Tag Archives: Art thoughts

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Unsurprisingly, there's plenty to read about goals and resolutions in the blogosphere right now.

iHanna has a good post with lots of inspiring (and occasionally daunting!) links.

Sister Diane from the Craftypod makes the very smart suggestion that you only pick one thing that you really want to do. I don't think I can quite manage that but it's something that I'm bearing in mind as I continue to very s-l-o-w-l-y refine my list of goals.

After being in a funk the other day, I did a whole load of journalling on the subject of goals and discovered that part of my problem is that I often confuse my goals and desires with the things that I feel I ought to be doing.

Pelt 02
For example, I know I should be getting on with making Pelt...

Now this hasn't been a problem in previous years, I've just stuck those 'shoulds' right on my goal list and felt damn virtuous about it too. However, in the last couple of months I've been following a conscious 'no guilt' policy. So if something makes me feel guilty then I do something to get rid of that guilt; this can include finishing things, getting rid of them or paying someone else to deal with it. The 'no guilt' policy is working well for me, except that it's apparently scuppered my usual goal setting, which was firmly based around the concept of guilt.

So often our goals and resolutions are negative - lose weight; quit smoking; get fit in the next five minutes, you lazy person; become a better friend; live life more fully; read more intellectual books; do this 'good' thing; don't do that other 'bad' thing. We often seem to start with the idea that who we are right now just isn't enough and we're flawed somehow, so the focus always seems to be on making ourselves into a 'better' person. Sometimes this can be a good thing - making positive changes in our lives can be very empowering. However, there's a big difference between making a change because we genuinely want to and punishing ourselves for not being perfect yet.

Guess what, you're never going to be perfect and neither am I!

What would it feel like if everything on your goal list was completely and unambiguously POSITIVE?

I don't know either but this year I want to give it a try.

Since I was still struggling with my very insistent 'shoulds', I did a mind map in my art journal about what I want from the year. Writing out a list of 18 things - some small, some large - that I genuinely want felt very powerful. When was the last time you let yourself think about the things that you desire? And not the things you think you 'should' want either but the things you honestly want.

Of course, I'm also very task orientated and I love to set myself very defined projects and tick things off lists. So writing things like 'spend more time in the library with the lights off and the candles on' seemed a little silly at first. How do I quantify that? How can I make that into a proper achievable goal with a definite target? Hmmm, should I start a database to count the days when I manage to sit down and properly relax? Ha, you probably think I'm joking... but many a true word was spoken in jest, says the girl who keeps a database of all the books she reads each year!

My mind map of desires isn't a goal list yet - the other thing I discovered whilst journalling was that the goals I did best in reaching last year were the ones that were very specific and had quantifiable targets (yay, there is a need for those databases!) - but it is a start in a new, and slightly scary, direction for me.

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Happy 2008, I hope you all had a good holiday season if you celebrate and that you're approaching this new year filled with creative energy and enthusiasm.

I don't know if I am yet. I posted the last envelope last night and spent some time bouncing around being very happy because I had successfully completed the year without a single missed envelope.

However, today I'm feeling a little bereft. I enjoyed the ritual of marking every day and it's hard to let go of that. How will I know that 2008 existed if I don't mark it in some way? My mind is racing with 'substitute projects'. Should I commit to art journalling every day? Should I take my new Moleskine notebook and divide the pages into sections so I can fill it with a year's worth of drawings and single poetic sentences? Should I put a wallchart in my studio and mark off every day that I spend some time in there? Should I take a photograph everyday? Should I take a daily art walk where I collect objects? Should I, should I, should I, should I?

Aaaaaarggggggghhhhhhh!

I was very clear before the end of the year that I needed to allow myself some recovery time after the active phase of The Diary Project and I know that's still true. However, my muse apparently abhors a vacuum and so I'm having to forcibly rein myself in and let my brain know that I'm not going to jump straight into doing something new. That it's OK to let go for a little while and I'm not going to drown if I don't have the rubber ring of a daily practice: I can just spend a little time floating and thinking and that's OK too because it's still being creative. And it's definitely needed, I can feel that it's needed but even though I know that, it's still the hardest part of the creative process for me. Being a bit of a control freak, I don't do well with letting go even when I know that I need to.

Generally I like this time of year, I enjoy looking back over what I've done the year before and setting goals for the year to come. However, I think it's going to take me a couple of days to do that this year because I need to process how I feel about the end of the first phase of The Diary Project and honestly assess what it is that I need and want from the coming year. I've spent today telling myself, "it's better to set the right goals a couple of days 'late', rather than rushing in and committing to things that are wrong for you just because you have this superstitious attachment to the 1st January."

Well, I'm off to lie down in bed with a cup of herbal tea, a hot water bottle and my art journal to see if I can calm the maelstrom in my brain. I hope you all have the space and time for a little reflection too.

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I've been dying to tell you about this since last month and I'm glad that now I can...

I'm delighted to announce that the last Craftypod of 2007 is an interview with me. It's pretty interesting, if I say so myself, and Sister Diane did a fantastic job in editing our long conversation so that I sound reasonably coherent!

Many thanks to Sister Diane for her great editing, her insightful questions and for being kind enough to ask me in the first place; I very much enjoyed being interviewed by her and what a great way to round off my year of drawing.

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Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 10th December 2007

In the early hours of yesterday morning I finished a mammoth update of The Diary Project blog because I thought it would look really shoddy to Craftypod listeners if the blog was still stuck in November - it's helpful to have a bit of a kick every now and then. Apparently I'd had a long enough break from writing about drawing and I was able to do it again without banging my head on my desk. I'm nearly up to date now, I just have a week's worth of envelopes to write up and then I'll be all caught up. It's so nice to be ending the year without that hanging over me.

Wow, I can't believe that I only have 3 days of the project left to go, it's a very strange feeling and I'm still processing it: it feels quite unreal.

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Clicking on the tab for Up All Night Again, the thought flitted quickly across my mind, "I wonder if there are any new posts?" Er no, dear, not unless you actually bother to write them!

It reminds me of the time that I accidentally hit backspace while surfing and wound up at my own Livejournal profile page. I glanced uncomprehendingly at my own interest list and thought, "hey, this person sounds way cool, I should friend them - oh, wait a minute..." Still, I guess the fact that I instinctively liked the look of myself is probably positive.

It's been a hectic week. My 40th birthday was on Saturday and my family threw a rather fabulous party for me complete with mountains of healthy yet delicious gluten-free food. We had about 30 people there and I was very touched that so many people, some of whom had travelled quite a distance, came to celebrate with me. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have decided that I should have birthday parties more often (although probably not every year).

The chocolates are all gone and the many bunches of flowers are starting to wilt but I'm still happily playing with several of my presents, which included a pile of books, a full set of Sakura glaze pens and a very cute, tiny set of travelling watercolours with a little water brush. Art materials - the gifts that keep on giving!

New Paints

Unfortunately everything else is in flux at the moment because as soon as we got the party out of the way, I had to empty my study so that it could be decorated. I can't think what possessed me to arrange two such major events within two days of each other. I am temporarily installed in the living room and connecting to the net through the X-Box cable. The painters finished this afternoon but I need to buy a carpet and have that fitted before I can move back in. I also need to have a rethink about where everything goes and what I need to store. Oh, and buy a new desk because this Ikea one has bowed drastically in the middle, which is rather worrying in a piece of furniture that's holding a heavy and expensive Mac!

Continuing the decluttering and organising theme of the last few months, I'm using this an opportunity to get rid of some stuff. I've drastically culled my art magazine collection - I gave away about 50 of them and have another huge pile to donate to the art college where I do my jewellery course. I've kept the ones I still refer to but it feels wonderful to pass the rest onto people who will actually use them. And as an added bonus, it frees up a lot of storage space on my shelves. Next I have to tackle my many folders of saved articles and images.

I've come to understand that having too much stuff weighs me down and makes it far more difficult for me to create. I had the realisation about a month ago that it didn't matter how many neatly labelled boxes I had, if I simply had too much to store, then my shelves and cupboards were always going to be an impenetrable mess.

So lately I've been tackling The Cupboard Of Doom, a huge walk-in cupboard that we've thoroughly filled up with stuff. I've been systematically clearing it out; going through boxes, throwing things out, visiting the dump, filling up our weekly recycling bins and giving away hundreds of items on freecycle.

I've even surprised myself by being able to give away some art and craft supplies: usually I hold onto those for dear life but sorting out my studio has helped me to see what I already have and what I no longer use. Having too many supplies can actually be a disadvantage when making art because you can suffer from a sort of mental paralysis when faced with too many options. In addition, having vast quantities of supplies makes it harder to find the things you actually want to use.

Decluttering may not seem like it has much to do with art, but it feels as though what I'm really doing is making a much bigger space in my life for my art.

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Lately it seems that most of my art conversations have been happening inside the computer. However, yesterday afternoon I was fortunate enough to meet up with artist, Camilla Stacey for tea and cake.

Camilla and I used to work quite closely together when we were both curating shows over at the Here Gallery, the artist-run space that Camilla was instrumental in founding. We haven't seen as much of each other lately because we're both taking a curating break and we live in different towns, so it was great to catch up over cheesecake and hot chocolate. The conversation ranged from our lives to our work and back again; we talked about whether I need to continue with obsessive repetition in my work and Camilla explained the rationale behind her latest ceramic pieces.

Photograph by Kirsty Hall of thistle against an orange wall

Close up photograph by Kirsty Hall of a thistle against an orange background

Because it's my birthday on Saturday, Camilla brought me these fabulous thistles - she said they reminded her of my Diary Project drawings and I can see what she means.

Having people who 'get' your work, whether in real life or in the computer, is such a gift for any artist and I am blessed to know many people with whom I can have these sort of deep conversations. I hope you all have real life friends that you can talk art and eat cake with.

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I spent some time in my local yarn store today. Sure, I needed yarn for my next couple of projects but much more than that, I needed an hour to soak up some colour and texture. I could have ordered the yarn from the shop's website and saved myself a trip in appalling traffic but I knew that I needed to go: something in me was craving that experience. I wanted to wander around, picking up the yarns and squashing the skeins in my fingers. I needed to feel the softness, the springiness and the resistance of the different fibres. But most of all, I needed to marvel at the myriad of colours. I needed to see the ways in which different dyers had married shades together, to notice how some tones zinged and jumped, while others were muted and subtle. I spent some time holding balls of yarn next to each other, testing to see which would go well together and which were jarring or unpleasant. I didn't have a particular project in mind, I just wanted to see what worked and what didn't. You can learn a lot this way - maybe art teachers should stop bothering with boring old colour wheels and just take their students to a fantastic yarn store instead!

I've never been brilliant at colour, I don't have the instinct for it that some artists do, but I still occasionally need a bit of colour therapy. Sometimes my muse (for want of a better word) craves time spent in art galleries, libraries, parks or beautiful buildings - and sometimes it just needs to smoosh some yarn!

I left with the yarn I'd planned to buy and only one extra thing (a bargain skein of very beautiful sock yarn) but more importantly, with my heart contented and my inspiration levels rising.

We all need to spend some time inspiring ourselves, otherwise our art will eventually run dry. What have you done to inspire yourself lately? Do you take yourself out on regular 'artists' dates', as Julia Cameron recommends? I often forget and only realise that I need to once it becomes a desperate craving. If you're in the same boat, then I hope you can take some time over the next few days or weeks to recharge those artistic batteries by doing something that's just for you. It's especially important to do this if you're caught up in the seasonal madness. It doesn't need to be much and it doesn't need to take long but I think it's vital to remind ourselves that our art is every bit as important as buying presents, baking cookies, decorating trees, placating relatives and all the other traditions that we may have encumbered ourselves with.

And if you don't celebrate anything at this time of year, then maybe you can indulge in your own personal art hibernation while all around are drowning in festivities? Get a pile of good art books from the library, stock up on some exciting new materials, shut the door and spend a few days just losing yourself in play. Mmm, sounds good to me!

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Sometimes correspondences in your work surprise you. me-jade recently added these two photos of mine as 'favourites' on Flickr.

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Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 26th July 2007

Kirsty Hall - photograph of a red thread drawing entitled Parse
Kirsty Hall: Parse, January 2007

Although I wasn't conscious of it when I was drawing the envelope, when I saw the two images next to each other, I was struck by how very similar the shapes are.

I've been concentrating on updating The Diary Project blog this week: I'm woefully behind on it and it's getting embarrassing. I've been updating the blog in small chunks because that's all I can manage right now - writing the little musings is getting to be almost impossible. I've pretty much run out of things to say about my work: I didn't know this was possible but apparently it is!

I did an update on Sunday and another one this morning plus I'm about halfway through scanning more than a month's worth of envelopes. I scanned to the end of October yesterday and felt very pleased with myself before realising that hey, we're already half way through November.

Here's my favourite drawing from the latest update:
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Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 21st October 2007

Hopefully I'll get another chunk done tomorrow - although frankly, if I never have to write another word about my damn drawings, it'll be way too soon! In the meantime, I'm off to scan envelopes, which is time consuming but thankfully a lot less mentally taxing and I can catch up on podcasts while I'm doing it.

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I have always been fascinated by artists' studios, to the extent that I even wrote my BA dissertation on them. One of the things I find so compelling about them is their very distinct aura: well-loved and much-used studios have a powerful sense of place. I'm sure it's one reason why art trails and open studio events are so popular; being allowed into the spaces where other people create has a seductive allure and the strong suggestion of intimate secrets revealed. Personally, I can never resist having a peek at other artists' storage systems. Is there an order that I can discern and do I understand it? Would I have arranged things differently and what does their system tell me about them? How have they organised their tools - are they a neat or a messy worker? And do they clean their brushes!

You can often get a strong sense of the artist's personality from their studio. When I visited Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives, I was struck by how very present she was: even though she was dead, it truly felt as though she'd just popped out to do a bit of drawing on the beach and she'd be back to finish off that stone carving any second now.

Artists are usually well aware that their studio is almost a person in its own right - at the very least, it has a definite genius loci or 'spirit of place'. But in order to keep this spirit happy, a studio needs to be inhabited, it needs to be worked in. I've often heard artists describe their studios as 'dead' or 'stale' when they haven't been working in them enough and I'm sure most artists are familiar with the need to tidy the studio after an absence or when they're getting ready for a new series of work.

I've been having that discontented 'I need to start something new' art itch lately and have even been questioning the direction that my work has taken in past years - in short, I feel on the cusp of change. So it's no coincidence that my studio has been undergoing a redesign in the last couple of months. In the summer I acquired some much-needed shelving and moved the desk to a better position and it instantly became a much more inviting creative space.

A studio is a working space and consequently it needs to work - things have to be accessible and easy to find, you need to know where your materials are and to have power, heat and light where you want them. Your studio also needs to be right for you and your working pattern, which is why artists' studios are so very individual and revealing. While I'm absolutely enthralled by Francis Bacon's re-created studio, I know I couldn't create a single thing in it - I need more order and much more visual simplicity than that. Your studio should fit you like a pair of comfortable shoes - if it doesn't, then you simply won't want to spend time there. I hadn't consciously realised how draining and unappealing I'd been finding my own studio until I started the overhaul.

It's also important not to get hung up on romantic images of what you think an artists' studio should look like or where it should be - spend some time exploring what your studio needs to look and feel like. When I first graduated, I paid for three months of studio time in a cold, noisy building on the other side of town because I thought that 'a real artist needs a proper studio' and I thought that meant a building with other artists in it. Then a conversation with a friend made me realise that I did all my best work at home and always had done - when I was in college, I used to work in the evenings on the dining room table and then take my work into college and install it in my space. My days at college weren't usually spent making - instead they were spent researching in the library, updating my sketchbook, pottering around seeing what everyone else was up to, drinking endless cups of tea and gossiping!

Recognising this fact made it apparent why dragging myself over to the cold, expensive studio had been so very hard - there were no friends, no communal cups of tea and no nice library books!

We're fortunate enough to have a large house, so I promptly cancelled the studio, happily put the rent money towards materials and got on with working from home. For a while I worked downstairs in our basement before discovering that it was wrong for the kind of work I make - everything got damp or dirty and I didn't like going down there because it was too dark and gloomy. Eventually I moved up to a spare room in the top floor of the house where I have cream walls, lots of natural light, plenty of warmth and carpeting - apparently I am an artist who needs a lot of home comforts in order to create! Yet even when I was finally installed in the right space, it took me until this year to get my studio working properly and it's still not quite how I want it.

So this afternoon - bone tired after a bad night of insomnia and with all my creative wells dry - I once again found myself tending to The Spirit Of My Studio. My son helped me carry up boxes of materials from the appropriately named Cupboard Of Doom. I then spent an hour sorting through them, getting rid of some things, rehoming misplaced items and then labelling the boxes with my beloved Dymo labeller before stacking them neatly on the shelves.

It's still not quite right in there but each time I organise my studio, it gets a little bit clearer. And I feel that space inside, the space where the new work is beginning to grow, getting just that little bit bigger and I breathe a little more easily.

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I think I just fell a little bit in love. Suzi Blu is a cute young art goddess who makes short videos about art journalling that she puts up on YouTube.

I just love her quirkiness and her passion. She's done lots of videos - there's a list here - and I'm having a happy evening working my way through them.

OK, I have a BIG confession to make. All through college, I kept immaculate, beautifully presented and very professional A4 sketchbooks. Looking up at the shelves above me, I see fifteen of them in an ordered line, their spines labelled with the dates. They're almost identical - always portrait style and usually black, with a couple of patterned ones when I couldn't find black ones.

Not for me the messy, spilling out at the seams, arty sketchbook barely held together with bits of string or rubber bands. Although I adore that style when I look at other people's journals, at the time I just couldn't bring myself to be that messy. Instead, my sketchbooks closed tidily on pages filled with perfectly aligned, neatly trimmed images and printed or carefully handwritten thoughts on my art. It's slightly odd because I'm certainly not a naturally tidy person - maybe I was searching for a safe space within the chaos?

I spent a lot of time on those sketchbooks. I kept huge boxes of trimmed photos that I regularly culled from magazines and I would spend happy hours sorting through them looking for just the right combination of images that would show where my inspiration was coming from. I patiently selected the photos that showed my work to its best advantage, as well as the 'during' shots that documented the process and lined them up and taped them in. I added documentation from exhibitions I was involved in and analysed what I could have done better. I went through hundreds of rolls of my beloved double-sided sticky tape. I thought of my sketchbooks as works of art in their own right and they truly are. When I reread them, I can see that they are wonderful objects, as well as being useful documents that accurately chart my artistic process through the years. I'm justifiably proud of them and I love to look up at that neat line of them on my bookshelf.

But... but... but...

I got out of college and my sketchbooks sort of ground to a halt and then stopped almost completely. Every so often I'll pick up the current one, write an 'it's been far too long since I've written anything in here' entry, post in a couple of pictures, write down a few ideas and then guiltily ignore it for another six months. I think I've filled nearly two in the last five years - me, an artist who once went through a sketchbook every three months or so! It's pitiful and it's been weighing on me a lot recently.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that my sketchbook use tailed off when I started blogging - a lot of my writing energy undoubtedly went into my online journalling instead. In addition, no longer being in college seemed to take a lot of the 'people judging me' energy out of it. There just wasn't the same drive to do my sketchbooks that there had once been.

Don't get me wrong, I've never stopped writing down my ideas - I have a little notebook by my bed where most of my art pieces start and another notebook in my handbag to catch the ideas that happen when I'm out of the house and I treasure both of those. I also write ideas on my computer if that's where I happen to be, keep a card index box of 'art ideas' on my desk and for the last two years I've been doing a series of ink drawings in an ever increasing pile of A5 cartridge pads.

But those well documented, bright, shiny and oh-so-acceptable sketchbooks - er, not so much! I'm kind of embarrassed about it and I feel guilty and cross with myself. But when I think about sitting down and taping in photos, writing about what I've been doing, trimming photocopies and images to fit the pages and lining everything up perfectly - well, my heart just sinks. It feels overwhelming and impossible and it's time to admit it; something that once brought me genuine joy and satisfaction, now just fills me with dread.

After watching Suzi's videos, I thought 'enough already, I've got to do something about this situation'. So I picked up the mostly unused moleskine sketchbook sitting next to my computer and let rip with some black goache, white ink pen and a couple of my beloved Inktense pencils. Wham, two pages of art journalling done in about half an hour and boy, do I feel better. No, it's definitely not my perfect and pristine sketchbook but it's obvious that the old way isn't working any more, so I need to try something new.

Our 'shoulds' can really inhibit our art; they stifle the flow of creativity within us. Yes, it would be nice if I could keep making those beautiful ordered sketchbooks and I probably 'should' but it's far more important that I keep my art going. On the first page of my new journal I wrote in coloured pencil "It's time to get messy" and it is. Perhaps one day those pristine sketchbooks will be right for me again but for now, it's time to let them go.

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Joanne B Kaar is a Scottish artist who works with fibre and bookmaking. In 2006 she completed a three month residency in Durness in Sutherland, which she documented in a fascinating blog.

Joanne B Kaar - Sango Sands
Joanne B Kaar - Sango Sands Seapapers

During the residency she made a series of books from handmade paper, often using local materials. Some of these books were subjected to pretty harsh treatment like being buried or thrown in the sea! It's amazing that they've survived as well as they have - it's easy to forget how robust paper can be as a medium.

Sutherland is a place that is very dear to my heart. Most of my childhood holidays were spent in Achnahaird in Ross and Cromarty and every holiday included a day trip to Lochinver in the neighbouring Sutherland. Although it was very close as the crow flies, it was an hour-long drive on a narrow, twisting and often terrifying road. I've just checked and according to the AA it's 16 miles yet takes an hour and 8 minutes - that should give you an idea of just how bad the road is! It was worth it though - not least for the annual visit to Achins Bookshop in Inverkirkaig - apparently the most remote bookshop in the British Isles. I always saved most of my holiday money so that I could splurge on books and I still remember the feeling of deep contentment that walking out with a bag of carefully chosen books gave me. I also have fond memories of standing on the pier in Lochinver watching the fishing boats unloading and sitting on the seafront eating homemade pies from the incredibly good local bakery.

Durness is a lot further up the coast and not somewhere I've visited but Joanne's photographs of the area, with all their Highland familiarity, certainly brought up plenty of nostalgia. I love living in Bristol and feel very at home here, but so many of my creative roots lie in those summer holidays in the Highlands - long days spent damming little streams with my brothers and cousins, building complex sand sculptures with my Dad, riding invisible horses, grinding down sandstone in an attempt to make pigment (I used to pretend I was a neolithic cave painter!), patiently drawing for hours in the caravan on rainy days and writing bad poetry once I was a teenager. For several years now I've been needing to reconnect with those roots and I know that I absolutely must make a trip to the Highlands soon because the feeling is getting quite desperate. While I don't really subscribe to the idea of a 'muse', I have learnt over the years that it's not a good idea to ignore particularly persistent creative cravings.

Where do your creative roots lie? Is it a place? A feeling? A particular smell? A certain kind of pencil or the feel of a fresh sketchbook?