Things I’ve said before

Bats (again), Artists (again) and car boot sales (again)

‘I saw a bat’ my son tells me, returning home at 10pm. When he says bat, he undoubtedly means a pipistrelle; the Daubentons stay near the lake, and the noctules are always high up and won’t have returned for the summer yet. I enjoy the information in two ways; first, the pipistrelles are back in their summer roosts, and secondly, that I’ve been told. Normal folk discuss other people’s business, which is usually quite dull, people being largely uninteresting to me, whereas I get updates on where green woodpeckers are nesting or pictures of lost Guinea fowl. That’s the type of gossip I’ve been signed up for, and I’m all for it.

April oscillates violently between summer and winter; sometimes too warm to walk in long sleeves, sometimes, a woolly hat, which I pull on during the nippy dusk. The buds on the cow parsley burst into the white froth which I associate with the return of the pipistrelles, maybe because the blossom attracts the insects they feed on, or perhaps just because it blooms in late April and they’d return anyway.  It’s best to go just before twilight when the bats get up, so you can see them clearly, flittering with their chaotic flight, powered by some invisible tightly wound elastic band, a helter-skelter clockwork flapping that defies gravity. Later, I can hear the Daubs, but it’s too dark see them and I have to imagine their far more controlled flight skipping expertly above the surface of the lake.

The cold snap is winterish, but the greening continues in spite of it, the woodland floor cresting in a riot of flowers; bluebells, stitchwort, herb robert, forget-me-not; celandine, anemone, cow parsley, one lone red campion, jack-in-the-hedge. The flowers of the larches round into little proto-cones, and above me the canopy is speckled with brightest green, which will soon broaden and darken and plunge the forest floor into shadow once again.

The house is still full of plants because it’s too cold to keep them in the greenhouse- I’ve had April frosts before and learnt my lesson; at least they are alive, if somewhat stunted from being indoors.

Workings

This week I read Deborah Vass’ post on Samuel Palmer, which caught my attention because she mentioned the effect that inheriting money had on his art; I liked that he continued not only to work, but to push his boundaries harder,  unconstrained by the need to produce work that people would like. In a way, money doesn’t matter; artists are compelled to art, whether they have money or not. In other ways, it matters a lot. One has to live, and that can make you timid and anxious to please, so it’s a good thing to consider what your practice would be if you were working without any audience as guidance.

I know I would carry on working, almost definitely with a much fancier press, and very probably without social media. Instagram and the like used to be a happy sort of place for a hermit like me, a place to chat to friends and connect to people, but these days it seems to be a tumble drier of rehashed reels with click bait hooks aimed at pleasing advertisers by providing a constant stream of meaningless addictive dross to hold an audience captive. I don’t like it much these days as a user, let alone with the pressure to continually produce work and posts. It’s bad for the mental health. I can barely use a sketchbook without being afraid to mess up a page and ruin a sketchbook flip through.

This week my time was taken up with experiments using photocopier toner and polyester lithography to make interesting textures; I made a low quality picture of a blackbird which I’m not going to show you. It was a valuable experience and I learn a lot; probably I will use this information in some other print, but even if I’ve discovered I simply prefer the look of linocuts, that’s still learning so good and fine. Instead I will show you the proof print of this raven. Just a little more work needed around the head, I think.

Also, I have enchoughenated (that it, turned this bird sculpture into a chough). I think that kind of counts as work. It involved paint?

Findings

Very occasionally my friends will take me to the car boot sale and I nearly always come home with a much bigger carbooty that anyone else, because my sphere of interest is diverse, and very closely matched to the sort of thing available at anywhere that could be thought of as a junk shop. There are nearly always old tins suitable for storing art supplies, extremely old books deemed beyond redemption to become magical grimoires and plant pots, which all come home with me because curiously, no one else seems to want them. Last

the whole place seemed full of vintage weights that are very useful for weighing down patterns and paper and all manner of things; my bag was very heavy that day. This time it was mostly tins and glass bottles.

I know from eBay searches that the clasp on this bible alone is worth more than the £1 I paid, and if you buy a bulk lot of tins you can haggle the price down so it’s important to get as many as possible- I don’t have any need for that the record needle tin, it was just tiny and cute. Also, before I bring this to a close, let us reflect once more on my favourite ever purchase, a carte de visite album with a description I personally relate to:

Same, album, same.

See you next week x