On being nice…

I’ve had a while now to process the encounters of my open studio. I’ve also had a few conversations continue about the work that is up on the wall.

Some people like the observational work, because a twig looks like a twig. I get it. They are good drawings, I like them too, or they wouldn’t be up on the wall. Some like the collages, but they prefer the ones where the children still have their heads and limbs. The narrative in their heads is not like mine. They can look at these works as nice… Fairytale-ish perhaps, but sanitised to a certain extent. There are some people who find the beheaded collages too much. I understand. Some people like them though. They enjoy the weirdness.

But for me, they are not enough. I am just getting started.

What I want to do is a series of experimental works (drawings, ceramics, textiles, words too) that push that edge between the child and the woods. I want to draw elements of human into the woods, and elements of the wood into the human. To the point where it becomes very strange indeed. If too many people are telling me “How lovely!” then I’m not doing the job properly.

This is why it is good to talk to other artists who challenge the niceness in me, the people-pleaser, the seeker of the comfort blanket. Because although it is nice to be liked, to have the work liked, it is not a developmental state of mind. Development appears along the edges. Development appears when it all gets a bit distasteful, a bit nasty. The reaction I like best is when people are drawn in by the work from a distance, thinking “Oh lovely twigs!” “Oh sweet little children!”, then get up close and go “eeurgh that’s too weird!”. 

I was talking to Loretta earlier about this balance between nice, and nasty. The raw edge versus the stitched hem. The neatly dressed versus the abstract figure with an imperfect, gestural paint job. The fairy story versus the grim folk tales before the disneyfication of them all. This balance isn’t reached with one drawing, one painting, but is achieved through continued push and pull. Each iteration of an idea falls on one side of that line or the other (which of course is different for every viewer).

So… while the gentle works need to be there, the closely observed ink drawings need to be there, what they are doing is paving the way to the marginal and unhinged. 

I spoke to L briefly about the galvanised bucket. I have started searching for one in every skip I pass…To me, the work that might appear around the galvanised bucket is where the nasty will really be. The people who like inky twigs and collaged drawings of children collecting twigs will not like The Galvanised Bucket. Oh deary me no…