Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been floundering in a hole of non-creativity in recent months, and increasingly distressed by this. Tonight, however, driving over to the life-drawing class in Ilkley, a possible explanation came to mind, and a way out of this situation.
Ever since I got back from our family holiday last autumn I have been thinking too much. I have been preoccupied with ideas rather than with images. This has been in contrast to previous productive periods, such as the burst of creativity that followed my visit to Malta a couple of years ago, or the artistic “retreat” I enjoyed some years ago near the Cumbrian town of Appleby. Although it did emerge afterwards that there were implicit connections between the pieces I produced, I certainly didn’t set out to paint any concepts or ideas.
I hoped that the little break I planned a couple of months ago in the south of England might set me going again, but it didn’t, and artistically it was actually a complete failure. Since then all of the things that have come to mind as the possible basis for pictures have been attempts to illustrate concepts, and I have had no specifically visual ways of getting to grips with them. This is putting things quite the wrong way round …. putting the proverbial cart before the horse.
My realisation that this might be the root of my problem was suggested in an amusing way by today’s development in Parliament. The place is in urgent need of major refurbishment (and not only the building). Not to put too fine a point on it, the buildings are actually falling apart, and major work is in process to prevent this. In the middle of a debate today, however, the chamber had to be evacuated because water was pouring in. Suddenly I had the idea that they might have been facing a kind of Noah’s flood in which God was threatening to destroy our wicked politicians. It would have made a great political cartoon …. but it is not the foundation for a good picture. Not only are ideas in themselves insufficient as the basis for art, I am coming to think that they might, if allowed to get out of hand, result in the death of art. Tomorrow I intend to tear up and bin all the stuff I have been accumulating recently in which I have been drowning in concepts but thirsting for images.