Hello Everyone, hope you are well. Another super-busy week flashes by! But see how the horse chestnut tree by my window is so very green and the candles of blossoms will soon be shining.
photo: attic room with a view - horse chestnut tree (and sketchbooks - see below for these pages)
This week I am sharing with you the second part of my re-introduction. I do hope someone finds this helpful/interesting and not too rambling. I have thought and thought, and in the end just wrote it out.
The notes below discuss my journey toward where I am now as an artist. I do make mention of loss and trauma. Skip ahead to Shop News below if you prefer.
Notes on Reinvention
Reinventing the self is hardly straightforward. Even now, having shed so many skins over the years, a part of me still yearns for the opportunity to just stop everything, hide for a while and re-emerge as a dazzling new butterfly of my own design. But that is a storybook ideal of reinvention. My slow and ever-evolving reinvention has been full of and missteps and happenstance, fun and heartache.
photo: recent sketchbook pages
If you are an artist reinventing yourself then chances are the limitations are too real. There are practical limits, including financial. If you are an artist and mother to two small children - one diagnosed as autistic - you have so many things to juggle, there are days you cannot see a way forward through the demands. Back in around 2005-6, I faced a new reality as a single parent and we were living precariously, with no real income. Fortunately, I did eventually have an amount of money from the sale of a house, but this was not enough to last us for long - just enough to get us some shelter for a little while. I have never owned a home since and the precarious nature of renting is real, as it is for so many of us.
2006 was the worst year - I hope I never live through such a time again. My father died in February (just a matter of weeks after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer) - he was 59. My beloved Granny died that May.
I had to reinvent myself on the go, with little chance of respite and a great deal of uncertainty. I loathed myself and the choices I had made that had led me to where I was. Could I not just be a child again and have another try at all this adult stuff? My inner child was raging with hurt and deep loss.
But I had bags of scrap fabric and buttons to keep her (my child self) busy, and so together we learned how to sew dolls and we gave up on how to use a sewing machine ‘properly’ and discovered how to drop the dog feed on the stitching mechanism, so no more straight lines only. The way forward would be an elaborate tendril of stitches.
Photo: me back in 2007 - working on a doll (or posing for a photo, whatever) - I don’t think I have the doll anymore, or the grey-free hair - but I do have the tin. I would like to make more dolls - so look out for them in the coming months
I had to work through a great deal of self-torment and sorrow just to do anything. The suffering artist is something of an archetype but she’s no fun at all. I had to make choices and fast. I was putting myself through an intense apprenticeship of craft and self-development. It was also up to me to see my own limits and to manage expectations. It helps at this point to see what you can do, rather than what you cannot. I was helped by friends to focus on what I could.
I had studied English Literature and Art (theory/history) at university passing with a first class degree which was as much use to me now as an empty packet of biscuits, or so I felt. After my first degree I had gone on to study for a Masters degree in Creative Writing. Was I now a writer, published and successful? Certainly not, though I had had some success. My poetry had been published here and there, in journals and in chapbook form - and I had received an Eric Gregory award - which is a big prize (it had been £4000 back in 1996, enough to give me time to write for a while). I won short story writing competitions and was approached by a big literary agency. I had gone on to establish a very small literary magazine with a friend and we had edited this together for a while, until it all became too much for me with two children. I am summarising here, but you can see I had had hopes. But I knew I could not make it work and the idea of any income from my writing seemed nebulous, at best.
I wanted to remain a writer and in some ways, especially writing this now, I realise how far I have pushed my writing to one side. Although I feel still capable of putting a sentence together, I do yearn for the days when I had hours and hours of writing time. But somehow choices and chance push you in different directions. I do not regret pursuing a visual arts path forward - it was what looked like a good idea at the time and it just so happens I love what I do. I hope that love shines through, at least a little.
I still cannot think what else I might have done. But what sort of path? Part of me wanted to explore abstraction and serious painting, but this required studio space, investment in materials and time - all of these I did not have. Another part of me knew textiles as something familiar, playful and somehow hopeful to me (I had always made things, of one sort of another). There was and is a comfort in working with tactile fabrics, wool and colourful buttons. I had to press past my own prejudices and realise that making ‘craft work’ would have to be as important to me as working in any other artist media.
People in my life were mostly very supportive. My sister and my friends took a sincere interest in my work, encouraging me to develop my often extremely quirky ideas. They knew I had always had an interest in art made by outsiders and I was now working in the margins myself. I pulled on a cat’s cradle of influences and ideas - going back to my own childhood love of animation, strange-to-me black and white films, storybooks and old-fashioned craft books from the library.
I had always loved art and making visual stories. As a goth-minded teenager I became obsessed with early twentieth century fashion plates - as all teenagers do, of course. I spent one summer at my grandparent’s home, drawing and drawing, covering a wall in my bedroom with copied drawings from books. But when I went back, after that summer, all the drawings had been taken down - I did not dare ask where they were. I told myself then that I was not very good at art. My sister was far better at it, she could make lovely drawings and paintings but my ideas were just a little odd.
Now here I was again, full of self-doubt but not admitting too much of it. I had to take hold of bravado and keep it close as a way of building my confidence. And so I learned through making. I found that given a space - a table, a few boxes for storage - it was possible to become a maker/artist of some kind. I learned I did have stories to tell and that my background in writing and literature would be there to help me in endless ways. I was not going to be invited to show at any high-end gallery, and surely even then I knew I was to be ignored by the majority of ‘art scene folk’ - but I was not interested in that world. It was from this moment on that I began to accept who I was, limitations and all. I had to shrug off prejudices, other people’s misconceptions and my own doubts.
Over the years I have been approached by galleries - but not so many. I still feel pretty marginalised and in some ways I have made the margins my home. I still love the idea of becoming an abstract maker/painter one day, perhaps in a parallel universe. I do allow abstraction into my work and I still hold dear to me an idea that there will come a time when I can devote, say just a month, to working in an abstract way. But the idea of making vast abstract canvases does not excite me in the way it might have once. I would rid of such purity and work in a more layered, mixed media way - and stitch might just have to be part of that - certainly linen scraps.
photo: recent sketchbook pages - my books are where I sometimes explore more abstract ideas and recently I am letting myself do more of that
Working on a small scale soon became my way and indeed I feel it comes naturally to me. Over time the size of my work may have shrunk - I was often pushing at the limits of what I could do - literally painting on the edges of a table top. But now I have embraced small and even miniature art. I like the power of small things - having a world in the palm of my hand.
I have been writing about a time when so much happened and I have left out many details because this is just a summary. It is painful for me to look back at some of the times I went through and I do not feel I want to write a complete book-length essay on those darker days. Thank you if you read and I hope you may be encouraged to know there is no one way to reinvent yourself or to become an artist.
I will write more about my journey some time soon.
Shop News
photo: one of seven new tiny portraits available later today
I have a new collection of seven tiny portraits going into my shop today, Sunday 21st April at 7pm UK time.
After taking a break from accepting new lucky dip orders (whilst busy painting) - I am happy to be open again to accepting orders. You can order from my shop now - if I get busy I may be ‘sold out’ for a little while again. Thanks for your understanding.
Future updates: I hope to have new work again next Sunday, 28th April at 7pm UK time - this might be a different mix of things from the usual tiny portraits - I will let you know here, of course.
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A Few Small Stories
I say Sofa, you say Alpaca
On the bus to a different town and a new route. We are passing through a village with leaden-window houses and small fields. And there in a field is what looks like a beige sofa on its side. Dumped. Just dumped there, a beige sofa.
But I see now as the bus nears the bend and my son says: oh look an alpaca - it is not a sofa but an alpaca, sitting on the grass. Really I should have adjusted to my new glasses by now. And there’s another alpaca, a grey one, and over by the other fence a brown alpaca. Then in the next field is a solitary horse.
Horses have always been a little maudlin to me, a little odd with their teeth, tail and skinny legs. In comparison the alpacas seem fearless, noble and ever so slightly haughty. Not like sofas at all.
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Home Again
On the bus home. An elderly man sits at the front, resting his arms on a shopping trolley. He is dressed in a hospital gown and a woolly hat. I don’t know his story but feel it might be a sad one. Meanwhile, a group of older ladies are having an animated conversation in Ukrainian, pointing at the rain and laughing. As we speed up on the dual carriageway I close my eyes and drift into a dream of painted skies and dissolving Turner-esque layers of changeable weather. My son wakes me as we near our town. It still feels so different to be here and I hope this otherworldliness never really goes.
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Photo: Reader, I did buy a new moleskine notebook (this will make sense if you read last week’s notes). I made a quick drawing of a woman but she does not belong to any particular story - yet. I will share more drawings from my new notebook, as and when.
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Thanks for reading here, for all your kind comments, emails and for liking the notes. Much appreciated! Please subscribe if you are not already signed up. These notes are sent out free to all readers most Sundays with thanks to everyone who buys me a coffee to support my writing.
You were the first artist (or one of the first) I found on the internet that inspired me to be an artist. To incorporate creativity into my life, and joy and play. I suppose I’ve also been healing my inner child with my art making
Have been so inspired by your work for so long now, feels like you might just be just down the street. So good to hear your inner light has brought you through, we all see it in what you make, it is bright* All my good thoughts out to you.