Sunday, February 17, 2008

Kunskop....


10 ii 2008, Sunday
It is excruciating and torturous, this thing of being an artist. My mind feels both achingly empty and bursting like a too ripe fruit with ideas. Where do I begin? I stand in front of my shelves laden with materials, sketchbooks and my very private collection of found objects and feel like screaming with all the angst and fear and sheer bewilderment that is pushed upon artists like a sticky, fly-paper cliché – but it’s honestly true! I think it’s maybe just the way our brains are wired. That were it not for this intensity of creative confusion on one hand, on the other our brains would just not be able to produce the kind of lateral, out-the-box uniqueness we’re so renowned for.

(Or am I just making excuses for myself??)
My morning was spent rifling and sifting through piles upon piles of collected pages torn from all sorts of magazines – from dusty, old National Geographics to the latest French Vogue – which I’ve been hoarding with compulsive selfishness over the last few months when my ‘day job’ has dominated my days… They were like the secret dreaming of painting and having another exhibition even though there wasn’t the faintest whisper of hope for this to happen because already I was burning my proverbial candles at both ends! And so, now that I have found some time in my new life with Craig where I only work 3 days a week at Gymboree, the amassed tearings have swamped me with too many possibilities and directions so I feel like I am drowning in my self.
A combination of two things has catalysed the beginning of my new body of work: brutally purging the pointless, excessive imagery of anything unnecessary… (the bin is now full!) and the unwavering, fiery encouragement and listening ear of my soulmate who listened to my quiet, neurotic ranting and gently suggested what I’d been desperate to hear: that it was ok and the right thing to do to choose just ONE specific focus and to pursue it till its completion, and only then continue on to the next idea/project.
Two or maybe three (probably four!) “petite” glasses of wine later, and I’ve primed a variety of surfaces with white gesso that’ve been lounging about latent and hidden in my drawers labelled ‘found surfaces’. AND then also laid the ground for a work I’ve been meaning to set down in black inky lines since September 2006!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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