A market, a store, a studio

The most exciting news thing this week, was the email that let me know that I am going to have a booth at the Out of the Blue art market on October 20th! The art market is a quarterly event in the Drill Hall on Dalmeny Street, where local artists and crafters come together to sell their wonderful things. This is the first time that I will be there as a seller, so I am both very excited and not a little nervous too. Not elate because I've never had a booth on my own before (although I know Megan will be there with me in spirit).
I've got lots of lovely things for the booth, my paper paintings, camera prints, car illustrations and more. I really hope to see some of your friendly faces there!

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This week also saw me launch a new range of prints, on the Society6 website. These prints are based on digital illustrations I made a few years ago and it is lovely to have them finally see the light of day – or at least the light of other people's monitors! These pieces share some similarities with the work that I created with and for Oddhero.

The interesting thing about Society6 is that they offer these illustrations not only as art prints, but also as skins for hand-held digital gadgets and laptops, as well as t-shirts and tote bags (although I have only made a few of mine available as the latter two). There may well be something for everyone.

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The working week ended when I made a visit to look at some artist studios. It was an interesting experience and the first time I have looked studios in Edinburgh. I did so without really thinking deeply about it beforehand, viewing it as an experiment, perhaps a fact-finding mission.

Now having been on the visit, I find myself with more to think about than I had bargained for. There are as many good reason to work at home, as there are to work away from it. There is a lot to consider, although it occurs to me that jumping for the very first opportunity to come my way is probably not the best plan. More research would be a better idea.

There comes a point in all artist's careers, when one must make the leap out of the home studio. I need to consider whether I have reached that point.

A rebuilding process

My studio re-awakens

For fear of repeating myself, I will try to avoid my usual opening statement regarding the unexpectedly hasty passage of time recently, with specific regard to that which occurred since my arrival in Edinburgh a little over a week ago. It would not do to become a cliché.

My first steps at re-finding my home-town artistic feet were taken yesterday, when I put my studio back together. In these financially constricted times, I have decided to keep my studio close to home. Very close. So close, in fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it is in my home. Which, to be fair, it is.
There are both positives and negatives to having a home studio. The primary positive is the easy and instant access to the studio, at all times of day and night. I have never had a daily working schedule as an artist, so around the clock easy access is greatly beneficial to my work. On the other hand, when one has a home studio one can never escape from work. As an artist who does a lot of work internally, I already have enough problems escaping from my work at the best of times. With a home studio, there is almost no escape. Other than to do outside, but that is a different matter entirely.

I've also been looking through my painting storeroom this week. There is a lot of work in it, some ranging back to my first tentative professional steps some twelve years ago. In the coming weeks, I am going to catalogue this work and decide upon its fate. Some I plan to place for sale on Etsy, a little I hope to keep hold of. For the rest, who can tell… sometimes one must simply let go and move on. We shall see.

Time, percussion, movement and light

Time moves onwards. Weeks seem to fly by and the long months I had to work on my show slip by quicker than I can comprehend. This has been a stretch of time that has been dotted with intense moments of painting, like bulging knots tied randomly in a long piece of string. In between those moments, I think and I plan and I prepare and I worry.

Those moments have stretched out now over seven weeks. Seven weeks spent working on my latest series, for Kevin Low and my joint exhibition in April at Union Gallery (regular readers will have noticed that I've mentioned it already). For all that the time has flown by, it has also been hard work and I can feel my momentum nearing its end. I have one painting currently on my board and three more that I plan to start. Reaching the end of these last four will be a relief, a break from the pressure that has been constantly on my mind since late November. It will not, however, be the end of my preparations for the show.

With six weeks to go, my vague internal estimate says it will take me almost approximately four weeks more weeks to finish all that I need do. Even though it is a very comfortable margin, I still hope to finish sooner because the sooner I finish, the sooner I can relax.

My recent move onto bigger panels has therefore been timed well. After over a month of working on panels of one square foot each, I was beginning to flag, finding the small space was becoming constrictive and so my desire to reach the end of this work was growing. Happily, the larger panels have rejuvenated me for my final push to the end.

As a consequence of both this increased area and energy, my latest paintings have become a good deal freer than the earlier, smaller ones. My marks are bolder and more expansive and, when the polyrhythmic percussive pandemonium of Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp or Sun Ra is filling my head, the world almost entirely slips away. Low winter sunlight is diffused into my studio through sheets of bubble wrap, taped over the windows to obscure the distractions of the outside world. In the light, with full ears and upon a paint-spattered pink bed sheet, I move and I paint and I lose myself in the work for a while. Nothing is better than this.

Soon those bulging knot moments of otherness will pass and my work will be hanging in Union Gallery. I hope the time keeps on speeding towards that moment, for I long to relax again, almost as much as I can't wait to see my finished work on the wall. Yet at the same time, those moments of loss of self, when I am simply existing in that almost sublime moment, are what I live for and I do not and never will want them to end.

Changed priorities

There has been almost no art action this week, not through a lack of a desire to paint, but rather due to spending my day time working in an office. Unsurprisingly, spending a large part of one's day in an uninspiring environment is not condusive to creation. The freedom and space needed to create art is effectively destroyed, not just be being in this environment but also by the regimented hours required in attendance.

It proves that making art is not simply a case of simply turning up and getting on with the work. Art needs space, more than anything. What may seem to others as an artist flitting about and not actually working, is the necessary time needed to recharge one's creative batteries, the time needed to find the moment when creation can occur. Locked into the daily grind, this process atrophies.

I read the news today

After the small throwaway paintings reached their end, I wanted to keep painting every day yet not on the same restricted A4 scale. The next logical step, to me, was to move to newsprint, specifically newspaper pages, which I would gesso then paint on.

Whilst the first couple were made in the much same manner as the smaller pieces, they soon began to move into markedly different territory. I wanted to challenge my habit of drawing shapes and then colouring them in, a recurring pattern from my pop art that seemed to have been creeping back. This took me off in an unexpected direction and whilst I had been thinking Motherwell in my head, Miro seemed to come out of my brush. The ongoing evolution continues, however, and that moment has already passed.

The increased scale is a joy to work on, giving me more freedom in my movement, allowing my brushes to slide with more fluidity. The contents of the pages under the gesso has also been interesting, adding textures and shapes where I have allowed it to show through. The pieces feel a little more mature than the smaller works. Which is good, as I am now starting to think about my next body of work, about what I want it to say.

The other big change this week has been in my studio. I've moved my furniture around and where once I had a painting corner of my living room, now I have a living corner in my studio. It is a better use of the room and the increased space is going to be great to work in.