More minnows

I love the things you learn just by standing around being alive. Discovered today that you can feed bees fondant icing over the winter; pop a piece in their little food receptacle (what would that look like?) and they will wander over in their winter daze and have a little lick to keep them going. How did someone think of this, what did they do before and has anyone latched onto it as a product? Must check out a beekeeping website and see if there is someone out there marketing funky flavoured icing with a catchy bee-friendly name. And I found this out purely because someone felt the need to tell me. Someone also felt the need to talk to me about figs again but this is no longer a surprise. Good quote from the Saatchi site, if a little long, but as it concerns this 'sensitivity' to things, coincidence, visual cues etc it's worth repeating I think.

' What we all do is art, you know? We are noticers, we are sensitives, we notice the rhythms in certain things and we identify them, and then we coin terms for them, and most of the world is not able to keep up. But some people just have that innate thing that allows them to express themselves in a way the majority can follow.' - Pharell Williams.

Maybe that is what we strive to do ; find a kind of happy medium between expressing ourselves in art that only we can understand, and pleasing the majority too. That has certainly been a dilemma of mine for a long time; to paint what springs forth naturally or to somehow tailor this for a perceived audience? Saying it out loud makes me realise the folly every time as the only 'true' work will be that created with no artifice or intent of pleasing 'them'. By 'true' I mean that which has integrity, good drawing and is made in the right mental state for the right reason. I can tell every time when I am working on something that will end up behind the sofa and when I am doing something I will still want to see in two years' time; the problem is I insist on completing both and then stress about the ones that I shouldn't have finished in the first place. But then there is the dilemma when someone else sees the one behind the sofa and declares it 'your best yet'; hard one to reply to that.

It always bothers me to a degree talking about the sensitivity of artists; how we can see what others can't and are in touch with some force within and without ourselves - it feels arrogant and precious. But it is so true. Now I am nearing the completion of work for the Angel Haven show, which has taken up half a year in which I have been nose to the grind every spare moment, I reach the phase of questioning, doubt, anxiety. The certainty and confidence that exists during the creative process is suddenly stripped away and the creeping worries come to the front of my mind. I have been asked for an image for the publicity material and this is now a major issue for me; should it be one of the less obvious images to intrigue (or repulse) or a more conventional piece? What will best represent what has ended up a fairly cohesive but varied collection of image? Who said artists are too sensitive?...

Reading the blog of a fellow artist and friend and chuckling at how similar our concerns are; finding a niche, looking for the big answers.. where does my work fit into the great scheme of things? Sometimes it seems as if the internet explosion has created a world full of so many million artists, creatives, all of a sudden. I guess we were there all along, and have now just found a voice and a method of distribution that is open to all and allows work to cross the world in an instant. It is both exciting and threatening; it can make you feel like a very small fish in an ocean of competition, or part of a very large shoal. Depends how the mood takes you.