The delicate art of getting a grip

When you've had a lot going on, when you've been off-balance, struggling with depression or other emotional issues, when you've had your focus firmly on one goal or one area of life, it can be hard to keep up with commitments.  I've neglected this blog for months; I've been focussed elsewhere, and I've been dealing with what we know these days as Stuff.

It's all pretty complicated and I'm not sure I'm up to giving a detailed account.  I met someone, got on really well with them, and thought I'd found a new friend.  When they hesitantly and awkwardly almost-asked-me-out a couple of months ago I'm ashamed to say missed the hints, and then I realised, and did my own asking (like a grown-up!).  But they couldn't manage the date I suggested, and then things went off the boil slightly as I was about to go away for a fortnight's holiday.  Just after I got back from my trip, this person had some private issues from their past come boiling up into the present, and within a couple of weeks had stopped speaking to me completely, and unfriended me on facebook.  And I have very little idea of why.

I am confused, hurt and angry; and I'm also not a little worried for my sometime-friend, who is acting out of character.  But since they won't speak to me and have ignored my email, I don't know what else I can do.  As the cliché has it, some people come into your life for a reason, and some just for a season.  Maybe this was one of those relationships. 

I hate not understanding what went wrong, and I hate the feeling that my trust may have been ill-placed.  I don't trust people quickly these days, but this friendship had won my trust, and now I wonder if I was completely mistaken.

Heavens, I don't think "yes, I'd go out with you on a date, I really like you!" quickly these days, either.

I'll still be here if they do decide to talk to me at some point.  Although the private issues I mentioned were unpleasantly messy and reflected less-than-well on them, my instinct is that my friend is not a monster, just a normal fucked-up human being with a mess they need to deal with.  I know that feeling.  So yes, I'll still be here.  But I won't pursue.  They're an adult, if they want me they can come and find me; they know where I can be found.

The really interesting thing about this relationship (to be thoroughly cynical and self-absorbed) has been the amount I've got out of it, and in such a short time, too.  This person could be pretty bracing company; outspoken, determined, challenging, even aggressive at times, and absolutely committed to walking their talk.  I had to shake myself out of a lot of familiar patterns, in order just to keep up.  It was bracing, but by damn, it did me good.

I've been in quite a rut, the last few months, and battling with my old invidious enemy, depression.  There were weeks when my fencing class was the one bright spell; a couple of hours of focus and excitement and energy, in a life of day after day of grey fear, procrastination and numbed emotions.
This relationship shook me out of that, and whatever else, I am intensely grateful and glad of this.  Yes, I've been hurt, and baffled, and pissed-off, by this sudden inexplicable break.  But I have been blessed in the friendship nonetheless.

So now, in the aftermath of having someone I thought was walking with me turn round and walk away without a word of explanation, I'm looking again at my life and trying to get a grip on things.  I hope I can maintain the momentum of being braced and energised and shaken up.

There's been no luck on the conventional job front, so I've now definitely gone back to working as an artists' model for the time being.  I'm not sure if I'll manage to make ends meet, but if I don't try it, I won't ever know.  I'm registered as self-employed and got a DBS certificate (what used to be known as CRB >sigh< yet another silly name change), and I've begun picking up some bookings.

I'm also feeling a bit more creative flow, at long last.  I've had another little push at trying to get sales and reviews for "The Charcoal Knots"; and I've finished a sequel, which needs to come back from my beta readers and hopefully will then be published.  I'm working on the extended version of "Running away with Pausanias" and that's going well.  I'm working on some art again, and have finally got round to setting up a facebook page for my art work; you can find that here if you're interested.  I've brushed-up my proof-reading symbols and started learning how to do indexing, and will be looking for any small freelance jobs of that sort, too. 

So, this is me right now; disappointed in love and friendship, but getting a grip and hoping to make a living as a freelancer.  Hoping that creativity and art can gain from the boost in my energy and the jolt in my life.  Still writing, still drawing, and of course still fencing.

Wish me luck.

Whole lot of random goin' on

I got in tonight after a hot busy and frustrating day at work - which is better than a hot boring frustrating day, don't get me wrong here - but oh, it was a maddening day!  Something I have been waiting ages for is proving painfully difficult to achieve, and it's setting me more and more behind in my own job with each passing day.  I sent the person who has it even worse than me a marvellous picture of a dreadnought (HMS Agamemnon, 1915, to be precise) as consolation, but I doubt if it made much difference to him.  I'm the one turned-on by Edwardian battleships, not him (I blame my brothers).  But anyway, the day wound to an inconclusive end eventually, and I picked up my bag and came home.

Poured myself a large G&T and cooked supper.  Logged on to facebook and found a bizarre collection of glorious holiday snaps and horror stories.  Eeech, what a world.  I want more of the happy and the Cornish sunshine, and less of the grief and struggle.  Not just for myself but for all of you.

That's probably the gin talking; apologies if so.

I found a bunch of theatre tickets had arrived in the post today; yippee, ballet galore.  The opera ones are yet to come, likewise theatre and concerts.  But the ballet tickets are one major element in place now.

I'm preparing for my autumn, you see.  One can feel the first nudge of it in the air, mornings, and the first scent of it too, musty and fungal and sweet, as though someone had devised a new kind of incense made of rot.  Come autumn, I need a full programme of Kulchah to keep me going through the cold dark days of winter.  Though I will hope to go away somewhere for my birthday (& to do it successfully this year instead of being spectacularly & messily ill as I was last year). 

Supper was a good one.  Last Friday when I had the chance to enjoy that rather spiffing & classy afternoon tea with my colleagues, one of the things I was chatting about with a certain very lovely chap was the question of whether or not one could take home the unused sandwiches in a doggy-bag and make a kind of savoury bread-and-butter pudding with them; slice them into a baking dish, soak in egg + milk, and bake.  We agreed it would probably work.  I realised afterwards that I was thinking of strata, which I remember having on holiday in Italy at some point, and which is pretty much exactly that, but with a rather more select choice of fillings (i.e. crab and prawns and buttery onions, not ham and cucumber and egg-&-cress and salmon).  I forgot to ask for my doggy bag, anyway; but ever since I have been thinking at intervals of the singular deliciousness that is egg and bread cooked together; strata, eggy bread, egg-in-a-basket, bread omelette, bread pudding, croque monsieur, croque madame...

So tonight I made myself a kind of Greek-inflected cousin of these; Croque Kyrie, I suppose I could call it.  Delicious, dead easy, and I imagine it would also work well with the splendid substance that is Genius Bread, for my coeliac friends.

Went down very well with the G&T, too.

For each person, you will need:
2 slices off a sandwich loaf
2 eggs
some feta cheese
pepper
olive oil
a tomato

Beat the eggs thoroughly with some pepper and pour over the sliced bread in a flat dish.  Leave to soak for half an hour minimum.  Sandwich two slices of the soggy eggy bread with a thinnish slice of feta cheese and press down hard.  Yes, you will get eggy fingers.  Tough.  Wash your hands.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a frying pan; get it good and hot to start with.  Pick up your gooey eggy cheese sarnie and slip it into the hot oil.  Fry for five minutes on a fairly high heat, then turn the heat down to pretty low and turn the sandwich over carefully with a spatula.  Continue cooking on the other side.  Turn again after a while.  Turn it two or three times altogether; gently does it each time.  The idea is never to let it burn but to get all the egg cooked and the cheese all melted and delish.  Part of the way thru', put in the halved tomato, skin side down, beside the sandwich, and fry that as well.  Ideally you want to get the tomato just slightly blackened on the skin and volcanically hot inside.  Serve hot, with some olives for an additional punch of flavour.

Incidentally, this would make very good hot canapes if you cut it into 1 inch squares.

After that I watched the cricket highlights from Old Trafford.  YEAH.  OKAY.

Not only are England doing okay in the test match but it's been a good week culturally as well.  Last Thursday I went to see "Guardians of the Galaxy", which is rollicking good stuff, thoroughly exciting, almost unnaturally well-cast (a Marvel speciality, this) and looks fantastic as well.  Last weekend I went to a wonderful show at Dulwich Picture Gallery, "Art and Life", with some stunning pieces by Winifred Nicolson, one of my heroine artists.  I've also seen "The Immigrant" recently on dvd; that looks tremendous, too, and it's brilliant as well - but heart-breakingly sad.  And finally I've been getting on with some sewing and I've written about 4,000 words on the western story.  Add in that excellent posh tea as well and it's not been a bad seven days.

And since I haven't seen the crush since then, except briefly in the distance, I am getting over the hiccough of seeing him last Friday, too.  Bless him, dear man.  I am determined to put this behind me.  I really don't want to cause him a problem (he's a very nice chap & I'd hate it if I did) so this is just as well, really.  I vow to let it go.  I will let it go.  I will.  I swear.  Or at least, the gin swears.  Gin is much given to that, after all.

And tomorrow is Friday again.  Good grief, where do the weeks go?

Why do I do this?

Why do I write?  That’s not what I trained for.  I spent five years at art school; five years of thrills and spills, being abused and then praised and then abused again, having my best work rubbished comprehensively and then being urged to carry out stupid ideas I had dreamed up during a drunken pizza lunch with my mother...  (FYI, it’s useful sometimes having a mum one can get plastered with!).  I painted and drew for the life of me.  I learned an enormous amount about myself.  And I tried (& tried, and tried) to connect what I could do with the Fine Art Newspeak Bullsh*t that most of the tutors spoke, most of the time. 

In the end, though, it didn’t work.  I’ll never regret those five years: they were fascinating and fun, I made some great friends, I learned to salsa and speak Spanish, and I did make some good paintings.  And drawings.  Good, big drawings.  If I ever know someone whose house is large enough to hang the really big stuff (which isn’t that big – I think the largest pieces were about six feet by eight – come on, some people make artworks hundreds of feet long) then he or she will be welcome to any of it that they like.  I’m unlikely ever to be able to hang it myself, after all, since I’ll never own a mansion.  I still paint and sketch with great happiness, on holiday, or down at the London Wetland Centre.  But I have come to see I’ll never be an artist.

It’s partly that I haven’t the patience to sit and listen and try to engage with the aforementioned Fine Art Bullsh*t.  I managed to, at college; but five years of it was more than enough.  Way more...  Life is too short to waste time bending one’s brain into that distorted worldview, just in order to please someone who will then turn around and say “But I don’t like the shade of blue you’re using, either”.  Excuse my French, but f*ck them.

I am someone who got a tremendous amount out of spending five years making what I consider to be art; but “an artist” is someone who wants to make a career in the Art World and embrace the Fine Art BS; qv my earlier rude comments, above.  I got into art because after ten years with no creative outlet except my job cooking (which I was good at, and also don’t regret), my rediscovery of creative activity when I was in my late twenties blew my mind.  I could have gone full-tilt into anything creative that I had happened upon, but it was an adult ed art evening class that I hit on, and that hit me. Like anyone who's been hit, I was a little punch-drunk afterwards, though in this case it was punch-drunk with joy.

Ultimately, all I was doing at college, though, was having fun and playing.  I think I had a whole second childhood in those five years at KIAD, and all the fun and all the frustrations of adolescence, too; but at an age when I was mature enough to experience them fully – and, crucially, gain from them - instead of simply drowning in them.  So no, no regrets whatsoever, but still I have come to feel it was a dead-end for me.

When I sat down, in autumn 2005, and did that “what are your creative goals” exercise from The Artist's Way, what came out wasn’t art works.  It was stories.  And they have been coming out ever since.  Not as steadily as I would like, but pretty steady even so. 

I wanted to write when I was a kid.  I had a head full of stories I wanted to tell, and all these years later they are still there.  The “back burner” exercise I did last year uncovered the fact that some of them, even some of the really old ones, were actually worth doing.  New ones pop up in my brain all the time.  Urban fantasies, pseudo-historical fantasies, romantic fantasies; slight things like the fairy tales, and epics that could run to four volumes.  Storytelling; that’s what I was made for, it seems.  I ignored it for all those years, and the moment I let it see daylight, it sprouted anew.  Stories, stories, stories.

That’s why I do it.  It’s what makes me, me, and it’s the greatest delight I have in my life.  I have no idea if I will ever be published (though I intend to keep trying) but I cannot stop the storytelling, because that would be like stopping growing.  I could stop doing the art in any serious way, because it was, ultimately, a blind alley.  But the stories are not blind.  The stories have intense eyes that see me, and see the world, and through which I can see; and nothing looks the same when I see through their eyes. 

I describe Anna and Thorn talking about sensory interference, I send the protagonists of “Café Tana” into the maze in the heart of someone's mind, I trap Simon Cenarth on a battlefield and walk across a desert with Maramne Myas to try and save her husband and reach her lover; I meet aliens, heal gunslingers, discover creatures that feed on fear, and learn to overcome them by overcoming fear, and I find love and lose it and find it again; and then wake up and want breakfast.  In stories.  Which are my truest world.

What more to tell?  A busy weekend: The Olympics Opening Ceremony was great fun, beautiful, exciting and relatively cheese-free, and also managed to be very smoothly drilled while looking completely anarchic and organic; Saturday I got sunburned again helping TCI to gloss paint doors on trestles in her garden; Sunday I did my grocery shopping and cleaning and all the other domestic duty stuff, and got rained on, and wrote, and watched “The Town”, which was excellent.  A classic-tropes heist movie, extremely well done and totally gripping; I’d put it on a par with “Heat” and “Ronin” and “Ne le dis à personne” in terms of good old-fashioned thriller quality.  And surprise surprise, Mr Renner is terrific – playing a terrifying, and ultimately tragic, murderous nut-job. 

And someone came home at 4.00am last night and slammed doors and played music in the flat.  At 4.00am.  Gods, I wish I had my own place! 

And a couple of cool dreams...

Someone just told me they dreamed last night that they had garlic growing out of their arm. I like that - I could eat myself all day (sorry, that sounds really kinky). My dream last night was less edible, or edible in a different way (hmm, shading towards the kinky again here). I was an officer in the Metropolitan Police and had been assigned to the Royal Protection Squad; I was looking after Princess Anne's grandchildren. They were lovely, luckily. But they were being pursued by a terrorist who could take the form of a lion - so I was sent lion hunting with Zachary Quinto. I am not into blood sports, so I will interpret this as being about the need to recover my inner power. With Zachary Quinto.

I love dreams.

I also love the day-dream/long-term-plan type of dream. The novels, published and selling, being read and enjoyed. The art works, framed and exhibited, selling and being enjoyed. The house and garden, my own, instead of rented and falling to bits because the landlord has no money for renovations. The Café and Vegetarian Bistro with attached bookshop, small press, gallery and artists' studios, set in a small botanical garden on the island of Thassos (on the east coast between Alikí and Paradeissos, to be precise). My Favourite Baritone giving a private recital at my wedding, to someone talented, interesting, intelligent, articulate, presentable, solvent, and of course crackers about me. And singing "Oh, Du, mein Holder Abendstern" forty years later at my funeral... Slight problem with this last, in that Favourite Baritone is six years older than me, so he will be a very old gentleman indeed if I get another forty-odd years after the wedding to the as-yet-hypothetical, hopefully wonderful (even maybe hothothot) future partner.

Ah, but still - a girl can dream.

Tuesday 2nd September; lunch hour.

Went down to my Mother's over the weekend - it was her birthday, so my elder brother Stephen came too, and we all went for a couple of excellent coastal walks, picked masses of blackberries at Western Heights, talked our heads off, and ate too much. Very enjoyable and relaxing, and we even had decent weather, especially on Saturday. We went to St Margaret's Bay and walked up onto the cliffs and along towards Dover, and ate a picnic sitting on the grass above the white cliffs, with harebells and scabious around us, and other walkers going by with dogs and kids, and seagulls flying past below us, startlingly white against the deep blue-green of the sea. It was hot and sunny, the sky perfect blue, and a light breeze blowing. Perfection.
Stephen remarked that he wished there were some chance for people like him (he's a freelance graphic designer) to do something creative occasionally without having to risk losing work in order to have the time. His idea was that companies employing people in so-called "creative industries" should run a kind of staff personal development scheme whereby their creative employees could take a day a month, say, to do something that was not work related but that would stimulate them and thus improve their productivity, enhance the originality of their thinking, etc, by letting them spread their thoughts a little beyond the usual end-oriented get-the-job-done way of working. I think that's a lovely idea! - if wildly idealistic... He'd been inspired by the discovery that during World War Two, when the war office hired artists to design camouflage schemes for naval and army use, they encouraged them to also continue their personal art practice in the belief that keeping their creativity flowing as freely as possible would enhance their ability to produce good designs for the forces.
A creative personal development scheme at work... Hmmm. How about trying to get Kew to set that up?!
I urged him to start carrying a sketchbook. That's been one of my solutions to the problem of finding the time to make art of some kind. I never read on trains, for instance, but I often draw. If I'm riding more than a few stops on the Tube I draw the people sitting opposite me (slyly!). I used to pick up a leaf and draw it at work, on quiet days in my old job at the gates (days like today with its interminable rain), or during those foot-chewingly boring hours of reception duty at the Herbarium (enlivened only by occasional moments of intelligent conversation with Herbarium staff passing through reception- I'm sure, looking back, that I must have sounded a little desperate as I tried to get those friendly souls to stop a few seconds longer!). The new job is more humane in hours and in work conditions, but doesn't provide me with those enforced quiet patches.
But still, one can sketch, or knit, or sew, or crochet, or make notes, or write a novel, on the bus or the Tube or the train to work...
Another thing that came up this weekend was a comment from a friend of Mum's, relayed to me by her in some irritation, & equally as irritating to me. It came from an elderly lady called Bennie who used to come to all my private views when I was living in Kent. She always had a glass or three of wine and always thanked me for the invitation and said how lovely my stuff was; last week she stopped Mum in the High Street to ask how I was. Hearing I was now working full-time, she exclaimed how sad it was as I would not now have time to exhibit as much. Very true; I don't have time to exhibit as much, or to seek out exhibition opportunities, or to meet up with other artists, or indeed to make new work in the first place. I plug away with it, but time is short compared to when I only worked three days a week and crawled along on financially what I could earn by that (& a bl**dy struggle it was, too). I am acutely conscious of how little painting I generate compared to four years ago. Apparently Bennie then went on to tell my mother that I had made the wrong decision and that she was disappointed in me when she had supported me for so long, and that I should be disappointed in myself, too.
Well, all I can say is that in the five years I was struggling on on about £4500 per annum, living in Mum's spare room, and painting and exhibiting every chance I had, this person never once bought so much as a £10 sketch from me. Her "support" of me amounted to turning up, saying "Oh well done", and drinking my wine. And she is not badly-off, and I know she buys original art works from other - successful - artists. I don't think I've sold out in wanting to make sales, but, hell, one must have an income from SOMEWHERE. If she supported me so much, she could have demonstrated it.
I am not disappointed in myself; I think I've done well. I'm still here, albeit right out on the furthest margins of creativity. So, sorry, Bennie, but it wasn't a helpful comment.

Thought for the day: If you know a struggling artist, BUY SOMETHING FROM THEM!!

Thursday 27th, after work...

Bit of a gap; life has been rather on the hectic side. Two colleagues are off on annual leave so Julie and I are trying to cover all their work as well as our own this week. Just a WEE bit pressured!
Had a good evening on Tuesday; I came home, put some veg on to roast and then picked up my three funny, amateurish-looking little collography blocks to have a go at doing some printing for the first time in years. Mixed results! But got the buzz again and then went on, this time to start trying to do some monoprints. I had a box of pre-cut greetings card blanks, and began making cards for all I was worth; collograph, monoprint, monoprint on top of collograph, two layers of monoprint in different colours, ink painted over the top, and so on. I've still got pink ink under my fingernails two evenings later, but I was very happy crawling about on the floor like a baby, slinging ink, paint, glue etc around. Luckily kept it off the carpet (not my carpet and landlady although tolerant is bound to have a breaking point somewhere!..). Twenty-one greetings cards later, I'm not sure what to do with them all - but it was a satisfying evening. Most are themed around either hearts or spirals... If I have someone to send a Valentine to next year, at least I'll be spoilt for choice.

"SPRING" Series, mixed media on card, 2003.

Exhibited as a series in "Eight by Eight" at the IOTA Gallery, The Old Monkey House, Ramsgate, May2003. Individual pieces exhibited since in various shows. Most now sold.

Strange to look at images of spring as autumn is definately with us now in late August.

An almost-creative evening...

I had some fun on Wednesday evening, teaching my flatmate Kerry some simple origami. As I am not a patient teacher and she is not a patient pupil it got a little hysterical, but when I came home Thursday evening the kitchen table was full of origami butterflies, so I think the lesson took. She is about to go to New York (lucky lass) and wants to give bits of origami to the cast of "Rent", which she is going to a couple of days before it closes. I am quietly envious (though I have no idea of the origami significance as I've never seen "Rent"), but cannot afford any jaunts of this nature at present! At least it was a slightly-creative evening...
Drinking green tea from Laos (a present!) at work while a bell tolls endlessly from St Anne's church opposite - the bride is 20 minutes late for a wedding and this seems to be their idea of entertainment. In a few minutes I must get back to dealing with some more odd enquiries. As I work my way down through one file, another one is slowly filling up... If one must have a day job, and clearly I must, at least this one is never dull.

Wednesday evening (after work)

I've re-read some of my earlier ramblings and am rather embarrassed; I veer from saying how tough and combative I was as a child to whingeing about my total lack of self confidence, a pretty odd segue; another time I manage to have a moan about the people in the Creative Arts group, when I want them to feel appreciated, not moaned-at! Maybe this blog has become too much of a spleen-venting already. Apologies if so. On the other hand, just wait until I get onto "stories of stroppy customers I have known"!
It's been pointed out to me that I began a little history of the reasons for the site a while back, and then left it with an image of myself looking round a lecture theatre at art school in the spring of 2000 and thinking "How do I get to carry on making art, then?"
Basically, what happened then was that I began looking for any and every tip and trick and piece of advice on the problem that I could find. I asked anyone who would listen to me if they had any suggestions (except those whose opinions I didn't respect in the first place - most of whom funnily enough gave [completely useless] advice even so!).
I realised that one of the key problems was lack of time when I saw that within a matter of months most of my college friends were saying "I simply haven't the time for art, I'm too busy/too tired/my job is too demanding". So I refused to solve my student debt problem the obvious way by getting a decently-paid full time job, and instead worked part time and painted in my spare time.
One of the best bits of advice I received came from an art teacher I modelled for. She had recently been given the chance to put a piece in a small show and was rejoicing that she had been doing some painting recently, and so had something to hang. She told me "Most of my fellow-students from Royal College days are still showing their degree show work if they get an exhibition opportunity, because they haven't done anything since, and I know how much it depresses them every time they drag the old stuff out." That stuck with me, as I'm sure you can imagine. They "drag the old stuff out". YUK.
Another thing I noticed a lot of people from college doing was rejecting possible chances to exhibit their work for reasons that were essentially snobbish - "I can't exhibit with Whitstable Art Society, they're all kitten-painters!". Mostly they are, kitten-painters that is; but they still have an annual Open Exhibition for local artists. I shamelessly exhibited with the kitten-painters and the Sunday painters. I even ended up as Acting Chair of the local Art Society for a year (after the chairman was thrown out of office for trying to defraud the society's main sponsor!). If it works, don't knock it, as the saying goes. It got me exhibited and it got me sales, and all the satisfaction of knowing some of my work was hanging in someone's home or office, instead of sitting propped against the wall in my mother's garage.

It seemed to me that the big hurdles I had to get over were
1. keep making art work
2. get it shown - somehow, somewhere
3. keep in touch with other artists
4. don't give up!
So I focussed on those things.

More tomorrow... Going home.

Pics!

Temple of Light, 2002. Oil on canvas.

Landscape near Adisham, 2003. Oil on canvas.

I've just found the old Cd-rom on which my father put a whole bunch of my pictures a couple of months before he died. It's rather odd seeing his comments on the box, but very pleasant to have a few of my paintings, albeit not very recent ones, in electronic form. Sadly the quality isn't great; on some of the smaller ones it's better as they were scanned directly instead of being scanned from photos of the piece. The second picture is more representative of my current oeuvre, as I haven't done any interiors for ages but do lots of landscape (when I'm not drawing ducks and geese).

Will continue tonight after work!

Tuesday evening...

Spider's comment on Thursday last stuck in my mind; she wrote of having to be
"...bold, and asking for more than you think you deserve"
and that just about sums it up, doesn't it? The biggest hurdle to creativity is not the infamous blank page, and certainly not, in my case at least, the pram in the hall, it's the personal insecurity and the effort involved in asking for "attention to be paid". No matter how much one tells oneself that one is a grown adult, capable, talented, with successes and triumphs under one's belt - still those little nagging inner voices are there in the background, saying softly and insidiously "you don't deserve to get anywhere, stay safe, don't try anything risky, spare yourself the humiliation". UGH. The legacy of internalising goddess-knows-what individually-harmless minor comments in early childhood. I do not believe for one moment that any of the people who said to me "Don't overreach yourself, play it safe" when I was a small child had any desire to undermine my confidence; I was, after all, a demanding, ferociously bright, competitive and short-tempered kid endlessly trying to beat an equally bright, taller, stronger elder brother. Not match him; beat him. Hence the broken collar bone, the impalement in the laurel tree, and a number of other injuries (- A&E Doctor:"Where did you land, dear?" Me, aged six: "Half on the stairs and half in the hall, but it would have been all in the hall if Stephen had let go of my leg." Another A&E doctor, on another occasion: "What was it that hit you?" Me, aged seven: "The toy rhinoceros my brother threw at me.").
Lack of self-confidence is one of the most crippling things I ever deal with. At least nowadays I DO deal with it; for years, I just hid. It took a very odd experience to force me to see that I was not helping myself by never facing up to anything that scared me.
I was discussing "Red Dwarf" (remember "Red Dwarf"?) with a colleague and found myself saying I identified with Rimmer. Her appalled disgust and disbelief brought me up short. Was this really such a dreadful concept? I found myself seeing myself momentarily through another's eyes, and it took me aback. In my lunch break I went out and sat in the rose garden of Eliot College, and thought about the whole Rimmer/me issue at some length. I saw myself over time turning more and more into a Rimmer-like character. The sun was shining, there were roses blooming all around me, and I was imagining a future as a sour, embittered, disliked tagger-along on the lives of others. I took my diary and wrote in it "I have seen the future, and it doesn't work."
A week later I went to an open day at the local adult education centre, got chatting to one of the art department staff, and on impulse signed up to do an art course in the autumn term. It cost me £120, and it was the best £120 I have ever spent, because it changed my life.
If I ever meet Chris Barrie, I must thank him, because in a way he changed my life, too.
Since then - that was in 1993, good grief - I've overcome many blockages, done many things that were difficult or challenging, and faced many fears. It does get easier with time and experience. But I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at it yet.
I'm in a new job at the moment, and it's bringing me up against some of the same issues. I cannot bear getting things wrong. Other people can make mistakes when they are learning a new rôle; I cannot. I feel like screaming with frustration at my inadequacy, over minor errors that I would comfortably excuse, were someone else to make them under my tutelage. It's as if the job is a new Stephen, and I'm playing catch-up once again, competing against a standard I cannot beat.
Sorry, this has all gone rather cod-psychology tonight. I'm tired after a rather mad day and last night's very enjoyable (if frustrating at times - why? - because I'm not good enough at it!!) lesson at the Lindy-Hop club. I'm going home now, which means cycling in the rain because like a mutt I came to work by bike today in defiance of the weather forecast.
Not feeling terribly creative; I chiefly want to sleep, in fact. The fresh (& wet) air will do me good, no doubt. Goodnight, all.

Monday evening...

Very pleased today to get an email from an old friend from college saying she has been looking at this! I'm saddened by her remark that she feels now she was one of those who just gave up at that moment in the third year at college; but cheered to learn that like me she has found her creative drive simply won't go away completely. Maybe that is what distinguishes the 4% from the other 96% - come hell or high water, the Muse stays with us and, for want of a better term, nags us until we find a creative outlet of some kind.
I've always felt very strongly that there is a totally unnecessary prejudice (within the arts as a whole) against certain types of creative self-expression - cookery, gardening, but also everything classified as a "craft" rather than an art form, and all the illustrative types of art such as archeological and botanical draughtsmanship. It furthers a snobbish and heirarchical (have I spelled that right? it's one of my blank spots) art world, and creates a system that shows preference to its own, and dismisses most of the world as mere lowly mortals who haven't got talent. Considering some of the twerps who are officially sanctioned as being "talented" I think I'd rather keep company with the gardeners and the craftspeople!
Dear me, I'm ranting, and I'm cross enough that my grammar is slipping.
Change of subject, quickly.
I started trying to do some collography on Sunday - hindered by having rather thin cardboard, but bashing away at it nonetheless. Two plates are drying at home and tomorrow evening I'll have a go at printing from them. Who knows? - I may take one look at the results and retreat whimpering, but I thought I'd have a try.
I'm also trying to keep galvanising the Creative Arts Club I've started at the place where I work. Everyone is busy and burdened with other commitments, but we have managed to have a couple of sketching evenings, and three of us went together to the RA Summer Exhibition (this was the mixture as usual, and it was fascinating to go around the show with someone to talk-to). I don't like coming over as a badgery sort of person saying "Come on, folks, let's have a get-together!" - like some demented school games mistress - but if we don't meet we don't have a group. Everyone was so enthusiastic when I first mooted the idea, but we're all so busy.
I'm finding the tendency this system has to revert to this seriffed typeface every time I take my eye off it very irritating! Drat it, I want Arial! Give me Arial! Bah. I think maybe I'm tired; I will stop looking at this screen and go out dancing for the evening instead.

Thursday 14th August, 1.05 pm

Maybe a bit of background history would not go amiss.
When I left art school in the summer of 2000 I felt pretty cynical about my degree; it had cost me three years of my life, not to mention the proverbial blood, sweat, toil and tears, and a great deal of money I could ill afford. By contrast, my previous college experience, a two-year foundation course leading to a BTEC in General Art and Design, had been terrific, two of the best years of my life. But the degree course had in large part been grim. As a figurative landscape painter in a provincial art college determined to move itself into the leading rank of proponents and producers of Conceptual Brit-Art, I had had a rough time of it, and I was tired and depressed by the time I eventually emerged clutching my degree certificate.
I was lucky enough to get a small break straight away; a family friend was organising a fundraising exhibition in aid of the local branch of UNICEF, and asked if I'd like to put a couple of pieces up, with 30% commision on any sales going to UNICEF. I said yes, and a month later I had made my first sale, and could list an exhibition on my cv. It gave me a hell of a boost. All my college friends (that I was still in touch with) were either up to their necks in new career-type jobs or else sitting around at home, despondently complaining that there was no system for them to get exhibited and no established pattern for them to follow to move into being practising artists, and that they didn't know what to do.
We had been told at college, about three months before graduation, that statistics show that 96% of Fine Art graduates, unless they go on to do a Masters, give up producing any art within two years of leaving art school, and never go back to it (the cynicism of telling us this fact at that stage in proceedings appalled me, though it was par for the course at that particular college). I remember this as one of the defining moments of my adult life. I looked around the lecture theatre, to see faces falling, expressions of horror and disbelief, slumping shoulders and sour grimaces, and I realised that most of my fellow-students were thinking "Oh shit, that's me done for then", and were giving up mentally right then. Whereas my reaction had been to think "Okay, so how do I get to be in the 4% who manage to carry on?" To my immense surprise, it was a minority reaction.
It became my focus. How was I to get to be in the 4% of art school graduates who carry on producing art? And for five years I worked my arse off to try and achieve this.
I'll go on tomorrow; my lunch hour is over...

First post!

This is my first ever post in my first ever blog. I won't go on about that as it isn't terribly interesting, though.

This is intended to be a blog about being a struggling artist/writer/general purpose creative person, and about the bizarre business of trying to keep the creative fire alight (hence the title) when one has an "official" life of job, rent and bills, family and friends, etc, as well. That official, worldly life tends so easily to dominate the creative life, yet the creative life is one's reason for being here in the first place; one can end up profoundly depressed, floundering in unrealised projects and unfulfilled dreams.

OR not. Because one can also end up managing, by many and varied means, to keep the fire burning and keep the creative juices flowing. It can be done; I'm doing it (although at times I'm only just doing it!).

Sorry about the clichés, by the way. I'll get used to this.

My name is Imogen and I am an artist. I fought my way through five years of art school and five years of trying to "make it" as an artist after graduating, before I succumbed to the bitter reality of having to take a full-time job, and the seemingly-inevitable result of my work as an artist becoming effectively no more than a hobby. That was three years ago, in the spring of 2005.

But this is what is surprising; it never quite goes away. I literally CAN'T stop - creating things is one of my greatest pleasures and I have always felt very strongly that it is my main reason for being alive. And so, I have found ways to keep going.