My aim is to write weekly blog posts; it always has been, but I rarely achieve it because my head is always in the clouds.
Especially recently, when I started again trying to explain myself to others. Trying to introduce myself in a meaningful, succinct way.
And here is the thing: trying to write minimally and create minimally is a struggle for me; I am not a minimalist artist (anyone who asks a question of me via email knows I send essays worth of information back). I literally throw as many ideas out as I can as quickly as I can to see what sticks. But everything always seems to fall off, leaving me with nothing that seems to work.
All the envelope paintings I have made up to this year
In the last few years, I have been creating paintings on “do not bend” C5 envelopes whilst attending the Old Electric’s Creative Network Breakfast meetings. And they asked me why on envelopes why not paper:
1. I don’t need to stretch the envelopes; they don’t bend.
2. I don’t need to underpaint as there is already a neutral tone
3. I do it so I’m not precious, the meetings can be 60 to 90 minutes so I work fast.
4. The performative act of making is more important than the finished piece.
I paint much like I throw, and that’s at a ridiculous rate that forms a bottleneck at the other end. That is to say, in 3 hours last year, I prepared 100 balls of clay, threw them all, and scrapped a third. But I then spent a few days decorating. I then squeezed everything tumble-stacked into two kiln loads. I took the work to UCLAN and glazed it there in an ash glaze I made from my home fire. It took two kiln loads in UCLAN’s gas kiln, which is bigger than my electric kiln.
Bowls with boats drawn on them sat on my studio’s shelves
The biggest backlog for me is doing the things I really don’t like, though, and that affects both my pottery and my paintings. And that is photographing the lot, and editing it, and it just sits undone because I social media has had this affect on me where because people never seem to respond to what I create no matter how I photograph it I have this inner voice that tells me I am not a good photographer or writer. And despite trying to convince myself otherwise, this is always on the periphery of my thoughts.
The thing that slows down that stage is this unfathomable inability to market my work in any meaningful way. I find doing craft fairs or ceramic fairs or any sort of fairs a struggle because in those settings, I don’t really know how to act. I have tried talking to people, and that scares them away and then if you don’t interact with people, they don’t like that. So when I have done these sorts of events, I inevitably just feel lonely and bothered that I’m not good enough.
Clouds are always prevalent in my work
Someone once suggested that I should do more altered prints and go to events and draw and paint whilst I talk to people, but that talking part, getting the first person to engage. I don’t know how to do it. I also don’t drive, and doing events further away than Blackpool from my home is a big investment in terms of time and money.
Inevitably, the whole situation makes me feel apart from my peers and my audience like I exist in another place. Poor sales have generally left me feeling lonelier, and working at a pace I enjoy costs money, and the work just piles up into a sky-high tower (it’s more of a set of shelves at the moment filled with really useful boxes to keep things pristine). So in the end, I just end up working in spurts of creative energy and spend my life in between making sure everyone is fed and happy. The rest of the time, I’m just daydreaming of a better life whilst the clouds drift past my head.