'An artist has to be able to sit in a room and wait for something to happen'

'An artist has to be able to sit in a room and wait for something to happen'

Anish Kapoor

I usually have no idea what's going to happen in my morning of work. I've spent years gradually letting go of the idea that I need to go into my studio in a disciplined way and get started on a project, with a clear intention or goal in mind. I've learnt that this usually kills the possibility of any kind of creative emergence for me.

As I have no idea where to start, I start with the body. I'm committed to a 'daily practice', in line with my years of work with my teachers and mentors, Kath Burlinson and Paul Oertel. Paul talks about work coming out of the body, finding information in the cells...

The daily practice is not 'practising', in the sense of doing your scales, or your voice exercises, or a discipline such as 'make a drawing every day'. I think of it more as a space-making, connecting-up kind of event. I make space to find out what's happening on a particular day; emotionally, physically, musically, verbally, mentally. It's a bit like Julia Cameron's Daily Pages, except that you don't sit and write freeform, you crouch inside your body and you let it freefrom from the inside out....

I wait. Eventually, something starts to happen. An arm wants to move, or my spine wants to twist around to face me in the opposite direction. Then an idea comes, an association, or perhaps an impulse to move towards a particular image, or a need to put on music and follow the movement for longer. At some point I might move towards some images, looking, or choosing, or arranging. Sometimes I pick my pen, and I follow. There's no plan.

Then I look. There are recognitions. I could do a whole conceptual overview of what interests me in art, what my influences are, what my philosophy is. These things will come out eventually. But when I work, none of these things are consciously in my mind.

There's a lot of looking. So much looking.

I didn't think it would happen like this. I thought  I would make and make and make, letting the working (aka 'doing') make the work. The working does make the work. But a big part of the working is simply looking at what's come.

Today I'm looking at these four paintings, which were made a week ago on the island of Lismore in response to people working in the shared space of the Sounding Authentic workshop (with Mairi Campbell and Kath Burlinson.)

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