I’m very lucky where I work, the Programme Leader for Fine Art (an eminent curator, writer and blogger herself, Tracey Warr) has arranged for one of the studios over the summer to be available for staff within the school to use. I desperately want to take advantage of this offer of space, something that comes at a premium in our small end terrace house, and use the studio to make some bigger work. I very rarely get the opportunity to make bigger work and I have some huge paper tucked behind a wardrobe as well as some large rolls of paper that could be utilised. This has certainly got me thinking about the possibilities of what I could do, but I honestly am at a bit of a loss. Which is silly, I was burning with ideas just a few short weeks ago.
Having been focussed on my teaching course as well as my job for a few weeks has taken the wind out of my art sails a bit, but I am determined to huff and puff some back in there.
I’ve got my copy of Esther Woolfson’s ‘Field Notes from a Hidden City’ here beside me and it is creaking at the edges with page markers.
Perhaps, I could make a series of drawings that visualise these passages that I’ve marked to be digested at some un-known time, perhaps I could start the project with a series of large mono printed landscapes. Perhaps, perhaps, I’m driving myself a little mad with the lack of motivation to just bloody well get on with it. I need to adopt the Taoist mentality that I continuously advise in my own teaching, ‘First thought, best thought’. Not, because necessarily, the first thought is the best thought, but because it is the thought that gets us moving, making, creating some work.
Time to get the sketch book out and take some motivational inspiration from my busy, ever present, garden birds.
Please feed the birds.
Martha Cadle - Artist and Printmaker 