What Three Words?
Anselm Kiefer at the RA
People sometimes ask my of my work “are these real places”? and it strikes me an odd question. What is a real place? The layering, division and burial grounds of human history in a space demarcated by invented systems of metrics. The use of the whatthreewords app is logical and wildly absurd at once: the random allocation of total meaninglessness of language to precisely convey exact locations. Although the words are randomly assigned, we seek meaning in the words where there is none, weird but very human.
Emerging from the MA is like coming out of the cinema in the middle of the day - a total disruption of the senses, the sudden flood of bright daylight and the oddity of having experienced such a turbulent and overwhelming moment in time, about which no one else seems remotely aware. The error and joy of having had several shows immediately after graduation has been no time to think, which is artistically tricky, particularly for an oil tanker brain like mine. I have gone back to old habits, which I am filing under ‘understandable but not great’ but also feel rumblings of something more ancient and subconscious in my painting process. I felt so calm going into the studio, which was ruined by deadlines of course, but it felt steady, assured even. I am now belatedly standing on the threshold of the movie theatre looking out at the bustling streets outside, popcorn crumbs down my front, looking blankly at my watch and trying to remember what day it is.
My emotional whatthreewords are perhaps steadyforgottenancient. These are the characterisations of my state of being as an artist and a person, a solid foothold higher up the mountain than previously, but still a sense that I could easily slip and tumble back to the beginning. I loved exchanging with the group of CSM graduates curating our show at Pinsent Masons this week, which reminds me to reach out to fellow graduates, see what their three words might be.
Things that occur to me:
I seem to have forgotten everything that happened over the past two years. I presented my work at Pinsent Masons on Wednesday and had to go back to my blog to try and remember what my work was about. That seems odd and a little embarrassing to me. I worry I have some sort of artistic dementia.
Drawing has vanished and I look forward to going back to it, possibly today in a small way.
Hangings are pressing. Why can I never make an actual hanging even thought I have been talking about it since the RCA in 2022? Annoying.
Massive, massive, ridiculously massive paintings - but how? I will find a way.
I don’t want to have any more deadlines for ages and ages until I have found my artistic feet again. So many half ideas, new and unexplored materials and half baked ideas need attention before my thinking becomes targeted again.
The Velarde show ‘On the Edge of Stillness’ is fabulous, my work looks great in the space. I just imagine it bigger, more overwhelming. Also more ragged, frayed, all those underground compassions and imaginings, slug migrations, fairy rings and imaginary places. The Kiefer/van Gogh at the RA this week threw me a life line and I started to sort of remember who I am and what I do.