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.

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...