After returning from Worcester, and the hanging of my current exhibition, I decided that I would take a break from art. My wife and I decided that we would take a short holiday in the Yorkshire Dales, and I don’t need to be in Worcester again until the 16th. It has been interesting to note my responses to this sudden and complete cessation of my engagement with art. I expected that I would become rather twitchy, and frustrated at not being able to get on with painting. In fact that has not been the case. I’ve been able to think about several things, to attend to some tasks which needed doing in the house and garden, and I’ve even found time to write a little. It has been possible to put in some work on the Italian language. Out in the garden briefly this afternoon I fell to thinking why this might be possible: then I had an interesting idea.
My expectation that I might feel seriously deprived by the absence of art in my life at the moment assumed that my relationship to art is perhaps a form of dependency. It was based on the assumption that I might feel some kind of withdrawal symptoms when deprived of my “supply”. In the event, I think that art has become for me rather more like a job, so that when it stops I find myself actually taking …. and enjoying …. a holiday. How very interesting!
I have often responded, when people ask me if I am “retired”, that this doesn’t really capture the essence of my situation. Indeed, I have left academia behind, but it has never really felt that the term “retirement” has been appropriate. Now I know why that should be so. It seems that I have simply changed my occupation.