Glorious failures

Dentists, a surprising amount of starwars and some kind of breakdown.

I like this photo because all the gannets are flying looking majestic except the one in the middle that’s really angry they are hitting him. That’s the kind of week I’m having.

There’s a poster advertising teeth whitening at the dentist. Apparently the models pesky lips are getting in the way of illustrating how white her teeth are, so to show you fully their pristine glow there’s a tooth flying out of her mouth. A really white tooth, yes, but it gives the impression tooth whitening is dangerous, and makes me feel queasy in an already stressful situation. Like those stress dreams when all your teeth fall out.

To avoid it, I look at the ceiling, as the tiles of the light has been made to resemble a window, with six panels with jolly pictures of clouds on. I presume it’s meant to soothe and relax you, only they’ve used the same picture six times,  which means there are six suns and I am wondering if a six sunned system is even gravitationally possible, and thinking about Tauntauns  even though tattooine only has two suns and tauntauns live on the ice planet Hoth anyway.

I do not like the flying teeth or the six sunned planet the hygienist lives on, or anything about the dentist,  though to be fair to him, at least he has given up telling me to raise my hand if I feel discomfort. We’ve discovered that my hand is not connected to my pain circuit. In emergencies, I do not raise my hand. I shout expletives and I do not care whose fingers are in my gob when I do so. I have not bitten the dentist today, thought no one has congratulated me on this.  One of the many things really wrong in adult life is the absence of post dental congratulations. Where is my sticker?

Me, messing up a lovely picture with my stupid face screaming

The whole thing gives me a migraine that lasts three days. And then comes back for seconds a few days later. There’s also the genuine risk that we’ll hit midsummer before actually having the start of summer, and the garden refuses to grow, even the stuff in the greenhouse. I have not had a good week.

Findings

My husband went on an emergency trip (someone was ill. He had to drive a minibus) to Skomer this week. This is rude because he’s the only one in the family that complained about the trip to Skomer last time we went.

He brought back a book on puffins. I would prefer a book on gannets but there is no such thing because people think puffins are adorable but gannets are not. Personally I think the stormtroopers of the bird world are superior but I enjoyed the puffin facts and Drew Buckley’s photos.

Workings

There’s not much of a newsletter today, because I hadn’t bothered to write one. This much writing is frankly a surprise. I’m having a crisis of confidence over both my ability to write newsletters, the worth of them, my latest print, and the worth of that. This happens towards the final stages of any big project when I have stared too long at it and can no longer fathom if it’s good or bad, if I like it or hate it. I can only say that I must finish it so I can move on with my life. It might be an evolutionary adaption to allow me to force one work out of the nest in order to incubate the next. It’s probably the synergy of mood disorder and constant migraine distorting my perception of reality. I don’t know. It’s annoying.

The proof is in the bin, where it belongs. The recycling bin. I’m not a monster.

Sometimes I think about the guy on social media that was asking why people chose to do certain types of art, when there were more lucrative art to be making like it was a financial decision. I get these comments sometimes. Wouldn’t it be easier to just draw it? Why printmaking?

Friends, I have a doctorate, so if the lucrative generation of wealth was my aim then there must be better ways to achieve it, even with a scrambled brain and the near unemployability that goes with it. I’m not sure artists have much choice in the means they create their art. I mean, if you do something because you love it, you do that thing. If you wanted to do things you don’t like for money, you’d work in banking.

The second reason is I, we, artists, are deeply insane. What I do is insane. I am insane. I don’t know why I do it. I just know for some reason I have to. It would be easier if I didn’t. My house would be tidier, I’d eat a more nutritious diet, but for some deep seated brokenness, I have to print an enormous enigmatic print of oak trees and ravens. It seemed like a good idea somewhere near the start, and as Neil Gaiman said, Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.

Onwards, friends. Glorious failure awaits.