Painting, drawing, films, stories, travel and other odds and ends
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Creativity and the unconscious mind
This article by Guardian article by Ap Dijksterhuis sums up what I have believed for a while, but only had my own experience to base my conclusions on.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/sep/10/creativity-unconscious-process-incubation
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This was written a year and a half ago and, for some reason, not published.
"Goodbye Florianopolis"
I'm going home. I've done it here.
I have to do something with my possessions and sell my flat and get a ticket home.
It wasn't one decision. It was a more like a series of conclusions about each single element within my life.
Like, how interesting is it, really, to continue painting in Brazil? To live on the island? To converse with people here? Does it make me feel alive, excited?
Can I renew my engagement with making things here? Painting? I felt I could renew my engagement, by investing more, but the returns have been diminishing over the last few years. By investing I mean, changing medium, trying to visit new places and view things from different perspectives, pushing oneself to make more effort, to take risks.
So it's connected to how I feel about creativity. The excitement I feel about making stuff is partly generated from how its received in a community. I don't find that here. It just isn't an inspiring art environment. It lacks an essential element- lively critical debate. I miss the greater critical sophistication of British society.
Actually, I miss British people in general. They're amusing and often erudite. Their towns are sometimes very beautiful and there is a general consensus on what is correct and what makes sense and that's a consensus that suits me.
I enjoyed travel in Latin America: but my dulled mood is also connected with feeling that I have visited much of Latin America that I want to. I could go on travelling here, but I'm not passionate, not intrigued.
And the people I know here are always some distance off. They are ok but I don't really belong with them. It's like a bunch of people you meet in a railway compartment. You bond because of an impossibly long delay. But you are bonded by circumstances, not by culture or blood. I could never shake a sense of the arbitrariness of my personal connections here.
That is how I feel and it feels like I should go home.
I began to feel this some years back but I also thought that moving back would be a mistake because I was worried about what I'd do for money. But I don't feel afraid about this now. I'm not sure why, but I just don't. I think it will be ok moving back.
Goodbye Florianopolis. Goodbye Brazil. It has been almost 20 years. Thanks. You gave me a lot and you were kind to me, but I need to go now.
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SMALL PAINTINGS
I decided after the Aberdeen Art Fair that I would, again, work small. I had been working on a larger size for impact at the Art Fair, but now I feel that is not really my true metier.
How small, I`m still not sure, but I guess abut A5? I will play around.
There is something about this format, which is to do with the idea of crapping the impossibly big- a landscape- into the portable- a postcard size - which I find immensely appealing.
Moreover, it`s a format that seems to belong to me, as I`ve worked so often within it.
Thus, I proceed- priming boards and getting carriers sorted, and in a week or two should have some work to show, and perhaps am prepared for Spain and Morocco, the Winter escape.
I feel strongly drawn to revisit the works of artists who set me off on my path as an artist: Odilon Redon, Hammershoi Fatin-Latour: late nineteenth century masters of the strange.
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