Sweet Little Reminder

of how, as it's been so long, you forget how good things can be. The reminder is sweeter still when been forgotten for a long time. When you're in forced contentment with less than ideal circumstances. It only takes a word, a sentence from a stranger or a look or a song, and things conspire to jog your memory. Kinda kick starts everything, which is a blessing if it's your emotions, a pain in the arse if it's your imagination.

it's a pleasure

I'm not a Hedonist, well, maybe a long term hedonist, rather than seeking short term gratification (which doesn't really work), so maybe i am.. no. Maybe i'm more in line with Epicurus (he was in that book on philosophy i read, he wasn't a materialist though, as many people claim, wrongly. He didn't believe we should be gluttonous, he was more a believer in basic needs to fulfill pleasure - friendship, shelter, food. Simple pleasures).

ANyway...

what i meant to say was about painting. Because painting is pleasurable, i mean maybe this applies to all art forms, but paint, especially oil, with it's slippery, buttery feel, it's pleasurable to paint with that, or its pleasurable to paint with pleasure in mind. Not that that's all painting is, or that's all a painter's life should be - pleasure. The opposite in fact, for me definitely, roughness of life, turmoil, depression, anxiety, apathy, unhappiness, troubles, all conspire to make paint pleasurable, if painting is your goal. Not that i advocate chasing after these negatives in order to paint better, though maybe i did that when i was younger. Wanting to paint better, being inspired by good ideas, having painting tied up with your life, that's as good a way as any. Making painting your centre, not your centre of focus, but what you focus with.

All these painters i love, from the past, Boucher, Fragonard, Rowlandson, they are not 'dry' painters, they have flair and style, and the tip of their brush or pen is filled with excitement, and jitters, and flowing, it glows. Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Baselitz, Van Gogh, Richter, Cecily Brown, Chardin, Daumier... And the content? nowadays it's been pulled apart for so long that it's a struggle just to not worry about content. Just to paint what's around you, to be comfortable. That's what it is, 90% of life is rhetoric, and that goes for the arguments you have with yourself.. that's how you win them. Well, not win, but a convincing argument is enough. Especially in matters of art, which are removed from life, they do not require as much reason as life does.

Art, i may be wrong in saying (but i convinced myself) that Wittgenstein did for philosophy what Duchamp did for art, not that their intentions were the same, but that the effect they had was that art began to turn in on itself (oh this has happened before, and began in art probably, in earnest, with Monet and Impressionism.) When art started to be less about life, and more about art. And when philosophy became less about life, and more about philosophy. When it all became a bit insular and elite. Funny how, during these 'elite' years, art has been more accessible to the public via free galleries and tv programmes than at any other time.

Actually it was pretty rather pointless to say, that last paragraph, wasn't it? (Is my bumbling manner offensive? i didn't think it could be, but i don't seem to put people at ease in telephone conversations, even when i'm being really really nice..)

Pleasure, it's in writing too. But it's not the pleasure of a cake or a lazy day in front of the television. Its the pleasure of a beer on the top of a mountain. Or a kiss after a years separation.

noth

Wake up each morning with a 'complete' feeling of emptiness. I wiki'd it.. and found the exact things i felt - "boredom, social alienation and apathy".

I went on to read - "travellers and artists are often intrigued by and attracted to vast empty spaces, such as open deserts, barren wastelands or salt flats, and the open sea"

i can't find a reason to carry on. It not being the first time is a glimmer maybe, but that it keeps recurring hints at something that probably needs checking.

Some little things - isolate and exaggerate

Another idea i had for the kids, something which i thought might be cool to teach children about, is like a mini modern art class. Teaching 7 year olds about Joseph Beuys, John Cage and Duchamp, or get them to recite some Dadaist poems.., that would be so fantastic to see how they responded to it, and whether they could come up with their own work in that same vein. I suspect they wouldn't view it as transgressive in any way at all, they'd probably just come at it with confidence, like with everything else they attempt.

....

Anyway.

I was stuck on monday, i really wasn't quite sure what to do, like every monday, but worse. Then tuesday came, and i still wasn't any clearer, so i figured maybe it was because i had only two huge canvases in front of me, big canvases, that means whatever is put on there becomes a big statement. You go to all that trouble to paint something big and people expect it to be more meaningful than something just drawn on the back of an envelope. So i thought maybe that's what was holding me back, so i went to BandQ and got me a sheet of hardboard for £2, cut it into 8 squares and started painting. It worked really well too, above are the 6 i've done so far. Just little things, as if a fly has passed by and saw these little objects bestowed with such epic ideas and beauty. It's really helped, and it really is about attitude, that's what causes you to make good things or not. To 'isolate and exaggerate' is mine at the moment. That's the way i'm trying to view things, to take an object or a person, and almost caricaturely, but not quite, paint them, filling them out to the corners of the canvases. Making them big and bold and colourful. Exaggerating poses and lines and colours, making small things epic.

And i think, in no small part, this positive turn in my work has been influenced by the teaching. It's useful having other things going on, which distract you, alongside time when you focus on painting. Last year in manchester i was working at a library, and had a few clubs i was going too, and i was getting drunk a couple of nights a week too, that was distraction enough. This year i have the teaching, the scraping out the pigeon trailer, and things the job centre has been throwing at me, but i won't have that for much longer, will have to give it up. So.. it's all good.

Also, read this Consolations of Philosophy by De Botton, it's really good, have loaned out Montaigne's Essays ( a mammoth book) from the library. But occasionally he introduces images. Not just alongside the writing, but instead of. An example:

"..It is because love directs us with such force towards the second of the will-to-life's two great commands that Schopenhauer judged it the most inevitable and understandable of our obsessions.

5. The fact that the continuation of the species is seldom in our minds when we ask for a phone number is no objection to the theory..."

He gives us the task of collecting the dots, he doesn't spell it, makes us work a little more. Which, though this is probably a primitive way of using pictures and words as one language, it's sort of exciting (though i'm easily excitable..). It's been done before, i've seen some W.G.Sebald books that use pictures, and Christian Boltanski's Sterblich is a book that uses only images, but in a wordy like way.

Comics would be the obvious point of reference, but in most i've read the words and images are treated as two seperate parts, two different languages, rather than trying to combine the two.

kids

How do you teach Mardi Gras to 8 year olds in the context of a Mask Making art class...? Why is Mardi Gras relevant to mask making, when there is nothing inherently 'mardi-gras'..ian about mask making..? and why is it relevant when we even digress from mardi gras masks to talk about other masks from different cultures?

I found out the day before the class that the mask making wasn't just about masks, but had to be Mardi Gras themed.. so i tried to, briefly, try to understand what Mardi Gras was in order to impart this understanding to children. I didn't do the introducing very well, i couldn't seem to convince myself what the point was, so it was difficult to transfer this clarity to 8 year olds. Plus as it was my first time teaching i was nervous anyway, and spoke a bit too fast, and didn't quite know how to talk to the kids "on their level" (although i'm sure talking to children on their level doesnt mean their level, but a mutual level) nor  did i ask many good questions. I don't have authority, i don't have leadership, i don't have their attention even, i'm not that sure i want it to be honest.

I think it'll probably be easier when i start teaching the general art lessons, things which i'm comfortable with and know more about, i know nothing about mardi gras, nor masks. I can't do it convincingly, the best i can hope for is to be clear in simple in explaining, which i have to do again twice on wednesday. I suppose doing some sort of animation class would be good, but the equipment required would probably be a little off-putting for the schools.. It'll also be easier when i'm more confident, a lot of the times when doing new things it's not that you're clueless about how to do things, it's that you're too timid. You're not sure if something would be right so you end up not doing it, rather than risk embarrassing yourself. Sad i know

Been contemplating the children's art classes i'm running. One starts this Thursday at the same school i went to (Queen Vic, Sedgley), the other starts in a few weeks on a Tuesday at Cotwall End, both primary schools, kids around 8 years old. The first is 12 weeks of mask making. The other is just general art. There isn't a definition of art, not agreed by everyone, which causes problems, but it's probably more healthy that way. That there is doubt, that no-one can be cock-sure (and retain respect anyway). But i think the classes will be good for me as well, when i get comfortable and confident teaching it'll open up a whole area of work to me. Plus i'm having to research into sections of art which i've overlooked in the past, masks for instance. There are so many different masks, for so many different reasons, they were used in religious rituals, in festivals, theatre, superheroes, for protection, they can be used to both hide and express. The Inuits made masks that transformed from one animal to another, beaks opened and another face would be underneath. They also made these finger masks, which were like rings, but with faces popping out. And then there's Venetian Masks, which are surprisingly talked about very little in the art books i have, but they're beautiful. I think they expressed wealth, but they certainly do it very well; gold masks, eye masks, looking like operatic in some ways, used in a couple of Klimt paintings i think. I even saw a gold unicorn mask online for a horse to wear... like something from Flash Gordon.

So, it will be beneficial for me to do these classes, however anxious i feel at first. Given that it's my first run as a teacher, i suppose it's expected that i'd be scared. I'll get over it.

Monday came, yesterday in fact, and i had my usual block in making things. I just can't figure out what i'm doing on a monday, i can't commit to an idea or a style, nor even know whether i want to paint at all. Same routine every week, i think i should be doing something else. Usually by Friday i'm up on my feet again, painting strongly, wondering what all the fuss was about. This week that feeling has spread to Tuesday (today). But i did read half of Alain De Botton's The Consolations Of Philosophy, which is kind of popular, but that's good. I suppose it's clearer than most philosophy books because it expects and asserts itself upon an audience who wouldn't necessarily know anything about philosophy. Which is what i need and like. But De Botton's a good writer, read Status Anxiety and On Love before now, they're good too. But this includes more of a history of philosophy, and applies different philosophers ideas to how we can live happier, more fulfilling lives. He goes through Socrates, Montaigne, Epicurus, Seneca... I'm halfway through Montaigne's ('Consolation for Inadequacy') chapter, have Neitzsche and Schopenhauer to go yet. It's really good reading.

Also been hung up on the idea that there are so many ways to say things, so many ways to express myself, but i can't think of anything i want to say. That's depressing. Though maybe i just have the wrong medium at the moment... that's depressing too.

Isolate and exaggerate.

Making things look like other things.

Animation and Painting are my two main activities in art, animation i havent done in a while, but i'll get back to it soon enough, things are brewing.

I guess most art is, although often very subtly (like cinema or dance), about making things look or seem like other things. But, maybe it's a coincidence, but the two main things i do are by their nature possibly the most open about that process of making things look like other things. Paint and plasticine, both have very specific characteristics of their own, both rely a lot on colours. Paint is about mimicking what something looks like, or in the case of Magritte, exposing that illusion. Claymation is about making things move and act like other things, making a ball of clay portray some kind of character.

Its on my mind because i saw these paintings by Watteau and Chardin, who i really love, and they were satirical showing an ape painting, sculpting, and antiquarian..ing. As if to say artists who only look and copy are monkeys, monkey see monkey do. But it just struck me that everything starts with reality, wherever it digresses to. Or starts with our view of it, although maybe its a cliche that we all view the world in our own way. I mean, yes everything that happens to us is viewed at through our past experiences and memories. But a leaf or a tree, thats the same for me as for you, maybe i notice more or less or different things about it to you though. But its a mistake, i believe, to assume that Munch or Bonnard or Van Gogh or Picasso or Kirchner actually saw the world how they painted it. To borrow from a Chardin quote, they painted not with colours, but with feeling. They were, expressionists, as all good painters are. Maybe that's what Chardin and Watteau were getting at, that you don't just depict the world, you depict it in your own specific way, filtered through your head. In which case the ape paintings are only half the argument.

Well now i've sort of cleared that up for myself this whole post seems a bit pointless now..

All art is taking something from life, whether it be an image (i won't say surface, cus it's all surface), a sound, a feeling, an idea, an emotion, a dream, a peach, a movement, whatever the fuck it is, and transforming it into something else, via you. It's like following the route of light, from its source, bouncing off different things, and fading out or being kept enclosed, only you never actually see the light itself, just what it bounces off. I think i've lost myself with that analogy. Here's some paintings that are 'for you'-

It's not just about that.

Am also very much in love with that word Pentimento, which was commented on the last post. It seems to sum up so much more than painting.