Compulsion

I’m in my studio working on my own work for the first time in months. With no reason other than to follow my intuition and the drive to make. I feel an urge that will not be satisfied until I have created something of worth. This of course could happen today, tomorrow or in months, years time. But still I continue, without real knowledge of when, but strongly with the faith that it will happen. I feel almost overwhelmed by the urge I am feeling to chase a feeling of joy and fulfilment in my work. Sometimes I get close and even feel like it is here, finally, I’ve reached the ‘Holy Grail’, and then it fades and it starts all over again. The quest to follow, to find, to search, never dissipates. And when I am tied up in life, in work and have no time for myself, the feeling is pushed into my heart like a hamster stocking up for winter. I can’t help but feel this intense pressure boiling up inside.

But today I am working, and the feeling is intensifying like no other day I have had of late. I feel like my body and mind are suppressing my heart but in the same breath allowing my hands to feel the way forward, through the dirge of my mind. It is through my hands that I must make sense of a situation. Listening to Eno, erasing all distractions of words, of form, or reason, my hands are talking and creating once more… they are home. My words flowing through my fingers, I must get back to my hands, to breathe, to create, to colour my world.

Newlyn Gallery show.

The show in Newlyn is down. For those who missed the show, I have added a link to the video and have loaded up some photos. The private view was predominantly about the Midas Awards, of course and to be expected and was such a big deal for the Falmouth students and lecturers. The response I got from the people I saw on that evening, and the other times I was in and around, on twitter and from those who saw it in my absence, was incredibly positive and uplifting, some of the best comments I've had about my work, which is just lovely. It did look great and I loved that it was the work speaking for itself in its nice clean space. 

Here is a link to a video of the show, to get an idea of how it was hung. (I hope you don't get motion sickness). The clarity is better on the HD version here, but less close ups.

BLOG TOUR 2014

Last week I was lucky enough to get a message from the lovely John Kilburn. I was asked to join a blog tour by John who was asked by Amber Hsu. Amber is the driving force behind the incredible artzine Tiny Pencil and a multi-talented designer, illustrator, editor and writer.  The idea of the blog tour is for authors/illustrators to answer the same set of four questions, then pass it on to few more people to do the same. So Amber passed it on to John and Alexis Deacon, Amber was nominated by Katriona Chapman who in turn was nominated by Jessica Lopez and also nominated Dan Berry. ..  but here are my answers.

What are you working on right now?
Right at this minute I am designing a book for my next exhibition. I have decided to make a catalogue of every show I do.

 Catalogue front cover

This month I have been working hard on starting and finishing a children's book and getting two more started, so little time to do my own authorial work. I'm also back at Plymouth College of Art, teaching on the Illustration course one day a week. My full-time job is as a commercial children's book illustrator with an authorial / fine art alter ego that comes out after dark. It is the alter ego voice I will be using for this purpose but that also means that the work I am doing for myself is minimal right now due to heavy deadlines and limited time.


So my authorial work currently consists of getting ready for an exhibition in the Picture Room in Newlyn Gallery. The work was born from a weeks residency in Studio no.5 at the Porthmeor studios in St Ives. Home to Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron and other seminal artists, past and present. I will be sharing the gallery with the UCF Fine Art Midas Award winners with a separate show by overall winner Marc Messenger. I have the picture room to myself which is great and very cosy. Although this work lies firmly within fine art, as an illustrator I am constantly working hard on another body of work that brings the two together.

Press release for the show at Newlyn Gallery

You Are My Religion

X Marks the Spot

Swimming Upstream

The 'other body of work' I am creating in the background is my own children's book and a new portfolio. It is taking ages, years in fact, due to lack of time, but it is where my abstract / fine art work meets my love and passion for illustration. They are currently just backgrounds and landscapes while I am getting to grips with working in such a different way to my normal prescribed pencil, paper and paint. This is a more sketchbook style process and in fact came from sketching from life in the woods where I live. My dog walks seem to be where I make sense of the world and give me a huge feeling of freedom. I go out without my phone and just look up, listening to, and experiencing nature and the world around me. So one day I remembered how much I love to sketch from life, took my sketchbook and pencils and loved it. I just don't do it enough. So it starts in my sketchbook, I then scan the pages in and move them around, cut to white and add textures where needed.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My work is a story of two parts. My life and my work lies in a world of contrast. I love contrast, but it means that strong contrast in my life means finding a middle ground is really hard. Because of my long background in Illustration and more recently the fine art, my work differs because I have two completely different ways of working and two different genres that I work within. It's an uncomfortable place when I look around. When I'm in each place, it's fine but when I look up and look back I wish I could stick to one thing and do it well, but I don't think that is my way? The paintings for exhibition seem to have a strength of their own, I have simply started the journey by creating them, they now have lives of their own and seem to be gaining their own recognition and pace, which is lovely. The illustration work is harder because I am well known for the commercial, colourful and very accessible work and therefore stuck producing work and books through demand, and with a style made within those constraints. But it pays for copious amounts of Lady Grey tea and art books, and more importantly the mortgage!

I therefore don't really know what genre my authorial work fits into really? It's a process that is born through my sketchbooks and finished in Photoshop. It hasn't really got an audience yet as it is still in progress. I guess illustrators such as Laura Carlin and Jon Klassen come to mind. I am very much influenced by painters as well as illustrators including Mary Newcombe who is a huge favourite of mine. So maybe my work differs as it straddles between fine art and illustration, still trying to finding it's final resting place? 

Growing Up ii

Growing Up i

How does my illustration process work?

When working to someone else's brief I sketch out pages and thumbnails so they can see exactly what I am planning, meaning the process is fairly formulaic. For my own work it happens more organically from making one mark or working with an idea that changes and morphs into something else. I always, and only, have a vision, a feeling that I want my work to have or achieve. It is only with my own work I can achieve that feeling in physical form. With a clients work my view is clouded by their ideas and ultimately isn't as good or satisfying and takes longer. So this means I often have to switch off my own brain and key into the brain of the brief and its genre.
When I'm in my sketchbooks or on my own time I am compelled to satisfy the thirst for self fulfilment, to quench a thirst for colour, texture, space, composition and a lightness of touch, while attempting to connect with a world that I covet and regard as home, in order to inhabit my true self. 

Why do I illustrate what I illustrate?

It's as simple as a compulsion to create something beautiful. For my own work it's a need and a strong will to reach that feeling of ultimate happiness and fulfilment. It's rarely easy and the long lived feeling of achievement has yet to come, but then that's what makes us strive and never stand still. The search for something new and enlightening is a lifelong journey which I am excited by on a daily basis.  

Even when working to brief as a children's illustrator I feel a passion for the structure and the genre and the fact that I can paint for a living and pay the bills, while educating and bringing colour to children's lives, like it did mine. It's not a bad life : )

I now nominate fellow MA graduate and illustrator Tom Hubmann. Tom is a great and very prolific illustrator who lives and breaths contrast in the work he does, but also has an effortless humour and quirk about his work that makes you want to have his work on your walls.

...and secondly another fellow student from back in the BA days, Andy Potts. An amazing artist who cannot only draw like no one else I know, (I've seen his drawing) his ability on the computer is second to none. Andy's ability to marry stunning colour, content, design and space, to produce a polished piece of art is incredible. 

Over to the boys...

Aesthetip and the calm after the storm

Aesthetip magazine 2013-14

Aesthetip comes to an end... huge shame that after trying so hard to get funding, Steve and Em from Aesthetip couldn't get the support they needed to continue the magazine. So much goes into designing, editing and arranging contributors and work etc, so it is no longer....for now anyway??... so pop along and see all, and the final issue here. It aint over yet.

Emma and Steve of Aestheti

Insight avec moi

Lots more projects to come, including Insight which I am featured in. A great project about artists in there studios. Offering an insight in to their art practice and what makes them tick and create. A book to come and more news soon.

So after the excitement of the residency in St Ives, I came home and played around with some images and here they are. Somethings happening, not sure what though yet. I have had in my mind for some time that collage should come back into my life. I have always loved it and I think now that is time to be revisted. Along with more painting... and on a more commercial note I have started illustrating some of the book cover imagery that I have done for commercial books, in my own authorial style.  To eee how they differ and also help work towards a new folio using content that is published but the copyright is mine. Interesting to see I hope... next post maybe?

PORTHMEOR RESIDENCY, MAKING NEW WORK AND UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS

The Bobo!

Ben Nicholson and Patrick Heron

Ben Nicholson's hand writing

The boys at TAap have hired studio no.5 at St Ives School of Painting. So I volunteered myself as a resident for 10 days or so, and have been driving to St Ives from Falmouth to work there. Because of it being Easter, parking and generally moving about is tricky, but once I'm in the studio, there are no distractions other than myself and Bobo, which has been great. Lots of space to get messy, although I've squeezed myself onto a small table in the corner where it feels safe and cosy. There are marks in the room that were made by two of it's former residents, Ben Nicolson and Patrick Heron. One note says Dalai Lama 3.30 Drill Hall... which I'm guessing means that maybe he was on tour in Cornwall back in the 60's-70's??!

 I was hoping the experience would start me off on the right road for a show I have at Newlyn gallery later in the year. I was right it would, but after a visit from a friend and an uncomfortable feeling of  misfiring with what I had achieved on the first day, I somehow dug a little deeper and started painting for me, rather than a gallery and something happened.

My 'natural gait' at the moment is somewhere between harmony and a sense of misalignment or discomfort. My whole life I have seemed to reject perfection or at least the idea of perfection. Anything that is too new and shiny or too pretty is rejected in favour of those things that have a rough edge or something broken about them. I find beauty in the discarded and unwanted. I believe this is something that came from being at school and that vulnerable time of finding your place in or outside the groups that were formed there.

I now love that I like imperfections and believe my outlook on life is more honest, accepting and therefore more enjoyable, because of this.

But back to the work.... I have a love for colours, especially those that exist in nature. A more grounded, natural palette where harmony and contrast sit on the same plane. The colours are obviously from the same palette but contrast in their tone, shape and composition. I have always had a love of collage too, starting at college in my early 20's being influenced by Joseph Cornell, Jake Tilson, Vaughan Oliver, Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Hoch, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and many others more recent that have escaped my memory! So playing around with found pieces of paper here and from my travels abroad. 

It keys in with my preference for the antique, vintage, lived in look. Something I strive for in my work and my life, that the results look lived in, as if they own the space they exist within and look comfortable in their own placing, being at ease.

By being in a studio that has 'serious' artistic history and now being part of that history is such a privilege that I understand I may not have earned within the St Ives culture, but I do believe I have earned within the context of the artistic process and the life I lead as an artist. I feel comfortable along side the artists before me because I share the exact experiences they had and have, as an artist. Facing failure on a daily basis, fighting through the failures to the immense highs of self belief, through to doubt and crashing to the depths of giving up, while going back for more, day after day, into weeks, months and years and decades of the same process. This sense of self belief has been nurtured by being surrounded by fellow artists who have nothing other than a strong sense of practice.

So after the first 'happening' I went back after an Easter break of two days and got to it. The majority of the day was preparing myself and making unsatisfying marks, muddy paint brushes filled with uncontrollable paint until I decided to go home a bit early and cut my losses. It seems that when I make that decision I do my better work! These below were the results which I like a lot and will be investigating into more. It's a movement forward that I am enjoying so my current gait is going with the flow. I have two more days to go, with today feeling like an assessment, research day. So back to it tomorrow early.