I am beginning to work on a new area for me. I have finished two abstract "paintings". I still haven't managed to use any colour but a style is appearing. It demonstrates perfectly the anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive side of my creative mind. Ideas are beginning to flicker through my mind constantly : being changed, adapted and mutating. However, alongside this, so are critical musings on the work. Why does this occur ? What makes me question why I do something instead of just doing it ? Is this my inner critic justifying the artwork ? Is it my psyche feeling threatened and therefore defensively pre-empting the world-wide discussions of the pieces ? When I collect enough work will I have to build the gallery, design the catalogue, pour the wine or will I settle for simply being a library assistant with a black pen.
At school in my art classes the focus was always on the figurative approach with the hyper-realism of an almost photographic perspective towards creativity. This was, I now recognise, because essentially we were aimed at passing particular examinations. It was not Art intended as a career and definitely not as a life-enhancing aspect of everyday existence. Even the careers which I was directed towards, and advice was sketchy to say the least, took more notice of salary than satisfaction and left the arts and humanities students to either teach or be taught forever.
I have repeatedly tried to do portraits and landscapes never finding the results to be either what I expected, or of sufficient quality to even merit keeping. There was always the nagging thought that a camera could do the job far better. So, at what point did my attitude to Art and Creativity begin to mellow ? From where did my symbolic muse suddenly appear ? That quiet little voice that persuades me I am on the right lines is also the voice that reassures me that even if nobody else ever views the art I know it is developing. I visualise a strange hybrid art form - part book part painting - born out of Blake and the illuminated manuscript and infected by Rothko and the Letraset catalogue. It will try to link the literature I love and admire with the art that inspires me - It will play games - sporting with the obscurity and the complexity of a Joycean narrative with the Northern philosophies of Roy Clarke and the late lamented Alan Plater. Like Joseph Cornell's boxes it will include the whole world of one man's interests and hopefully be of interest to more than that same one man.
