Art Hell 2

Art Hell 2

My cat, Saphie, surrounded by torn up drawing.

“This is the end, my only friend, the end…” (The Doors).

“Waaahhhh!”  (That’s me crying.)  Well, not really, but I am sad.  I worked so hard at a  drawing for nearly three weeks – all in vain.  Tonight after trying EVERYTHING to solve the problems, I finally put myself and the drawing out of our miseries by tearing up the offending piece.  I had intended to photograph it for a post but I’m not courageous enough to share a failure with you (except when it is ripped up).

It is a peculiar thing as the drawing, which I had called “Sakura at Dusk”, started off so well.  Two weeks ago when I wrote about my drawing”Rare View” I said that it took me a long time to connect with that piece.  I had been about three quarters of the way through the drawing before I really began to enjoy it.  “Sakura at Dusk” was the opposite experience.  I loved working on it right from the start.  It was one of my blurry type of drawings with most of it being out of focus and just some sakura (cherry blossom) in the foreground in focus.  So I merrily worked away on it and it seemed that it effortlessly finished itself.  I put it up on the easel and was satisfied…that is… until I wasn’t!

The more I looked at it, the more I adjusted it.   The more I adjusted it, the more I wasn’t happy.  This state of affairs went on for days.  During that time I wrote last week’s post “Art Hell”.  Mentally the drawing went from being called “Sakura at Dusk” to “Art Hell”.  As I got more agitated, it became less and less “Sakura at Dusk” until its title totally turned into “Art Hell”.

I had overworked “Sakura at Dusk/Art Hell” until the colours had turned muddy with layering.  And all the way through I couldn’t make up my mind.  One minute I’d think ‘ah ha – THAT’S fixed it’.  Next I’d think ‘wow, it’s beautiful’.  Then I would look again and know that it really wasn’t.   I had to keep trying because, while I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it either, not while there was hope of redemption.  At least in the end (tonight) I knew that I really DID hate it.  Out damn spot!!!

I had a lot of pleasure working on the drawing as well as miles of frustration and some anguish.  After many hours of work I don’t have anything to show for it.  However I now put this behind me and look ahead.  What’s next?  I began a new piece the other day.  I will ‘keep calm and carry on’ as they say.  At least – I’ll look for calm.   Where is it?  I must have put it somewhere.  When I locate it, I’ll attempt to keep it – and then I’ll carry on.

Ripped drawing on the floor.

Related post:  Art Hell         Related page:  Failures!

Return to Contents of Posts page

Art Hell

ART HELL

Art hell is a state of mind…and a negative one at that.  It is the opposite of ‘brimming over with ideas’.  It is contrary to having the satisfaction of creating what you want and feeling deep contentment.  Rather than being in control, you know you are out of it.

Art hell is my term but it may also be known as artist’s block, writer’s block or creative block.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that there are no new ideas; rather, that you don’t want to do any of them.  When little seedlings of ideas germinate, a big foot (like on Monty Python’s Flying Circus) stamps from above and flattens them.

It is when you can’t trust your artistic judgement.  You finish a new piece and you don’t know if you love it or hate it.  Is it that this drawing has gone beyond your usual boundary and you haven’t caught up?  In other words it could be ‘the shock of the new’ therefore you can’t yet evaluate it.  Or is it simply a picture which failed to thrive all along.  You actually don’t know.  You can’t tell one way or the other.  Probably yes.  Probably no.

You ask yourself ‘what do I feel deeply about right now that I wish to work on next?’  Honest answer – ‘nothing’.  You can have files and files of new material but they don’t elicit any emotion.  Within those photos you took are compositions for new drawings.  You will see them later when the current bout of art hell is over.  But while you are in it, the critic within says NO.

It isn’t depression or anxiety.  It isn’t life threatening or a real crisis.  It is only art hell.  It need not be feared for it is always temporary.  You don’t have to do anything.  You wake up one morning and, just like that, your optimism is back.  Until then, well, you’re in it.

In the meantime you go for walks, garden, clean the house, read, write miserable entries into your journal, see a film, have coffee with friends and whinge to long-suffering husband.

Art hell and I go way back.  I can even remember it from high school; in fact, since ‘art’ was a subject.  It wasn’t a subject in primary school.  So, as far as I can remember, art hell hadn’t really developed then.  It grew enormous at art school but settled back down to just being part of life’s natural cycle since then.

Oh – but for one exceptional day at Karori West Normal School when our teacher decided that our class would have a whole day of art and craft.  He brought in so many materials; driftwood from Makara Beach, shells, paints, papers and cards, string, glue, wire, printing equipment – you name it.  I felt under so much pressure to produce something good that I remember it as one big art hell day.  Maybe my first one?!  I was nine.   Happily, some parents complained.  They didn’t want their children wasting time on art for a whole day.  So it wasn’t repeated.

Certainly writing this down has helped to ease the current bout of art hell.  I think perhaps tomorrow it will be over.  Until then…I wonder what’s on TV?

Related post:  Art Hell 2          Related page:  Failures!

Return to Contents of Posts page

Rare View

“Rare View” – coloured pencil drawing.  345 x 480 mm. 2013

 

Love in a Cold Climate: Saint Petersburg

Love in a Cold Climate:  Saint Petersburg

Detail of a poster for the ballet behind falling snow.

This week I am sharing a few photos which I took during four days in Saint Petersburg.  I have borrowed the title from Nancy Mitford who wrote the novel “Love in a Cold Climate” – first published in 1949 (incidently one of my favourite books).

Nice spot for fishing!

Were these guys fishing or taking some measurements under the ice?   Whatever they were doing, it was a freezing spot to be doing it.  I was impressed!  (It is like a Russian version of  L.S Lowry’s bleak landscapes.)

Old lady hoping to sell clockwork Moomintrolls on Nevsky Prospekt.

I did a double-take when I noticed these tiny figures were Moomintrolls (characters from the books by Tove Jansson).   I’m afraid the Moomintroll lady wasn’t attracting any business.  I might have bought one except that my pockets were empty.  You see,  I had spontaneously rushed out of my hotel to get snow photos.  Visitors are always supposed to have their passports on them when in Russia yet I had nothing but my Nikon.   This was on Saint Petersburg’s main shopping street, Nevsky Prospekt.  I like the fact that there are snowflake motifs on the counter – and it is snowing.

View down a side alley.

‘View down a side alley’ makes me think of communist propaganda art of last century.  The writing on the banner sets the scene.  The old man, while watching his step, did not notice me photographing him.  I was also watching my step; trying to take a photo in a hurry without falling over on the ice.

Focussing on the glass (rather than the view) of a window at The Hermitage.

When I was visiting The State Hermitage Museum (which had been one of the palaces of Catherine the Great) my attention was divided between the art treasures  inside and the views of the frozen river outside.  I took several photos where I focussed on the glass itself so that the view outside was abstracted.

Church on Spilled Blood in a spring snow fall.

The proper name of Church on Spilled Blood is ‘The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ’.   It was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881.  Finished in 1907, its future was not bright and it was used to store vegetables during world war II and mockingly referred to as ‘Saviour of Potatoes’.  It was left to ruination however in the past few decades it has been restored to its former glory.  It functions as a museum nowadays.  The normally brilliant colours of the exterior have been completely muted and softened by the falling snow.

Love in a cold climate.

While I stood on one bank of the frozen canal leading to the Church on Spilled Blood, I noticed this couple on the opposite bank.   It looked like they had just got married and were posing for photos in front of the church.   I couldn’t resist taking my own photo of them.  Being at a distance, they were oblivious to me.  As they were small in my lens, I could not see what I had captured until I got back to Australia and transferred my photos to computer.  Then I saw it.  I had caught two people utterly absorbed in one another.

Don’t they look like an attraction of opposites?  She is fair haired and engulfed in white -while he, darkly handsome, dresses in black.  I surmise that she is an extrovert – (she loves to talk) – while he is an introvert (he listens to her stories).   How Slavonic they look!          This is, surely, Love in a Cold Climate.

Return to Contents of Posts page