And so this is Xmas

Merry Christmas everyone.

May the seasonal holidays rest, inspire and rejuvenate your creative spirits... and wherever you're gathered, I hope it's with loved ones, good food and fine weather.

Me, I thought I had summer school sussed for my Christmas break - but the class was cancelled at the last minute.
A pity because I could do with the stretch and Carole Shepheard's course sounded like an interesting little leap at this point.

It makes me think though, as artists, how DO we stretch ourselves ....?
I know for me sometimes it takes an objective person (or 6) to help me see what's under my nose - or where I could extend the work I'm doing.

Do we get better at that as we go along do you think? (I wish, says this difficult woman)

At the moment amongst other books, I'm reading Wassily Kandinsky's book 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art'.

He has some interesting things to say about 'art for arts sake'... and the perennial questions of 'what' and 'how' that drive artists who try to express some kind of spiritual depth in their work (and produce something other than a dreaded Nikau palm - though Mr K doesn't mention THOSE).

He wrote the book in about 1911 (off the top of my head) and mostly what he says about the power of colour and painting for meaning (or spirituality as he puts it) is pretty cool - though he's prone to sweeping statements (I suppose that makes two of us).

For me, I'm thinking too often it's easy to get hooked up on the 'how' and lose sight of the 'what' that drives us. In rather quaint language Mr K says...

" If the emotional power of the artist can overwhelm the "how?" and can give free scope to his finer feelings, then art is on the crest of the road by which she will not fail later on to find the "what" she has lost, the "what" which will show the way to the spiritual food of the newly awakened spiritual life.
This "what?" will no longer be the material, objective "what" of the former period, but the internal truth of art, the soul without which the body (i.e. the "how") can never be healthy, whether in an individual or in a whole people..."

I was just talking to Bob - my studio mate, about 'what' and 'how' the other day too.

On that note, I'm returning to my last years Summer School work, trying to recapture the essence of it - the energy and the spontaneity as well as working from the source imagery to create some new works for a show in February.

I remember this orange artwork as a struggle - so NOT what I thought I'd be doing that week, so unexpected and unfamiliar (Hah! isn't that just the point of Summer School?).

Sometimes what we make isn't LIKE us - (what arrogance leads us to think it will be I wonder?) - or isn't immediately recognisable or seem to be where we're at. (Hmmm - this orange work was vivid,bold,decisive and full of warning symbolism as well as dark corners).

I remember looking at the stranger we made when she was born too, and being transfixed by the knowledge of her 'otherness' and lack of familiarity even though she was contained in me...

The learnings from the orange art have been good though, the loose brushwork has informed the under painting on the gesture and figurative Sara drawings, it fed into illustrations this year and taught me what happens when you push something over the edge, or when you push through the desire to screw it up and start over.

So I'm thinking sometimes 'how' IS enough - there doesn't always need to be a 'what' in everything we make, and the learning we need doesn't always come without pain - or obviously.

I'm painting a couple of times a week at the moment - a much needed antithesis to my job these days. It's so much harder to be spontaneous now.

Meantime mark 24th March in your diaries for 'Beyond words' - it should be good, and please.... have a wonderful Christmas OK?

arohanui Adele