I am in a place of struggle with my art right now (as indeed, I often am).

I am second-guessing myself all the time. Is this embroidery good? Is there any point to it? Does it mean anything? Is it derivative and boring?

Bah, and indeed, humbug.

The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.
Pablo Picasso

I often have to trick my analytical side into letting me make art because my art is essentially nonsensical. It's a daft thing to do. Putting thousands of pins in a piece of fabric or tying thousands of knots in bits of string is loopy, I've always understood that, whilst at the same time (mostly) believing that it still has value. Yet holding those two opposing beliefs (this is daft/ this is worthwhile) in balance is not always an easy thing to do.

It's hard to make art when your mind is tied up in knots like this. Often it seems that we artists spend most of our time clearing out the junk in our heads that stops us making, instead of actually making. Hmmm, perhaps it's time to read one of my favourite books, Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, which is all about how not to quit. I reread it at least once a year, it helps get me through times of doubt like this.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

I want to get back to uncomplicated creating, making without thinking, joyful making. I miss it. Perhaps I will drag out my pens this afternoon, lie in bed and just draw and draw and draw. I know when I feel like this - dissatisfied, antsy and annoyed with myself and my art - that work is the only cure. I might not make anything good but even lousy art usually moves things along.

One final note: I'm not looking for sympathy here. I am not in crisis, despair or needing reassurance that my art is good: I've been through this many, many times before and I know that I will pull out of it and start making again, usually with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. I am well aware that this is a natural part of the artistic process that most artists periodically go through. I'm putting this out there in the hope that other people will learn that this is just part of making art and so that they don't despair when it happens to them.

And now I'm going to go and take a walk with my camera to get some fresh air, buy something yummy for dinner and hopefully clear my head.

Hmm, apparently I did something weird this morning and this post vanished into the ether even though I'm sure I published it. Even more annoying, it didn't save most of it, so I've had to rewrite it. Fortunately most of it is based on an old piece of writing from way back in 2001, so it wasn't too much work. I've even managed to put in a couple of pictures - if I'm very patient, I can link to photos that are already on Flickr, I just can't upload any new ones. Using dial-up is like wading through treacle and I can't wait to get back to the 21st century and a fast broadband connection although I am enjoying hearing the old modem sound again, it's quite the nostalgia trip.

Anyway, it's time to raid the vaults... this has been edited slightly to tighten up the language and grammar but is more or less unchanged from the original.

Still Life
1/7/01

I have come to realise that much of what I make is actually Still Life. My photographs, in particular, have a Still Life sensibility. I am looking at small things - like hot raspberries on the beach or the reflection in a bowl of water - and saying that they are small yet important. It seems to me that that is what most Still Lives do: they take everyday things and set them apart so we can truly see them.

Kirsty Hall: Blue Bowl Reflection, circa 1999

Still Life demands that we really look at the flagon of wine and the apple; the bowl of cherries; the lifeless carcasses. It ponders the flowers, the glass and the tablecloth. It shows us the texture of everyday life and forces the realisation that actually these things are amazing: the bread we eat, the soft cheese, the pile of fruit, the luscious cakes, the humble or grand spread. This is what keeps us alive after all. This is what nourishes us. Of course we also need vast epic pictures of the imagination and portraits that force us to look at our frail human bodies. We need art to consider many things but it seems odd that Still Life should so often have been considered the least important subject matter in art, when it deals so intimately with life and death.

Kirsty Hall: Grape Stem, May 2003

Mortality is a vital component of many Still Lives. Those flowers will soon be dead: they are just caught for a moment in time. Caught at the point of perfection? Or perhaps already weeping their petals onto the rough-hewn table or perfect lace. That food will spoil or be devoured by a hoard of hungry mouths. Even that fine glass goblet will eventually be broken or lost. The table itself will be consumed by history. Who knows what happened to the musical instruments, the sheet music or the pile of books? They are lost to us except for this captured image.

It is that quality of stillness that I love most about Still Lives. More and more my work has been edging towards stillness and quiet, not actual silence but definitely quietness. I think I am looking for contemplation and the mysterious void. Stillness is a quality that I associate strongly with the colour white, which is why I think my work has contained so much white in the last two years. I am searching for that perfect moment perhaps, that moment of clarity and stillness?

I have a problem with categories. Basically, I'm just not very good at them. I find it difficult to choose tags for blog posts. I have too many sets on my Flickr account. I have too many email folders. I struggle with organising my filing cabinet. I desperately need to go through and rationalise all these things but it doesn't come easily to me.

In terms of organisation, this is obviously A Very Bad Thing. I constantly lose things and I sometimes avoid tidying up because I simply can't decide where stuff should go. And then I end up with this sort of thing!

Kirsty Hall: Messy Study, May 2008

[I've tidied my desk since this was taken because the photo appalled me so much. If you have problems keeping your desk clear, check out Inspired Home Office for resources that may give you the push you need. Since tidying up this disaster zone, I've been noticeably more motivated and I'm feeling more on top of things.]

I do have systems but things still stump me. I've got a box that's been sitting in my study unsorted and neglected for 6 months because it's full of the sort of random objects that I find almost impossible to categorise. The pile of papers to be sorted into my filing cabinet is so large that it's developed geographical layers and may actually have started to fossilise down at the bottom.

Since I'm so visual, I sometimes wonder if I should simply file things by colour - but I know that I'd just end up spending ages trying to decide if objects were blue or green instead because having trouble with categories is a global failure in my brain.

TIME TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE...

However, while it's a problem in terms of organisation, being bad at categories can be a distinct advantage for an artist because you can see across boundaries to make associative leaps than non-artists often don't. Leaps of logic that make perfect sense in KirstyLand often seem innovative and original to others.

For example, this piece called Lost was made for an exhibition in a church. To make the piece, I carefully broke an unglazed bowl, then mended it with glue, leaving deliberate holes. For the exhibition, the bowl was placed on linen and filled with salt water, which gradually evaporated through the porous clay.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

Lot's Wife was the inspiration for the piece and I combined her familiar story with the Japanese tradition of mending broken bowl with gold to make them more valuable than when they were whole. I'd read about this several years before and had been utterly captivated by the idea of regarding a mended object as beautiful and powerful instead of flawed and damaged. Somehow in my head, this linked with my sympathy for Lot's Wife, who was forced to leave not only her home but two of her adult children. In that situation, what mother wouldn't turn back to see what had happened? Isn't it interesting that she's usually held up as an example of female disobedience but if you turn it around, her story can just as easily be interpreted as being about the power of maternal love.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

As artists, we need to turn things around. We have to learn to look at our problems and disadvantages to see if they also contain power and wisdom for us. It's time to recognise that the things that make us bad at fitting into the 'real world' are sometimes the exact same things that keep us making our art.

I've been working my way through Alyson B. Stanfield's fantastic new book, I'd Rather Be In The Studio.

Instead of reading the book from cover to cover, Stanfield encourages her readers to dive in and read and then act on the chapters that relate to where they are right now. The one that immediately leaped out at me was the chapter on writing an artist's statement.

I wrote my current statement in the final year of my degree - six years ago this summer! Sure, I've tweaked it a bit since then but when I put up my website last year, I realised that it read like something an art student would write to impress a tutor. Obviously that was appropriate at the time but it isn't so helpful now. However, I needed to get the website up and I knew that I would noodle around until the end of time if given half an excuse, so I decided to let it stand and change it at a later date. That later date has finally arrived. Alyson's system for writing a statement, based around a series of helpful writing prompts, has inspired me to start writing a statement that's a bit friendlier and more accessible with much less 'art wank' (what, it's a technical term!).

I thought I'd share some of the process with you, so here's my answer to the question,
"How do you begin an artwork?"

I usually begin with an idea, often a single sentence written in the notebook that I keep by my bed. My ideas can take a long time to come to the surface and even longer for me to act on them. I'm not a quick artist - I often think about pieces for several years before I make them! A lot of working out happens in my head first and then I usually wait until I'm absolutely compelled to make a piece before I start. It often feels like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces have to be slowly swirled around in my mind before I can start the actual making.

Next the idea enters the test piece stage, at which point it might stall because it just doesn't work. I'll noodle around with the test piece for a while, rethinking things, trying other approaches and fitting more pieces of the puzzle together until I eventually find a solution or discard the idea altogether on the basis that it was shallow, pointless or just a bit crappy.

I absolutely love the problem solving aspect of making art. My art needs to work on three different but related levels: the practical level (will it fall down?), the aesthetic level (does it look right?) and finally, the intellectual level (does it convey the right meaning?). All three things must be in balance for me to consider it a successful piece and I constantly look for elegant solutions to all three problems. I like simplicity in my art, it's good when something is 'just so'. It's important that I don't say too much or too little and I know a piece is right when the solution works precisely and completely.

.....

I don't know how much, if any, of this piece of writing will make it into the final statement but just being nudged to think about my process again has already proved inspiring and useful. I'm feeling less stuck and more connected to my art than I have for a couple of months.