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MY EXPLANATION |
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My Colour – My explanation. No one may care to read this either, which is partly the appeal. I can voice my thoughts, and you can take it or leave it, as you see fit. ‘My colour,’ a collection of paintings created on and off over the past three years. That time was largely spent thinking, ‘I’m shit. This is shit. What am I trying to say? Is this my style of painting? What is my style? Have I ever had one?! What’s the point of me painting now anyway, I’m a grown person working in the real world as a designer now.’ Which I was, and still am. I painted around the edges of the many new things that began taking over my life. Studying art at college taught me how to paint to order, and that’s what I did to. ‘This is my work inspired by such-a-such artist’. ‘Here are six sketch books on a study of so-and-so a painter’. Looking back now I’d urge anyone about to finish their studies on art to think little of their resulting grade, and instead buy a box of pencils. Get back to creating your own unique work, that you used to do as a kid, when you and other people first recognised you had a talent. Talent. A gift. Something sadly not essential to study art. Spending time with people who enjoyed the sleep art lessons let them catch up on was galling. They were right though – art was a doss lesson. It’s all thanks to the ‘but it’s modern art’ excuse, as they offer up a shoebox full of crushed coke cans, pleading its symbolism of the condensed space of a fast-paced lifestyle. Talent! Skill. It exists for a reason, to show us what we’re good at. What the frig is the point in pretending art is something we can all do. I don’t pretend I’ll ever be an microbiologist. All that time spent looking at art under a microscope didn’t prepare me for how mute I’d feel at the end of it, so I just got on with going to work. People said things like, ‘You just need a break and your ideas will come back I’m sure. Don’t over think things’. I was pretty sure I lost it. ‘Write what you know,’ or paint it. I thought I could rekindle my passion to paint by taking inspiration from other areas of my life that felt passionate. The first few paintings in my exhibition are examples of this, flowers and objects all linked to relationships I had at the time, dreams of travel and holidays. Only doing this had the opposite effect, and I realised how passionless I was. Relationships were short and I blamed myself for this, and focused on working, and stopped trying to paint. Oh woe is me. Bring out the violins, how awful. The poor girl can’t paint. As much as I want to explain things I don’t. It’s personal stuff. I didn’t paint anything for about two years. As unappealing as I find it now to look at, the phone box painting was revisited time and time again when it seemed I had fuck all in my life to look to for inspiration, direction, anything. But at least there was light in there somewhere. I’m not a musical person. I’ve never mastered an instrument. I gave up trying to learn the piano. But I bought a lot of music, because I found then I could feel something. It was my first real boyfriend who started me on this. He burnt me cds, by means of modern day flowers and gifts I suppose. They were amazing. It was like rediscovering a sense I’d lost. There were sounds that seemed to unlock real feelings for me. So I listened for a long time. A lot of people say, ‘I love music,’ but I was hooked. I did begin to paint again. Always to music. Sometimes one track would inspire an idea, and I would live days played on a loop until I got the idea out. One art form fed the other, as I searched for new bands, live gigs, experiences to keep the fires burning. See this all sounds pretty great now, but at the time I didn’t feel very in control, and instead kept fearful of loosing the ability again, and as satisfying as I found it to paint – it was consuming, intense, but still altogether aimless. I worried about my goals, what was the reason for doing any of this? Did I want to sell them? Was I commercial enough, did I have a clear style? But something blew the doubts from my mind, and opened my eyes to what I’d had all along. A friend once told me, ‘You won’t find your style – it will find you,’ and they were right. A challenge was set by a band whose music I had discovered during my insatiable search, to create artwork for a new album cover. It was asking artists to be inspired by their music and produce artwork – a request I couldn’t ignore. I felt it was something I had to do, but there was no room for fruit and flowers here. Perhaps this is an odd thing to say, but before this, I hadn’t painted anything imaginative. Not since my crayon days as a child, had I made an image that was unique to me. I worked from observation, playing the part of the human camera. This new challenge made me question this. I had to close my eyes, listen, and see. I had to explain in acrylics and canvas how the music made me feel. This is where my style found me. The artwork I created then was the most real and ‘me’ than I had ever done before. Listening to how I feel: three years of college where this wasn’t a skill needed, and a further three years re-learning what I’d forgotten how to do. I can’t say I worry now about what my art is for. They’re just paintings of mine, that I wanted to hang on the white walls of a gallery. I want people to see them, to feel something from them. I’d like that. They meant a lot to me at the time, still do, but it was the creation of them that I needed – and will always need. ‘My Colour’ is my final word on trying to feel how I should do. The full stop on fitting in with my surroundings, on being a chameleon. There’s no need for that now, I’m happy to have found my own. Thank you for reading if you have done, you crazy fool. Take a look at the paintings, see them in the flesh, let me know what you think if you’d like.
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