It’s a continuing theme…
We are back in the book again. Come in, have a stroll round…
It’s a bit wordy underfoot so mind your step.
There’s a regularity to the irregular once you get used to it here.
There’s a quiet comfort in the uncertainty.
And as in the parallel world outside, no-one’s really sure what’s going on.
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
…live in the question.”
Welcome to my circus of uncertainty
Last night I couldn’t sleep. So I painted. And I pondered.
Life is as quick as a flash, a sprint through some generations and it’s done.
And life is a slow evolution, spiralling up through understanding new layers of the game.
It’s both.
Everything & Nothing. Empty & Full.
Contrast & Confusion. Zigs & Zags.
Deep & Shallow.
Some folk like to scramble the edge, following the truths they’ve chosen to absorb, busying away their days in occupation and activity, punctuated with ritual and escapism.
Fearful of treading over the lines, getting their toes wet, or worse.
Some folk run at it fast, not leaving anything to chance, escaping the dangers by out-running and out-witting. No way is right, no way is wrong. We’re all just making it up one bit at a time.
~~~~~
I’ve been listening to Pete Holmes’ podcasts: You Made It Weird. He kept me company through the night, kept me laughing and thinking. So far I’ve really love love loved his interactions with Liz Gilbert & Deepak Chopra and been curiously riled by Noel Gallagher & Tim Minchin.
How to make a decision, how to avoid paralysis of overhwelm, when there are a hundred gazillion options, how does that work?
Cos here we are, right, in the 21st Century, and if you’re reading this I’m figuring you’re someplace a little bit like here. A place where art supplies are available in more colours, more media, more super-doopy newly formulated zingyness, more variety than you can shake a stick at.
And even when you’re on a strict self-imposed use-what-you-got-already-before-buying-more-at-the-art-store diet….. there’s no still shortage of choice. Especially not when you’re compelled to repurpose just about anything into art.
Lately I’ve taken to limiting what I can use to the scraps that are on my work table. These tubes of paint I didn’t put away after last time, these nibbles of torn paper. These choices were made by a previous me, and today’s ingenuity is tasked to find a new way to combine them.
Do you have daily practices?
I kinda do, but my progress moves like a caterpillar – that scrunching-stretching motion, so while it averages out as daily, it might not always be technically daily.
This is the thing: – I’m acknowledging this now instead of berating myself. I’m learning my rhythms and working within them. I’m letting the process be the lesson.
Since the start of this year I’ve been adding to this book of ‘daily’ doodles. Mostly every day I complete a 1″square. The days when I don’t, I return to, always within a day or two, and as I doodle I reflect back on that day. Sometimes there’s a word or a shape or a scrap of something to glue into the square. Everyday is similar, yet every day is unique.
It’s another unfolding metaphor.
Traditional journalling – the outpouring of words and thoughts and the recording of happenings, events and reactions is quite linear: these things occurred, then were recorded; these things were planned and projected, then recorded.
Art journalling is far more holistic. Even the most literal illustrations are cast in the light of the mood, defined by the view of the artist and constricted by the limitations of their style and skill.
And then there’s this whole exploration of the psyche that forms from the deluge of abstraction that some of us create.
Like many other artists who play this game, mine is largely an unplanned stream of consciousness.
As life ebbs and flows there are periods dominated by torrential outbursts of imagery.
I’m driven by a force beyond my thoughts to combine and construct these collections of objects, images and notions. They make no sense at the time and only sometimes later can I pick out an impression of context, a reflection of thought.
Meanwhile, I enjoy the colours and the nonsense. Another metaphor for life.
I’ve got old journals – the ‘dear diary’ variety – dating back over decades. Of no interest to anyone but occasionally me, I see what me-in-the-past was up to on this day however-many years ago.
At art school I began to keep sketchbooks, filled it with thoughts and plans, doodles and scraps. Mainly visual references and test grounds for techniques and materials. And they’re as rich in memories to me as the purely wordy versions that preceded them.
Last year I experimented with Julia Cameron’s morning pages in an on-again/off-again fashion. Not every morning has the space to accommodate all those words, but a bigger block is that part of me resented the paper it required for long, one-way streams of consciousness that I shouldn’t want to revisit. And the thought of scrawling longhand every last niggle and fuss didn’t sit comfortably either. I get the ‘better out than in’ motive. But I didn’t want to hold volumes of this in my life thought; that seemed to be merely displacing it from my head to another place of permanence.
Three things about things I do in books.
Without much connection beyond my voracious consumption of stationery.
Until I read this blog post by Deanna Jinjoe where she speaks of the power of transformation in burying words, thoughts, sentiments into the soul of our art we can transform them into a new beauty.
So the art journal I’m working through now is starting to embody this essence. With traces of the therapeutic brain dumps that keep my mind clear, intertwined with the doodles and splatterings of colour that keep my spirit buoyant.
The pace of this project is slow but steady, marching through time at 1 inch per day. And already since the start of the year it’s a past the first page.
And the book is teaching me lessons already: Page one’s squares were measured and neatly spaced. Page two’s are are more in keeping with my style: eye-balled, uneven, bit wonky in places.
After the first few weeks I’ve wandered off from just doodle/painting to include collaged bits – fragments of that day’s doings. It intrigues me how different the mood of each day looks. It intrigues me to see how the coming weeks and months will look, and the lessons they will bring.
2015 was tied up in this book, in the rigidity of one page: one week, when some weeks felt empty of expression and some pages felt too small for all that was flooding out of my imagination.
By mid year it had taken on a thick, heavy persona with paint all gooey and chewy and some weeks where no amount of layers would cover up the uncomfortable truths of ugly: a parallel to the world it was illustrating. Something intangibly off. Something meh. Some things I didn’t like, didn’t like confronting, didn’t like to witness. I didn’t want to relive, repeat, or even properly acknowledge.
The book served a purpose: A lesson in being a grown up is knowing when to persevere, and when to stop. I persevered. And when the year was up I was glad the book was full. Finished. Finally time to move on. Onto what next.
What next?
I found myself cutting out shapes from magazine pages, scrap paper and junk mail. Something was stirring, I didn’t know what…
Last week I fell into a new facebook group run by the gorgeously art journally Orly Avineri. It was the catalyst I needed to jump into this new book.
This book is different, there are no limitations and no rules.
Free to fly in and out, land a while –
– chat with my thoughts, flit off again.
It takes as long as it takes.
I’m getting more and more aware that by pouring out my unconscious I can steer myself through this life in a fashion not like anything else.
It’s a compulsion.
You get this too, right?
Everything that was feeling stale and sludgy has dropped away since just this first page.
Toward the tail end of last year I fell upon #selflove365, a daily drawing practice, meditation, and focus. I chose the book I wanted to use, I drew a grid of 1 inch squares, and I waited for January to begin.
Here we go.
Two days in, I’m finding my way.
I’m not rushing or hustling the old year out, I’m not one to wish my days away, but I am dipping newest thoughts into next month already.
Next month – Next year – Next incarnation of being me in this life.
While I’m indifferent to the big new years fuss that happens around midnight on 31 December, I do love the clean freshness of 1 January every time it comes round.
So much so, I don’t want to guzzle it all in one day, I want to savour it.
My routine, such that it’s becoming, begins toward the end of November and by Winter Solstice it’s up to full speed. Those last 10 days of the year represent the closing up of the old year. Loose ends neatly bundled, filed under the past.
As 2015’s page a week book winds up I’m already sewing the seeds for 2016’s year-sized art challenge.
To kick off I’m going to take on Belinda Fireman’s #selflove365 adventure of a daily 1″ square drawing.
I bought a concertina sketch book way back – I think with the intention to take it away on a trip – but either it didn’t go with me, or I didn’t find the time to fill the pages. Either way, it’s fresh and ripe and raw!
It’s already ready to be 2016-ed!
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