The Art of Resilience

The Art of Resilience : Kintsugi

I’ve agreed to give a short talk on resilience at a conference in London on Wednesday. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to say yes to something when you don’t think about it first? Gulp! I want to approach the subject using a mixture of art and the experience of myself and others. It is tempting to see resilience as a kind of armour – something off which life’s projectiles can bounce. I prefer to see resilience as something more flexible, adapting to the challenge rather than resisting it.

I hopped onto Facebook and Twitter yesterday to ask ‘I say resilience, you say…?’. I received a load of responses, at one point I felt overwhelmed by everything coming at me. I may, if I can find the time, curate the stream of replies. Time is pressing and I’m currently settling on three things to explore tomorrow.

Responses to bereavement
The need for creativity
The beauty in impermanence, imperfection, incompletion

For this post I’m focussing on the last point, and connecting with that fact that most of my visual backdrop for the talk will be my art..

Wabi sabi is a Japanese concept, beauty that is impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete. Wabi sabi has a connection to a practice known as kintsugi, or kintsukuroi, the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The idea being that the cracks are now a part of the imperfect work, not something to be hidden away, or covered.

I am finding the preparation for this talk quite stressful. I am recalling bereavement and other tough times, and I can only stand to absorb so much of this stuff. I need a release.

I draw a pot – using pencils and a small watercolour brush. I then draw a crack into the pot which I fill with gold.

I found it hard to know when to stop, not very wabi sabi of me! I’ve settled now – it’s good enough. I can see imperfections, incompletions – so to that extent – the art represents my current work well.I’ve titled the piece, ‘You Broke My Heart. I Tried To Fix It, And You Can Still See The Cracks’, and I will hold onto this piece for the Carshalton Artists Open Studios event this summer, which I am excited to be taking part in. I’ll let you know how the Art of Resilience talk goes soon, too.

Seven Years

Our local gift shop, Calladoodles, is about to turn seven years old. I enjoy supporting local independent traders, and I have designed and painted some art to help Calladoodles celebrate.

This art is representative of the red envelopes which are often used to contain money, and given as gifts at times of celebration as part of Chinese culture. I have attempted to overlay the Chinese characters for ‘seven years’ in gold leaf. I hope they are at least reasonably accurate.

Calladoodles will be including one of these art works in their celebration treasure hunt next week, and the other will be given away as part of my free art project.

Free Movement

This is a small series of abstract works, designed to consider movement. The pieces are layered, each layer representing a different element of movement.

I started with wet paper to which I added graded shades of water colour, the idea was to represent the drift and movement from one colour to another.

Once that dried, the next layer arrived as paint splashed from the brush, a much more random movement. Finally I blew some gilding paste across the surface of each piece, then applied some gold leaf. It took more readily in certain areas than others.

One of the finished pieces featured in the ITV News article about my free art project, and was given away near Beddington Park. Another piece has been given away in Wallington and a third has been gifted. The remaining pieces in the series are sold.