Processed Out

I once heard the novelist Martin Amis talking about the writer’s day – he may have been being ironic, or he may actually have been talking about his working day, I can’t remember – and it went something like this: get up; breakfast; work at writing all morning; tennis after lunch; read in the afternoon. True or not, the idea has haunted me as a paradigm for the process I should be aspiring to when working on anything creative. It doesn’t help coming from a small country with a powerful work ethic tradition. But in truth, that productive, balanced working day is not a process – it’s a routine. And routines in themselves do not generate ideas. I’ve been back in the studio recently working on paintings - and stringing together a few days working on art has thrown up questions about my process and routine, so I thought it was about time I put down something about my own methods – i.e. do I have any? - and see if a bit of self-reflection could shed some useful light.

One thing popped up straight away - there have been three common threads running almost continuously since secondary school in Edinburgh: drawing; writing; and, photography. Drawing is part of some of my earliest memories - writing became a conscious pleasure at primary school - and I learned to shoot, process and print photographs in 3rd year at high school. Since then, I've almost always carried a notebook, for writing and sketching in, and some kind of camera - right up to today.

It's telling, in terms of shedding light on my own priorities, that these three elements have been present fairly continuously to greater or lesser degrees. Writing tended to be about ideas - I don't think I've sat down to write prose fiction outside of school exams - History essays or critical essays for English were my favourite. In fact the highest qualification I achieved at school wasn't in art, it was the Scottish Education Department's Sixth Year Studies (SYS) Certificate - a bridge between school and 1st yr. university level study - in History. But although writing was important as a means to structure and communicate certain ways of thinking, ideas from another place - the optical/visual level - have been primary. Interestingly, the big clue for this is not the dozens of sketch/note books I've kept since the 70's, but rather, the photography.

The camera that I really got to grips with photography on was a Pentax 35mm Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. The genius of SLR cameras is that you see exactly what you will record on film, and can interchange lenses at any point in the use of a roll of film. I realise I'm talking about equipment which has, quite literally, become antique. But using SLR cameras revealed the mechanics of optical processes - and developing film and printing pictures revealed the tension between a perceived, three-dimensional world, and a two-dimensional (black and white) image. And it's on that optical level that my interests have remained. Looking through old sketch books confirms this. It's never so much about what is seen (although that's not unimportant), as much as how it's seen or shown in an artwork.

Apart from a brief period at the end of art school I've never worked on abstract material - abstract elements have always fascinated me - and even when I did explore that form it was about the tension between what is shown and what is perceived (these were geometric compositions which were either 3-dimensional, or 2-D representations of 3-D compositions - if you see what I mean). Other than that it's striking, looking at old work, that the draw is to explore this territory: the relationship between the seen and the felt. I don't know what it is about some images that have an emotional quality, but I think I've always been panning for that particular gold - sifting through material which is on the edge of recognisability, hoping to put down the element that moves - conveys some sort of meaning.

At least, that's my guess based on hindsight - defining what that meaning is though, holds no interest. Hopefully it will be there if the rest of the process has been successful. I remember the English abstract artist John Hoyland gave a lecture about his work at art school. He told an anecdote about someone asking him what his paintings meant. He asked the person how they expected him to explain the meaning of his paintings - it would be no more possible than explaining the meaning of a tree.

Movies are a final element in confirming this optical interest. Ever since I graduated I've owned some kind of movie camera. Super8 originally, and now video. But again, narrative was never something I could get going with - not for want of trying, mind you; working in theatre as a designer, and with a number of friends making their way in TV and film, the grand tradition of narrative movies has always had it's siren call. But I have to look at the body of work I've produced and say - that's just not in me. Even now the video work I do is documentary, which combines the interest of writing - communicating ideas - and reavealing a situation optically - through the camera. I love the hardware of movies - the camera dolly and track which creates a smooth gliding traveling shot, for example - but mostly, I love things like traveling shots in themselves - for their visual excitement - not their role in a drama or character-telling.

What I seem to keep coming back to - and I really have tried to do other things - is the phenomenon of optical experience; what it is to see the world through the lens of our eye-balls. Not only do I find it fascinating from a scientific, physiological, perceptual point of view - in fact, I find that simply seeing things (and maybe this is because of the conclusions of that fascination) can be quite a moving experience.

Actually, the real final element in all this is painting and drawing - which asserts the visual/optical strand in a way that photography and movie photography never can. This is because of the connection between hand and eye - the body becomes the most immediate, the most direct conduit between thought and medium, perhaps, of any artform.

My prejudice, of course.

This isn't a qualitative judgement, it's just an observation that in painting, and drawing in particular, the link between thought and finished, permanent artwork, is shorter than in any other medium. And for me that's very exciting. I can only speak for myself, but excitement is the trigger for creative action. Maybe it's the same for all creatives. But that quickening brings with it the impetus to put something down - in words, in sketches, through a camera. And if later that excitement is still there, it may lead on to a bigger idea - a deeper insight.

In terms of describing how and why I get from sketches to finished pieces, that's probably about as far as I can go. There's no conscious message in anything I do. What I'm engaged in is trying to satisfy self-criticisms based on art-school training, years of exposure to art, unquantifiable hours playing with media and blethers and arguments with friends. Which I have to admit, as I write this down is a very self-indulgent activity. Does sharing the work redeem that? I can't say. Especially because sharing the work brings its own excitement, it's own self-indulgence - and I'm off again. But it's a mysterious loop, even to me. And maybe it's the mystery that keeps drawing me back - like some huge knot or gigantic Rubik's Cube, the more time you spend at it the closer a solution seems to come, the nearer you are to unravelling it; if I could just keep spending the time at it...

Routine, though, I can't say I've ever had - except in short bursts between other kinds of work. And when your time is limited the desire to do something good with the time is intimidating. Enter the demon displacement activity - what psychologists call resistance - what I've heard described by a writer friend as the walk the dog syndrome; an activity which needs to be done but takes you away from work. I can always find pencils to sharpen, workspace to rearrange, references to look up on the internet - or maybe a cuppa before starting. Anything, except starting and potentially messing up all those immaculate ideas in my head. An art school chum of mine used to think that unproductive hours at the 'coal face' paid off - you'd be getting in the zone. He might be right. But (that old work ethic thing again) I find the only thing that works is preparation and then actually just making yourself start. However bad the first results (and they usually are bad), activity brings improvement, if not satisfaction.

I can resist with the best of them though: if my workspace was fitted with a studiocam, a commentary might go something like - why is he still sitting on that stool, what's he staring at - here he goes, he's got a brush, he's mixing paint, he's... no - he's gone to make another cup of tea - now he's back on that stool again - what is he staring at... ?

All I can say about a work routine is that it goes in waves - intense output activity, maybe over an extended period and at odd times of the day, followed by fallow periods of preparation or reflection. And then there's other jobs.

And, just as I'm learning to live with the fact that I'm moved and excited, in my own art process, by forms and media which are quite traditional (something which would perhaps have disappointed the student me), so I also realise that I'll never fulfill Amis' ideal working routine.

But that's quite enough navel-gazing.

Anyone for tennis?

GJ

April 2009

Illustrations from top: Me in the studio; Asahi Pentax K1000 SLR camera; John Hoyland Retrospective, 1970's Room, Tate St Ives 2006; studio palette; studio brushes.