Art That Nobody Sees

Now I’ve completed the Royal Drawing School’s Summer School I am declaring myself a drawing-led painter 😉 I am not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as all the drawing-led painters I admire and whose work I drool over - David Hockney, Tracey Emin, Rose Wylie - but one day, after my death perhaps, someone will say “She tried her best at drawing with paint.” That’s all I want to achieve: my best.

My time in London was deeply clarifying. I’ve realised I have very little interest in sharing my work with strangers or applying to gallery shows with themes I’d never usually make art about; I don’t really care if anybody else sees my art in person other than me and my close family. That isn’t a startling revelation – I’ve been distancing myself from the industrial art complex for a number of years – but I have been surprised by how disinterested I am in the ‘sharing’ part of art. It’s hard to identify the root of this estrangement – a distaste for social media is certainly part of it, but not the entire reason. I think I’ve concluded that to persist as an artist, to really find the strength and resilience to keep making art through all the ups and downs of life, I must be driven by something deeply personal, spiritual, and perhaps something that can’t fully be described. I want to be the best version of me, the painter, as I can possibly be. Not for ego’s sake, I’m the most unambitious Capricorn you’ll ever meet, rather I LIVE through art, it’s my love and life language. I may never be a good enough painter to have work accepted by a posh London gallery but that’s not my goal. I just want to keep improving and make my art unmistakably mine.

The striving to improve is The Practice. And The Practice sometimes demands I put myself in uncomfortable places – like the Royal Drawing School – or requests I remove myself from distractions such as Instagram, or even Substack. In this way, The Practice IS the source, the life-force, the energy of Art. What comes out of The Practice is evidence of my commitment, devotion, love of the process and hopefully, over time, the outcomes of The Practice become more aligned with the source; better drawn; better articulated; just better in all ways.

I know many artists who wouldn’t agree with my position. In fact, in the past I’ve declared my art unfinished until it has been witnessed by someone other than me, but I don’t feel that way at the moment, although I retain the right to change my mind - next week I might be writing about responding to gallery calls for art!

I recently read an article in The Guardian1 about artist Rex Exworth who spent a lifetime creating sculptures that he only showed to a handful of people. On his death he left seven sheds full of sculptures and the article recounts how photographer Jem Southam has documented the works in a book called Ray’s Sheds. I don’t know how the photographer got permission to enter the sheds but there’s something seductive to me about leaving a hidden legacy. One runs the risk of course that the person opening the shed doesn’t give a fig about the work and it all gets taken away by one of those pay-us-and-we-dispose-of-anything services, so I’m lining up possible candidates to be The Keeper of The Shed: a person so important they’ll be handed the key on my demise and given full permission to document my lifetime of paintings. My good friend M, a brilliant photographer, is top of my list. I haven’t broken this to her yet but I will soften her with a glass of wine and the promise of a Leica camera afforded to her with the proceeds of my estate. She’ll be thrilled ;)

Having settled on stashing away all my works, only to be viewed by a handful of lucky folk, I find myself unusually relaxed about my studio practice. I still have goals - clearer hierarchy in my composition, not over-working - but I feel less rushed, less pressured to fix all the faults in my process. I have what’s left of my lifetime to reach my ‘best’. The Drawing School encouraged me to slow down and at this stage of my ‘art career’ - an optimistic term for all my years of artmaking - my practice is not about churning out as much art as possible, or producing art in response to a brief, it’s about reviewing, editing, and refining. I’ve spent days looking closely at last year’s paper-based works, reading them like a book, deciphering the narrative. What’s the story? What’s the next chapter? What motifs are symbolically important to me? Where’s the myth?

All my art is about relationships: the interconnectivity of humans with nature and the planet; me and my landscapes. Strange spatial relationships are key to my artistic style, negative space being just as important as the wonky objects, but I often lose confidence towards the end of a painting and add in unnecessary clutter that undermines the composition. Having spent the first part of this year decluttering my physical spaces, it’s now time for me to apply a similar rigour to my creative process. The clutter on the canvas needs to go! I’ve found that living with less and occupying a smaller home has meant less cleaning, less maintenance, much more spare time. I’ve finally whittled away the distractions so that there are no more excuses as to why I’m not dedicating time to my art. I’ve pushed myself into a tiny corner with an easel, paints and a brush. This is the time. It’s now or never. But my confidence is wobbly. There’s a squeeze of fear in every paint-mix on my palette: What if I’m not actually capable of creating pictures that accurately depict the world as I see it? Is my proclamation of not showing work fundamentally fear of it being rejected? (Of course it is). What if a locked, dark shed is the only place where my art belongs?

Yesterday I popped my crisis of confidence into my paint box, headed to the co-working studio, opened up a sketchbook and drew with paint. I engaged with The Practice. That’s all that’s required of me.

With love

J x