note to self: Put repellent in the backpack too.

A handful of the cyanotypes didn’t work out too great. Mainly either wrong choice of paper or underexposure gave me weak results. But most of them did work out good. These initial experiments have me pretty excited to continue seeing what other possibilities there are out there. I love the subtle shifting tones, gradations and random chance element. And of course, the process.

Since then I’ve been back to the river with some different papers, a different stretch of the water, and at a different time of day. I’ve learnt some new tricks and come up against some new problems but I’m enjoying myself hugely and I’ll update again soon with how the project is progressing.

Sketchbook daily

March 17, 2018

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.

All the browns

February 27, 2018

After days of torrential rain, the heavy clouds where chased across the sky by a biting wind. My roof. Let’s not even go there. I’ll mention my bedroom now has an interesting water feature and my son’s room is minus a part of ceiling. Oh how I missed the river.

Snookered by the weather for so long I was itching to go check it out even though it was bone-numbing cold outside. The ferocious, swollen waters had broken about 5 metres free of the nearside banks. Shouting and angry, spitting expletives in river language like a raving volatile drunkard.

The dog sniffed at a lump; a poor drowned mole, bloated and grey. Uprooted trees and branches hurtle downstream. Wreckage snagged on the way creates coffee-coloured whirlpools and swirls of white foam. Hmm, why am I reminded of Starbucks? When the sun breaks cover it brightens the muddy water with golden shards of dancing light.

On the far bank something catches my eye – a flash of rich chocolate velvet. A large mink is running furiously up and down along the bank. What is it searching for? It’s home is also damaged by the rains? Is it searching for an easy meal? I guess fishing is out of the question even for something this strong and agile.

Downstream are two bridges – one is a concrete road bridge. The trees, branches and debris carried along by the water have formed a mountain. Unable to pass under the bridge, the has water backed up. It now diverts across the bridge, creating a cascade. The roar is deafening and terrifying.

I gingerly go up to the iron footbridge and take some uneasy steps across it. It’s high enough that the river couldn’t have compromised it, but, ya know you can’t be too careful. I almost chicken out of standing on the metal grid. I watch the torrent rush downstream beneath my feet, the trunks racing with it. Imagine the bridge giving way! I’m struggling and gasping as the icy, murky brown water pounds and batters my body. Oh yes, I’m a bit like that…

Soon this will all be over. The frogs, the kingfisher, the heron, the brown trout and even the mink will return. Everything will circle back round to where it all began. The waters will retreat into their easy curves, the sound will become a gentle murmur again.

“In the end, it was always the river; everything returned to it” – Truman Capote

alternative adventures

March 23, 2015

So yes, alternative processes. Everything I’ve learnt so far has been by trial and error. LOTS of error. The sun returned a few of weeks ago. Off I went playing with cyanotypes, kallitypes, lumens and pinholes. I’ve lots to say about all of this mucking about but for now I’ll just talk about cyanotypes. After dabbling with them late last summer/autumn the sun got weaker, so I stopped and moved on to other things. However, I did get this far:

I was using some old chemicals I’d bought years before. They had ended up going very gloopy. But they mixed up OK and with the help of the wonderful Alternative Photography site I made some reasonable pictures.

Side note: Have you also discovered that most of the time people on the internet are super helpful when you ask questions, but occasionally you find yourself somewhere in a fb group full of insufferable know-it-alls? Let’s just say it’s another reason to steer clear of facebook.

This time round I bought pre-mixed chemicals and my God. What a difference. Although it took me dozens of test strips to get the exposure times right. And that was after a huge amount of paper testing. It would seem that cyanotypes don’t like paper that has too much size in it, too acid or not acid enough. I’ve tried everything from pricey 100% cotton handmade printmaking paper to cheap and cheerful cartridge. I think I’ve found the perfect paper, for me. But because this is all arbitrary, Arches Aquarelle.

You make a cyanotype sensitising your chosen paper by coating with equal parts of Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate, dissolved in distilled water and away from light. Leave to dry in the dark. I make a sandwich of a board, newspaper, my prepared paper, digital negative, sheet of glass and expose in the sun. Once exposed, dip in a tray of dilute white vinegar for a few seconds before rinsing under running water until the whites have cleared completely. Leave to dry for 24 hours, allowing the cyanotype to oxidise.

In my experiments, I’ve learnt oodles about preparing the digital negatives in photoshop, getting the curves right etc. I also have become obsessed with checking the weather forecast for UV levels; if it’s going to be a good day I’m down in the basement sensitising paper before breakfast. Any UV level under 3 and it’s is probably not worth trying to expose, but a wee bit of cloud doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve found with that level, Arches paper and a well prepared negative, 90 seconds exposure somewhere between 12-3pm seems just about right. Late lunch then. Of course as the spring turns to summer that will all change…

Keeping plenty of nerdy notes as I go along. On days it wasn’t sunny I tried toning. So far I’ve tried green tea, black tea, coffee and red wine. The green tea gives a pinkish tone; the coffee is too dark for me. Red wine doesn’t work but it’s nice to drink while you’re tittyarsing about. The black tea I think, works the best, toning the bright blue down and giving the white areas a nice cream colour if it’s fairly weak. All toning works better with a 30 second dip into a weak solution of soda crystals first to bleach slightly. A strong tea brew tones rich red brown like this.

Of badgers and Bob

March 10, 2015

Driving home one evening I saw this beautiful badger dead on the side of the road. She was a pregnant female, heavy, swollen belly and teats. I was so sad. I spent some time with her, observing closely every detail so I could keep her memorised and later honour her life, one mother to another. Her soft velvety brown paw-pads and mud encrusted claws from digging; how the fur on her muzzle was silky smooth until it was harsh bristles on her hindquarters. The deep blacks and mottled greys. Her sweet tufted ears, the snarl of pain and her clean white teeth. I worked in my sketchbook later, hoping that the ideas would come to me.

And then I discovered mezzotint…

I’ve spent the past few weeks working on this plate, but now I feel it is finished. I hope I have been successful in bringing her back to life, the snarl of physical pain and the glassy eyes replaced with a heartbeat and warmth of fur, and a sense of sadness. Sarah Gillespie, an artist I admire greatly, wrote a wonderful post a couple of years ago about drawing dead creatures with respect and gratitude.

One of the trickiest aspects of printmaking is knowing when enough is enough. It’s always tempting to add extra detail or scrape away a little more. My teacher says he always frames his proofs and hangs them where he will see them frequently and if they need more work he will make a better decision like that, rather than in the heat of the moment.

At the same time as the badger mezzotint I have been working on an aquatint. This has been in progress since last December, and knowing when to call it a day has been really, really difficult! Over winter it’s a challenge to keep my momentum going, my studio is open at the back and thus too cold for me to work in there. Instead, I get the moka pot bubbling or a large brew of something herbal, put on some music (right now I’m revisiting the huge CD collection we have, and I’ve fallen in love all over again with Blood On The Tracks) and take over the large table by the wood burner, laying out what I need for the day and trying to hunker down.

Now spring is in the air, sun is shining and for the past few days I’ve been busying myself with lumens, cyanotypes and pinhole experiments that I will show-and-tell soon.

Black Dog

January 29, 2015

Black dogs are a bit of a thing for me, metaphorically and literally. It took me a while, but I finished my inaugural mezzotint. Yes you are quite right, it is tiny. 6 x 5 cms of tiny to be exact. It took a long time of careful burnishing, scraping, stippling and deep concentration while I got my head round working from light to dark, burnishing the whites the most and working backwards to create tone.
Then inking up is a bit of a skill in itself. It’s all tarlatan dolly, dirty wipe, tissue wipe, retroussage. Fancy!
Next lesson is going to be interesting because I have talked my teacher into trying a non-toxic method of hardground etching. I showed him my shiny new copy of Non-Toxic Printmaking. After his initial horror he buried his nose in the book for ages, scuttled off and came back with the necessary bits we need.

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