unexpected twists…

May 2022

I sense that I am seeing and drawing things differently.

Initial hesitancy or sketchiness is increasingly replaced by bold, sweeping lines.

Over time, I am beginning to take a measure of the man making the marks.

Status update.

Don’t you just love bureaucracy and form-filling? I know I do (not).

After four months of phone calls, emails, form-filling, toing and froing, twisting and turning, I now have an official professional status as an “artiste-peintre”.

(How did that happen?)

I will be able to derive income through any sales of my artwork while maintaining my job as a university teacher.

Not having to make a living from my art gives me the freedom to create.

Freedom to sell?

I never set out to sell my artwork. It was always an activity I did freely.

I had always associated money with constraint rather than freedom..

Then I was faced with a conundrum.

SPACE-TIME-FREEDOM (money)

I had never created so much art as in the last four years.

What on earth was I going to do with it all?

I started by giving it away to family and friends.

I didn’t want to burn all of it. I couldn’t keep it all.

When push comes to shove, what’s the point of keeping your art or your artist identity in the closet?

In January 2022, I weighed everything up. I wanted to spend less time doing academic research and publications and more time doing art.

There was no way around it, I would need more SPACE, more money for art supplies, a website, a studio SPACE which would allow me to create with bigger formats and make more mess.

I wanted to do exhibitions, I wanted to sell my freely created artwork. I didn’t want to do commissions..

Unexpected twists…
I was setting up for the weekly life-drawing class, ready for another relaxing session.

Suddenly, somebody asked, “Who wants to do an exhibition on the 3rd of June?”.

I heard myself saying “Me.”

Exhibiting.

I hadn’t really considered the practicalities of getting an exhibition together (at short notice).

It was also apparently, of course, the right moment to start the building of a website, I decided.

(Why? Why? Why?)

I have got myself tied up in knots so many times.

I should know better than to trust my worst/best instincts.

I know I won’t not trust my instincts in the future.

I am hard to live with at times.

out in the open…

the path ahead…