Oh No its October!

I can’t believe its October! Time is rushing toward my November exhibition. This has been a strange year, where I have tried out a range of stuff. I look at what I have left in my stock of originals, and it is quite reduced! This is good as I have sold a lot of work, new and old along with prints and glass. When I look at what I have, to take forward I feel as if I have not accomplished much, but the truth is I have created quite a lot this year. The only problem is a lot of my production has been sold straight away or has been created as a commission.

What I have discovered about myself is that painting is my passion, not painting on glass not designing products, definitely not organising and running galleries. All this stuff is unfortunately necessary if I am to continue funding my painting. I am getting more and more business minded as far as all that stuff goes, but I still want to paint and develop my painting expression. Development as a practitioner only comes with practice, and I have got to get more dedicated to my artwork.

I was discussing this with a friend who is also a female artist, and we experience the same problems. We put family tasks first every time. From running people to school, helping out at church when there is a shortage of volunteers, to prioritising washing because it’s a good drying day! Can you imagine when I was working as a teacher, turning up after a days absence saying ‘oh I could not work yesterday I had to do the washing while the weather was good? But now we do just that, and wonder why the days go by and we have no work done.

Maybe because of my lack of dedication to my own gifting I am left with a busy time over the rest of October and November. I have a Gallery booked for November and I need to get that organised, and get as much work finished as possible for that. At the same time I have put a submission in to Bishop Auckland Town Hall winter exhibition that also needs work finishing (the BATH exhibition may not be a stress if I am not accepted). Having said that, it is more proof of my lack of self-worth as an artist. I am not sure if this is a woman thing or and artist thing or a combination of the two, but I often wonder why I do what I do.

Is it totally self-satisfying, I get pleasure out of seeing a work come together and completed to my satisfaction. I get no pleasure from the failures. I love it when someone likes the work enough to pay good money for it (but if it was about money, I would not be pursuing this career at my time of life.) I don’t feel I am doing anything new, quite the reverse actually, I feel I am pushing further and further back in time to investigate old techniques to produce the best representation of the world that I can. This seems pointless in the face of modern media, where anything can be created by digital manipulation and wonderful sharp images can be obtained of more and more. The constant question is, has photography killed the skills of putting marks on paper? Its such a huge debate and one I often fall into in my head, why bother painting a thing when a photo can be taken more quickly and maybe provide just as good, if not better a representation of the thing.

I like to imagen that a painting can capture something more than a photograph, that somehow it can provide a spirit of the place or an atmosphere, but to be honest I don’t know. The friend I talked about earlier works in photographic images, and she feels that her work may not be equal to a painters work because of the craftsmanship of painting, but we all know that is rubbish. I have an amazing camera that I use to gather images, but no one would want to buy any of my photography. Photography is as much a skill as any other art. So, I am back to the original question why paint at all?

I can’t really answer the question. I paint because I want to create something from nothing. I paint because I have things in my head (more than I have time for) that I want to put on paper or canvas. I hate to say I want to tell a story; it has become such a cliche ‘I am a visual storyteller’ but I do want to show how totally romantic our world is. I want to point out the things that strike me as beautiful, or wonderful, or sad, or lost, or even sometimes dying. Now that is why I do it. That is why I must make the time to get some of this stuff out of my head and on to canvas so I can share the world I see with others. There is an element of egotism in that I will admit because I have to believe that what I see is worth seeing. And I am sorry if it is egotistical, but I do believe that it is. So, I paint because I want to share my view of the world I live in, to share the world I see with others. I want my work to be as honest and as accomplished as I can make it, because the world I see deserves that from me.