Slow week

It has been a doleful week. My lack of energy worsened by the coldness of this apartment which seems to have the effect of immobilising me close to our one, tiny bar heater: flats in Southern Brazil don't often have heating, even though it's always quite coold in the winter.

Anyway, with a view to shifting my conception of what art production is onto the digital age, I cleared out old photo files from the computer. I installed the counters (below)- though for some reason I do not really trust them. And I continued work on the mobiles, cutting out more shapes and considering better how to use them- including a wider varierty of shapes and experimenting with flash, and different coloured filters.

The thing is not to lose the naive, folk art feel of the cutouts in the course of photographing them. If the photograph is too highly manipulated this gets lost and the result is like an overproduced live recording of a performance.

You can see the work so far, here-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/sets/72157621606358902/

Finally finished: "A Hero of Our Time" and "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

Completed paintings.

The Kingdom of Moth

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I`m making progress here, using the cut-outs to revist a theme I began last year but somehow couldn't really make progress on- a series of monotypes to be called Moth, a Dream.

 I'd intended to make a series of monotypes which Nick Parker would perhaps write a piece to accompany. But there's a time for everything and perhaps the time wasn't right. Or maybe I over-thought the idea. 

 Anyway, here we go again, this time a giant mobile with The Kingdom of Moth as a working title.

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What's the point of making stuff?

To clarify my mind- some questions I have been asking myself abut my work (not listed in any order).

1. Who is it for?

- Anyone who likes them. There's no target public, but it's usually people who have a taste for the macabre.

2. What will you do with them after you have photographed them?

- I'll put somewhere or chuck them out them, depending on space. The latter is more likely, though. I'm going to extend this disposablility to ther stuff I make, including paintings- so I'll re-use canvases once I've photographed them.

3. Are they for sale?

- Yes, the price is low. Write me, (Tadeusz598@yahoo.co.uk)and I’ll get back to you.

4. What do they mean?

- Meaning is hard to define in visual art. It isn’t proscriptive. These pieces have a function which is to make life more amusing. I guess I’m trying to draw attention to the strangeness and ambiguity that is everywhere, and to add to it.

5. Why do you like making things?

- I like being surprised by what happens when you play with materials. I think the essence of creativity is play. It's an instinctive delight in materials and their communicative possibiliies.
The technique here is very clean- scissors and card. It's not too difficult and because there is only a limited art tradition connected with paper cutouts, they feel fresh and fun to make. I don't know where they will lead to, which I quite like too.

6. What is the point of making things when there are already so many?

- To satisfy your own creative desires, and entertain others.

I say entertain, because before an artwork is anything else it has to entertain, or the public won't be drawn in. It's not a fashionable world, because it suggest you aren't "deep", but then perhaps being "deep" isn't all its cracked out to be.

Sometimes the things I make are unique, or at least, in conception relatively rare, so having them around is offers anther take on things. If I were just reproducing wholesale from a pattern, though, I still think it would be worth doing, just because it's a satisfying exercise.

I think the "what is the point?" question is very important, because if you can't think of a good answer and if you aren't enjoying making art then you should just give up. There are enough reasons to me miserable without adding to them un-necessarily.

7. Do you think any one gives a hoot about what you make?

- Judging by the number of regular visitors to my sites, and adding to that other people I have on mailing lists and who come to exhibitions I would say between 30 and 150 people give a hoot. Sometimes they leave nice comments, which help me believe that my work matters.

I like being part of a creative network- many artists are very isolated, and very frustrated by what they perceive is the indifference of the general public. The internet is helping enormously to break down this isolation.

8. If you work in one style, then another, aren't you contradicting yourself?

- Probably. But it's only art, you're allowed to be inconsistent.

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If readers have any additional questions please submit them, and I will attempt to answer them.

Where do we go from here?

I enjoy making the cutouts, and I believe they can be a striking expressive tool but the question is, what to do with them? They seem too insubstantial to function as art.

I shall play with 1. "Tableau"- essentially mini installations of cutouts and 2. Mobiles.

In addition, I am trying to deal with the difficulties of producing more work which will, most likely, simply go into storage, and is unlikely to sell. I haven't space to store more work.

The solution is to work digitally. To treat the artwork as simply the means towards producing photographic digital images, then discard it once its finished with.And by putting the work on the Internet, it is accessible to the public.

I gain a great deal from the support of people, usually strangers, on Flickr, Facebook and Deviantart. They only know my work through its dematerialised pixellated presence on a screen. Does that matter?

Cutouts

I spent today working on these cutouts, and then photographing them.

My original idea was to work on a mobile, and I may still do this. However, I might also try to make miniature stage sets with them. For that to make sense, I'd need some sort of narrative structure, though I could possible just make them as "Tableau" illustrating, say "The Four Seasons", or "States of Mind".

Perhaps they are sufficient in themselves- something tells me, however, that they are not.

11.30am, The Prince of Wales, Billy (the third of the Billy stories)

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"Hello, Schweppes Corporation -Hello, May I speak to John Fisher?"

 "John Fisher is in a meeting. Can I ask him to call you back?"

 It was 10.45, then 11.00, then 11.15. No call. 

 Enough: I put on my coat and started for the Prince of Wales.

 But as soon as I got outside it started to rain. Insane weather, so suddenly switching on like that, and so heavily wet. I ran to hide in my car.

 I sat in the Rover, smoking. An old friend: the seats of worn green leather creaked reassuringly in the same way every time I sat ; the instruments solid, designed to reassure. It had been inherited from an uncle who died when he was driving across the South Downs when he stopped and went under a tree to relieve himself and got struck by lightening along the stream of his urine. 

I drove the hundred yards to the Prince of Wales, pressing my face close to the windscreen to see, the rain so heavy, it was like sitting inside a drum. Thankfully, there was a space right outside the pub. The pub is cavernous, Victorian, and designed for the needs of hundreds of thirsty dockers. But the mechanisation of the port, and use of containers means that it rarely serves more than 20 people at any one. That’s fine by me.

 It has a giant, circular bar, so grand it dwarves the barman, a silent, pale, northern fellow . I guess he moved down here and just swallowed up by the giant sad bar, losing all colour.

 I entered: as always there below enormous plate windows seated on the maroon vinyl banquette, the elderly solitary drinker. I look across to him and nod: he raises his glass in his thin white arm. “Here’s to your lordship’s health!”

 There is a billiard table there. I like to play in the silence of the pub with the guys who hang about there. I am an excellent player and that secures me a place in The Prince of Wales socially. In any case, the players don’t talk. They just stand about sipping pints of beer and all you hear the resonant clink of the balls and the murmur of people at the bar, and occasionally the scrape of chalk on a board if they decide to keep a score, which isn’t often. It’s very satisfying and makes a gorgeous contrast to the brittle world of celphones and emails at the desk in my office.

Anyway, that’s where I met Billy.

 Billy was a scrawny dilapidated sort of guy who appeared here and there except when you might want him to. I never quite figured out what he did or why though. I never imagined for a second that it might be legal.

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Illustration: a sly fellow, April 2021

 

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