I have been looking at premises with a view to moving, giving me more space, and opportunity to begin regular workshops and art classes. It is an exciting prospect, and much time will be given to the setting up of all this. It is a geat beginning to 2009, and especially as there will be opportunity for professional collaborations, both in my own work, and hopefully with other art agencies. As I have often said, being an artist and working in a studio can be a very solitary, this move, when and if, will help to alleviate, that situation, heres to happy moves.

The new year finds me preparing my work for exhibition, sifting through drawings, selecting which work is to be framed, which are to be made into prints, leaflets and publicity material to be printed, and a million and one other things. I look forward to the new year, lots of exciting prospects, and a lot more work to be done. I have not touched glass for quite a while, it will be interesting to see where the muse takes me, and which materials I choose to work with, never a foregone conclusion. So I gues its a case of watch this space.

I am struggling with my conceptual visualisation, I want to express how we all connect to our terrain, sometimes withour bodies sometimes with our feelings, consciously and subconsciously. The patterns of the earths creation is so woven into our psychie that we dont consciously always recognise them. An obvious exception I think is the Australian aboriginal people, and that is probably why all cultures can tune into it on a both a very deep intellectual level, or just like them for the colour and pattern. I feel very much in tune to those aboriginal works as I am sure that I also am tuning in to the integral harmony of the earths patterns in landscape. These natural circles, bands , stripes, curves, ribbons, cracks, swirls et al, have somehow also become part of our everyday life, used to decorate fabrics, ceramics, almost everything we surround ourselves with it has become part of our graphic language, our decorative language, but have somehow lost the original connection. However I am searching for my own connectivity, with landscape, my emotional connectivity.

I am thinking that the missing link in my work are words, they are the missing content to my earth scapes. I need to express the connection of landscape and emotion, I want to weave the emotional content in an integral way into the landscapes and make them a part of the process so that they become a whole entity, I want them to be my own words and to speak my own personal connectivity,and experience of terrain. It will be sometimes visible and sometimes not, like weather and just as random.

I am considering the emotional responce that we have to our environment, landscape, terrain et al. How do these places make us feel, we use such expressions as “a glorious view, sunset, vista, why and how do they make us feel this way. Of course it is subjective, we talk about loving a landscape, what causes this love, and our undoubted preferences for, sea, mountains, or woods. Landscapes inspire poets to wax lyrical, and songs to be sung in praise, and as this emotional responce drives my work, I am thinking that I need to address this very particular ellement, watch this space.

My latest creations are taking over my studio, and yet still they come, I am having to become more creative about drying times. It has been a long time since I last used my kiln and worked with glass, unfortunately, thats the problem you have when wanting to work with different media, I am beginning to think about glass again, so maybe the time is nigh, watch this space. However until then I continue with the forms, I gues until I completely run out of space.

I hold my breath so much when I am working, like a child sticking his tongue out to aid concentration, and then find that rather than die, there is a sudden exhalation.  I get so involved in process that however silly it sounds, remembering to breathe, is a problem. Working in my studio is like being in a bubble, and after an intence period of work it is sometimes quite a shock to lift up the head and connect with the outside world, and I suppose that is a problem for all creative lone workers. We are I guess happy in our own little world.

The work I am doing at present is oh so delicate, I have a lot of dificulty in initial stages in forming the spheres as gesso is liquid that has to harden, and only ammasses strength with build up of layers, and so if not supported by framework will fracture. This has happened over the last week several times, I am working much more cautiously now, and have got past the danger stages on several pieces. I am concidering the final forms as the spheres are evolving organically, and they are the counterparts to the earth series panels, the 3D version. It is nesessary to have a series of tasks so that drying time can be usefully filled, but not wth the dreaded ‘paperwork’.

I have been so busy in my studio I havnt done my blog, so I have forced myself to sit down and quickly give an up date. It has been good to get back in the studio, and it is also good to get into the mind set that goes with it. I feel completely divorced from the general hubub of normal life and it is like a kind of meditation. Studio time is a physicality that takes in subconscious mental processes, and an ability to tap into a mind body connection. I have been working on spheres, small generally, and playing with texture, applying layers, allowing drying time, and building up.

Having completed shed loads of mind numbing paperwork, I am now allocating myself studio time and time to play, this is the part that makes all the boring stuff worthwhile. tomorrow I shall head to the shed and give myself some headroom to experiment and just to see what comes out. I want to play with some 3D shapes and make a mess with no pre-prescribed parametres. I intend to push my media, and in particular gesso to its physical limits, and to look at strengthening with various materials. If I can get some images on this blog then you will be able to check my progress, should be fun. I am hoping to write my posts each monday, as when possible, so lets see where a week takes us to