The exhibition is over. A critical success perhaps but low sales failed to recover the costs. After recovering the unsold works and putting them into store I am sitting and taking stock, which means letting things meander around my unconscious mind whilst my consciousness has been quieted by reading and playing Mah jong until the programme started to kick me out because it says I need a more difficult version.
I have a canvas waiting in the studio and circulating the back of my brain is what I need to do to take it forward. I could just push on blindly, but I am conscious that as I approach my 80th birthday I am piling up disposal problems for my partner when I die if I keep producing and piling work in the garage. My attempts to organise a Viking send off, launched to sea in a boat full of burning art have come to nought. It is not just the work – I have an art library with some valuable books in it, and photographic archive of my photography since 1960’s (including the Hotel Designs archives).
Art I collected since my donation of my curated prints (including Winner, Tilson, Caulfield, Warhol and many others) to the Towner was destined to be added to the Towner gift, but the gallery has not shown what has been donated so far and questioned my judgement in what I have bought, so that door has been closed along with the funding I was giving in support both now and in my future will. It seems that once one is old the judgement and eye that was sought after for conferences and commissions in youth is no longer relevant.
‘Looking towards the Light’ acrylic on canvas 48 x 36 inches
All that is a digression but is also part of the continued irrelevance of me as an ageing artist. Today I read a philosophical piece about ageing, which summarized those who reach the century mark as have got there not just by looking after their health but also because they retained a sense of purpose in their lives. Having devoted my life to art if I stop I will fade away, perhaps leaving the odd smile like that of the Cheshire cat.
So onwards then, I must go down to the studio – I feel that line is a little like Masefield going down to the seas again with sea fever, except mine is a cool art fever…
I must go down to the studio, to the lonely seat and the easel,
And all I ask is a clear eye and a canvas, white and dry
And the brush slick and the colour strong and the paintbrush shaking,
And a colour glow on the canvas face, and a great idea breaking.
I must go down to the studio again, for the call of the idea high
Is a wild call and a loud call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a clear eye and a canvas, white and dry,
With the brush play and the colours bloom, and the music crying.
Iknow what drives my prevarication. The tiredness of age is a primary cause but also my doubt in my own painterly skill. I have grappled with colour, using varying devices to tackle my own inabilities. The exploration of texture and colour through both the grid flower series and the BRotS have both been ways of exploring my own lack of control. I have explored techniques like collage and photography but the media themselves have contributed to the failures there. So now I must go down to the studio again, for there my future waits.
The past is gone, life rolls on, the creative pulse is too strong to ignore. I must get on with living. My heart may be failing, my bones rebelling, my art not selling, but the sun still rises, beauty surrounds me and the studio awaits
I must go down to the studio again, to the irrelevant artist life,
To the painter’s way and the sculptor’s way where the ideas demand a life;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
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