back up

This week begins in a more reflective mood – I’m backing up all my documentation so my computer can stop getting upset about all the large files I have stored there. It gives me chance to go through old photos and photos of paintings. I’m missing some photographs I took at an exhibition of Eugene Leroy at the Michael Werner gallery in London (see here) over the summer. Thick impasto paint dried dripping off the canvas, gleefully masking the forms being built up in glorious oil paint. Leroy takes his influences from Auerbach and Kossoff – but it is a more focussed sort of chaos – in the London townhouse of the exhibition his paintings seemed at home; where Auerbach’s work would look awkward or uncomfortable. I say this having visited Auerbach’s paintings in similar(ish) West London townhouses, I’ve found them to be looking grisly, weird and uncomfortable. These are not qualities I would attribute to Leroy – Leroy deepens his intensity in civilised surroundings.

There are a lot of photographs on this little laptop. This’ll take time.

The current batch being transferred are from a wander I took to Crostwight in Norfolk to see a beautiful little church an hour or so from the coast. The wall paintings were remarkable – I took the shape of the devil’s head off one. Beautiful church, slightly desolate and ragged, and fitted with a harmonium (I want some people to record there – I want to be present when they record there) I’ve put a few pictures of it here: insta. @ill_copy I think a lot about this little church.

The insane amount of documentation will have to be shifted onto usb sticks – with plenty needing deletion. The difficulties I have photographing pieces I’ve dealt with by taking as many pictures as possible – this is the down side – my hoarding impulses allowed free reign by the ease of digital photography.

a copy of Persian clouds – A4 sketchbook

rain

devil in the landscape

121.1 26/10/23

The first one to one of the MA and we discussed much – mostly about limitations and how useful they can be – or perhaps how useful I find them. I can find it difficult to focus – I throw out too many ideas, and when it comes to accounting for them they prove impractical. Instead of brainstorming I bring things together slowly, using materials as my core – letting them guide the work and allowing me to think deeply on one thread of thought. I spoke of my desire to create a book – probably a book of drawings – we discussed some ideas – and it was suggested I am hard on myself. Now there are reasons for this. That thing that they call ‘imposter syndrome’ is one, I have very little in the way of feedback so I am working in a vacuum – my mindset tends towards the uh bleak (as someone with depression I need clarity if I am going to do work), also I am largely self taught and a tougher attitude is very useful. Possibly most importantly I take the work very seriously and have very high ambitions for it – as work not – sadly as a money making job…. Lastly I was asked about the differences between my drawing and painting. Obviously there are differences – I like having different tools for different effects – I do bring drawing into the odd painting & I used to use painterly techniques in drawing. For the present though I am happy to use drawing as quick sketching – a way to sharpen up my thinking and looking – and a quick way to process or delineate ideas or scraps of images. Probably this will change again. There is something satisfying about having disparate mean of practise that broght together create their own meanings (I mentioned Patrick Kieller in the meeting)

For the moment I plan to keep on in this fashion I feel like the course is aiding my focus and the results are rather exciting

failing iii

I spoke about something I wanted to do sometime ago at our last MA session – I wanted to mess with corporate stock photos – but when it came to it I got so bored of staring at them I packed it in & looked for inspiration elsewhere. I look for ways into culture that impact upon me but would be impossible for me to impact upon – these are things that pollute our consciousness – I tried again just out of curiosity

failing ii

mixed media on rag paper, 190 x 280 mm

another still yet to finish – it’s not really failing though – I’m slowly finding my way, bit too slowly if I wanted somesort of commercial aspect. That’s the thing – to be an artist is to sell

uh

the music I most admire is experimental, the album currently to the fore of rotation is called ‘Chord’ by Eddie Prevost, NO Moore, James O’Sullivan and Ross Lambert; it is not commercial. It is the music I design posters for. The painting above – in this it’s unfinished state – has been co-opted into the background of one such poster (there’s a page devoted to them under the nights’ title of Soundhunt at the top of the page). This is a way I can get my painting seen – & support a music I think a great deal of. I think many of the musicians do not make their living with this – being academics / teachers to earn their cash. Even so they create events such as Soundhunt so they can play – often to each other – but still they play and the scene across Britain seems large…. The attitude, especially among the improvisors is to play with ideas, test out theories and probably quite often – make wild stabs in the dark – just to see what happens. I like the music because – well maybe I’ve took on their influence – I make a mess until something resonates…. or at least that can be a substantial part of my painting. It’s comparable I think – though I don’t do it in front of an audience + it takes some time – still comparable some. Failure is part of the process – if you like

strike

I was on strike today – following the advice of our union ‘Unite’ – a decent turnout of members voted in favour of the motion and this is the first of four days. Due to the demands of my studies I can join the picket line two out of four days. I’ll try and pop by and say “hello” on the other days. Uhm I’m tired. I’m happy we’re doing it. Pay rises need to rise keeping pace with costs of living – or at least inflation.

I don’t hear much conversation happening around the labour movement, and I think we’re consistently hitting new lows in working conditions, access to education, healthcare, quality of life, healthy food, and access to housing – especially housing. While pay divides have been getting higher and higher. Since the eighties these things have gotten drastically worse but over the last ten years media and political conversations on poverty have been apathetic or ghoulish at best – mocking and bullying commonly. Counter-arguments are few and often posed as provocations. & yet… disentangling disingenuous or stupid or malicious arguments feels like a waste of lifespan; because there’s so little of it, so it’s oppositional – so it’s unreasonable (a particularly English problem I think & one that’s fuckin us). The labour movement is essential to any discussion on equality – it is unfinished – and is needed in these crazy times. Equality seems to be something we all – uh – aspire to? Certainly artists, HR departments and academics can agree with activists that it’s an aspiration worth having. So many arguments become moot once poverty strips you down to one dense manky clump of wriggly nerve endings.

Most of our politicians should be tarred, feathered and defenestrated – their contempt for the rest of us is palpable. The money they take at our expense- for themselves, for their peers – is obscene.

Since the transformation of art colleges, since the dismantling of the welfare state, since the death of squatting, and since most low pay work has become impossible to live on and casual work has more or less disappeared art has gradually returned to being the province of the well off. It can be as intersectional as you like but the culture will be manifestly out of reach from anyone wishing to create their own paths or devise their own mini arts world. The need to make cold hard cash as quickly as possible while participating in ‘creative industry’ will always prioritise assimilating into the monied cultures rather than pursuing experimentation or explicating unpalatable truthes or marking out alternative narratives. Anything without a very simple, vague or bland narrative will not be much more than a brief blip in the information streams. Creepy kitsch seems to be the manifest aesthetic (that may just be Cambridge) but aesthetics are no longer debatable….

>we are just prawns to the financial sector<

Here’s a picture of a German lady peasant about to stick her finger in a chickens’ arsehole (a drawing executed of table porcelain ~ poverty tourism ~ creepy kitsch):

Pencil on paper, a5 sketchbook — I came to this manner of drawing so I could apply it to anything and everything – probably my main influence is Asgor Jorn – with it I can draw something I dislike without having to stare at it long. Draw out the ridiculous. Hah. The sketches are very quick; often not thirty seconds.

draw ii

pencil and sanguine in sketchbook, a5, 2013

graphite on paper, 170 x 120 mm, 2014

pencil in sketch book

Pulling some drawings out of the archive.

failing

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett, ‘Worstward Ho’ here

There’s a large pile of paintings on my floor – not a neat pile neither but a big sloppy pile – strewn paintings – work’s unfinished and occasionally picked up and worked over – sometimes finding a state I’m happy with, sometimes returning to the pile. I recently went through the folder of completed paintings, pulled out about a fifth of them, and returned them to the floor.

The Beckett quote has been spread across the internet in a variety of memes. Quite rightly. The struggle to act is hard, the struggle to say something is hard – what has sense – what has meaning – what can we say with conviction – ? I am speaking personally here. Where to put value. Interrogating myself is compulsive. Doing something which creates impetus to do more; it can be frightening. Slowing down, filtering, and rendering thoughts comprehensible seems impossible (or a sell out out – is this what hegemony looks like)…. is that anxiety or is this anxiety – or perhaps depression….

Beckett’s methods of paring down and working in cycles – and showing the ridiculousness and the horror and beauty of the (maybe) randomness of our thoughts and impulses – it’s effective. It’s an effective way of balancing depression and anxiety in my thought processes….. ideas and events can be pulled into a stream, and weighted in context…. I have both depression and anxiety, and they need balancing.

mixed media on rag paper, 190 x 280 mm

This is part of my pile of unfinished pictures. I like it but I don’t think it finished – is it a dead end? I am cautious of adding to it because I feel like it would lose everything I like about it – on the other hand it does not contain everything I want it to – maybe it is stuck in an inbetween state – maybe it is stagnant, maybe I just need to change my perception of it…. or maybe I’m being too cautious.

[Maybe the only failure is not finding an audience]

draw