Writing

I don't know yet if this section will remain part of the Studio Practice project, part of the learning journal, or anything at all to do with the MA.

Although this MA is in Fine Art, it is an essential part of my creativity to write. I've long been fascinated in the processes of creativity, and what works for the individual, or generally. It's often a process of discovering, or uncovering, inner mechanisms which are already there, or of responding to ways of thinking and reasoning. I have written much over the years, stories, poems. Over time I developed discipline in writing, and figured out formats which made sense to me. I stopped the unsatisfying writing of endless story and novel beginnings ideas, and realised that I was much happier and infinitely more productive when I had committed to a particular project, and therefore completed it.

Aspects of my own creativity mechanism which writing has taught me, I have also applied to visual work. My approach is not identical, and although I write or make artwork as different mediums in pursuing similar aims and ideas, they are not directly related, and neither illustrative or descriptive of each other.

The point now, is that in the three years before the MA, I wrote two novels, each about a year-long pursuit. Since starting the MA I have realised that I wouldn't really have the time to write another until it was finished. However, I can't go back and unthink what writing novels has given me. I remember talking to Emma in one of the very early tutorials, that I wanted to make moving Image work in the way I wrote a novel - to spend a year or so getting my teeth really into something.

Last year I spent that time making Vessels, which was satisfying in many ways, a big artistic project with many large and small conundrums to resolve. However, even that was different to a novel-type project, which unfolds over time, as it was the nature of that exhibition that I had already come up with the format of vessels in order to gain the exhibition in the first place, so the work always had to fit the initial concept, and was not free to transmute, only to find ways to become itself.

Writing a novel is different to a short story. In a short story, there is a point and a story and an aspect. In a novel, although there is much editing, the point is to try to put in more, not less, to incorporate every aspect and every shade in the novel.

Although I'm not a painter, I have done some paintings, and I often think of writing novels or making moving image as working on a big, complex abstract painting, with it's own internal logic and equations. Basically, although writing a novel is difficult, in fact grueling at times, it's wonderful to be so engaged and engrossed in solving all the problems within, and finding the ideas which will propel towards completion.

I have not spent so long as an entire year or so making a piece of moving image. Usually I have spent about three months on a piece, and although this can be intense, I think I'm saying that I apply all lessons in creativity to writing and art, and now I want to make film, moving image, as if it is a novel. I do not yet know exactly how this will manifest itself, but I do know this is very much how I want to work, to make a bigger, more multilayered and complex piece, that resolves itself over time.

29th June 2012

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I don't seem to be able to commit to or sustain linked writing at the moment. I've had a couple of attempts, but realistically, that part of my mind which mulls things over is occupied by the drawing at the moment. That's not so bad, but it's the structure that counts anyway, and the principle to transfer to the drawing project, especially when it comes to making the moving image from them. I am beginning to think about that - not to plan it, because that would close in possibilities when I still want to open them up, but to wonder what it will be. At the stage, nearly half way through the 60 drawings, the visual world created is emerging, although new types of drawings may be added.

Mentions of novels, etc in the research page seem relevant to me, as I pick out various ideas and structures. I find it a little difficult to express exactly how these cross media into my own drawing, but I will find those links.

5th August 2012

..........

Not everything happens all at the same time. Writing towards a novel is just not going to happen right now, although I have ideas developing. I have been more deliberately looking at novels with an art related theme, whether in the artworld, or having an artist as a character. I have been compiling these in a book list. Although art and novels do not have to have a direct link to be relevant, I think these is something for me to research and understand in this area. I cite aspects such as the structure of novels as a major influence in my thinking, which I translate into my art in various ways.

However, there has not been no writing, if I may put it that way. Don't have to explain or refer.

..........

And Yesterday

Yesterday and yesterday and yesterday

Creep like shadows over our days

Swallowing up the landscape of today

Into the dark indeterminate greys of night.

A mountainside full of sunshine and detail

Rolling over in its sleep, forgetting,

Sinking into cloud, into lost.

All our tomorrows

Already photographs fading into paper.

And what is to be determined

Is whether all those yesterdays

Amount to something, or to naught.

..........

Sky

I search the sky for the meaning

Of today.

Come on, clouds. Where is your metaphor.

I thought I spoke cloud,

Read it.

How can it be that it is all further away.

Further

                Further

Evaporating like a cloud

I thought I could touch.

12th November 2012