Blog 5

I have recently read A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland. Now in her sixties, Maitland has spent the last twenty years or so trying to find silence. She has finally found it, of sorts, living in a remote cottage in the countryside of Scotland. 

In the book, Maitland writes extensively about her research and knowledge on the subject of silence, what it is, what it feels like, what it can or cannot be. She stayed on a remote island, travelled into the desert, lived in a forest and moved house twice before finding the silence that she needed for her.

Interestingly, Maitland tells the story of Barbara Erakko Taylor who brought an RV, travelled all across America, only to find her hermitage when she got back home. 

I thought that I wanted silence and realise that I don’t want it all the time, but definately to be part of my existence.

Maitland describes two types of silent retreat. There is the creative who needs silence in order to ‘find oneself’, through creative work, protected from the distraction of society and everyday life. The opposite is the hermit who needs silence to empty out the soul. Both seek individual fulfillment with one supporting the ego and the other breaking it down. 

As a writer and creative, Maitland finds that she needs both types of silences, in order to exist and to build herself up or break herself down. She finds it a struggle to support both, and I feel this too. 

The problem for me is that my brain is not silent. It is loud and active. 

My artworks may have a quality of silence about them, when they are being made and when they are on display, but my drawings are full of activity when you get up close to them.  

In 2006, I presented a single dot on an A1 size piece of paper. It was a fully considered, measured drawing. I was interested in Claes Oldenburg’s comment that ‘drawing is a mark that activates a space’.  As an experiment, I made one single tiny mark on paper, to see if I responded to it. The drawing hung in my studio for six months. I looked at the dot often. It had definately altered the paper, but I didn’t draw into it once. That was the work. 

These days, I have to fill the whole paper up, leaving no gaps unturned, every space drawn. The complete opposite to the dot drawing in 2006. 

In 2008 I wrote a brief saying that I wanted to ‘de-clutter’ my life - mentally, emotionally and practically. It was exciting, refreshing, yet scary, all at the same time. By the end of that year, Shawn and I had decided to sell up and go travelling. Seriously down grading our home, from a three bedroom house to a van, we had a mega clearout. Almost everything had to go and I felt at peace with the whole event. 

As I look round the van, I think it is time to have another ‘de-clutter’. I find myself keep making the same kind of drawings and I need some new processes, a new approach. Perhaps by pairing things down even more, reducing my physical and therefore mental clutter, it will help me to move on. 

Blog 4

Detail from 'Map of the World' 

I have been drawing 'into' my map of the world. The distinctive shapes of each land mass have disappeared; the map of the world is disappearing.

I am working using my embossing pen and no ink, just pushing into the paper hundreds of lines, contours, across the page. I call it my invisible drawing for I can't see what I'm doing, only close up, but not as whole piece. I have to fill the whole sheet of paper, can't leave any gaps or spaces.

I work outside as it is sunny and hot. The bright light of the sun on white paper is even worse for seeing with - a curse or an addition - an additional medium to play with?

I can hear the sheep's bells ringing round their necks in the distance, the occasional cars driving past, the flies that keep touching my legs and landing on my paper. They will become part of my work if they are not careful... There are a whole new set of circumstances working outside - noise, light (and shadow), distractions. Not bad ones, I know. But an addition to the drawing process.

There is a sense of perception with my drawing. The Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty is by my bed, but it is just too taxing at the moment to start reading.

The idea of 'colouring in' the drawing with graphite pencil has been playing on mind for days and I eventually set to, blackening the whole art work. The white lines from the embossing pen are highlighted. I can now see what I have drawn.

Whilst embossing as a 'white' drawing, the work was contemplative, calm, meditative, thoughtful, rhythmic, and there's that moment when you want to take leave and start to destroy; or take action, get more physical and dirty. You know that moment is going to happen, but you don't know when.

It felt good to 'blacken' the work, but now I question if it looks better or worse. Will it be a heading for the rubbish bin?

I leave the work alone, create some distance. The drawing is sitting there, unfinished, waiting.

I think about Richard Serra's Verb List (1967/68).

At college, the tutors would insist you keep working into the work, whether you felt it needed it or not. And I must.

I feel I'm going round in circles, but I must keep trying, keep pushing forward with my drawing. For doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

Blog 3

I have been drawing the last couple of days, on a set of new drawings which I started the beginning of January. I have taken the map of the United Kingdom as my starting point, my destination. I have plotted every place we visited from August 2009 until December 2010. Some drawings contain just those dots, whilst others are blank with only the outside line of the UK. Some contain the lines of each county and some have the grid lines of the longitude and latitude of the area. Some are a mixture of all of these things. I want to fragment these drawings, draw into them so they become abstract and 'something else', a memory, a feeling, a response to my trip in the UK during this time. I'm not looking for an exact replica of our trip , neither a visual diary, but a response to this trip, the journey we have been on, my homeland. The outcome may or may not be pleasant. I may or may not like what I see. But I want them to be a more internal response, not a conditioned response. Being away from the UK, how do I feel now about the UK? Distance, Space, Travel, Time, Boundaries...
These last two days I have started to draw a map of the world. I wonder about all the places I would like to visit. The UK looks very small in the scale of the world. This is not a negative, an observation. The drawing is looking more abstract than the UK drawings.
I have been embossing using an embossing pen and no ink creating white lines across the paper. They are softer, almost invisible. I have been using a dipping pen and black ink in other drawings. I love the way the lines appear as I glide the drawing tool across the surface of the paper. With the black ink there is such a contrast between the blackness of the black ink and the whiteness of the white paper. They are wandering lines across the paper plane, like myself wandering across the surface of the land. Imaginary and real mixed together. Sounds a bit romantic. Too romantic.
I am struggling a little and feel I need a new process of mark making. The visuality of the works look quite similar to what I've done before. I need something new.
I take a step back and flick through some of my books - Land Art to specific artists - Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, Hamish Fulton, Yves Klein and Tom Friedman - all who have influenced me at one time or another. I look at the pictures in the books in a casual kind of way, like you would a magazine, to allow snippets of imagery to lodge or disappear in my brain. Trigger points that may or may not come up randomly when I start creating again. I have made a few notes, but not too many.
There are really random links that somehow link together - John Constable's The Haywain, Joseph Beuy's Coyote, I love America and America loves me, Christo and Jeanne Claude's yellow umbrellas planted across a Chinese landscape, Richard Long's walking texts and all the drawings and marks that have been created in the landscape, especially large works that you can only see by flying above.
I do sometimes feel that many of my drawings are blueprints for something much bigger, either in scale or medium, or something else intangible. How can I execute this, make it happen?
I then return to my drawings and start drawing again.

Blog 2

I have always liked writing. From pouring over my books at school as a child, to taking notes, writing minutes, reports, memorandums, filling in documents, writing essays, descriptions, artist statements in adulthood.
In our van we carry nearly all my books. There are a lot of them, excess weight, but my treasured possessions. When my arts journals arrive by post, I scour them, for they are one of my main sources of current intellectual debate. Along with newspapers, which are difficult to come by right now, I take out lots of cuttings and file them in my books and files, relevant to their subject.
I make lists - shopping lists, 'to do' lists, birthday lists, lists of mailing lists I belong to, destinations we've visited lists, exhibitions I've been to and want to go to lists, thoughts and ideas lists, 'don't forget' lists. This list could go on.
I leave post-it notes on the stool, by my bed, stuck on books and magazines, even on the dinette window, much to the silent annoyance of Shawn.
But what to do with all this information that is in situ, divulging, waiting to be re-read, or spat out? This literary system plays an enormous part in my practice, working positively or negatively in the creative process.
I belong to Facebook, but not the best at nattering, and Tweeting looks a bit too quick for me, although I haven't tried it out. Blogging can be a new medium for me to make notes and share in a digital format. We shall see how I get on.