The purpose of this blog is to give the reader some idea of how my specifically artistic activities relate to the rest of my life. A part of that story has to witness the fact that there are periods in life when that relationship comes apart at the seams. One part of the story has to tell about those times when, in an extreme sense, everything else is pushed aside and neglected because a frenzy of creative work has come to occupy every waking hour …. and perhaps even a part of sleep also. By way of contrast, there are times when art has almost entirely evaporated, and one looks around in puzzlement for any indication at all that one might be called “an artist”. This is one such period for me. I am, quite simply, “beached”, left high and dry, as the art has mysteriously moved elsewhere.
Often the activity of artists is described in terms of “inspiration”, but this is, in fact, only one part of the situation. There are, of course, periods during which one’s activity as an artist is driven by external demands, such as commissions. My design work for the Leeds climbing wall a few years ago was one such experience. One’s creativity takes the form of a response to other people’s needs rather than some inner force. Then there are those periods during which the demands of everyday life rush in and the pressure of routine or maintenance activities simply sweeps aside any inclination one might have to create. This is one such time for me.
A major preoccupation for several weeks now has been the building work being done on the house. The old conservatory had reached a state in which the rot in the timbers threatened to result in its spontaneous demolition. We commissioned a new one, which is now finished, although I have to complete the internal decoration. Then we have been taken up with two family visits …. very enjoyable, but filling the horizon pretty well entirely. And so on …. and so on ….! The nearest I have been able to get to any creative work recently has been the session I spent drawing with my small grandson, when we explored Paul Klee’s idea of “tasking a line for a walk”. I suppose, at a stretch, I might consider my woodwork in the conservatory as a kind of “sculpture”, or some sort of “installation”, but neither of those terms really suits.
It isn’t the case that I am jumping up and down with frustration because I have a head full of great artistic ideas, all clamouring to be realised. Other things have, quite simply, come to fill my head. In my worst moments I find myself pushing back against a rising sense of panic, that perhaps art has deserted me altogether. In such times I just have to remind myself that I have been here before, and I will find myself once again in a situation in which my wife has difficulty in persuading me to get out of the studio and join the human race. Right now, however, high and dry, the sea seems to have gone out a very long way indeed, and it is as if, artistically speaking, I find myself on Morcambe beach where at low tide the sea is barely visible from the promenade.