art – Page 34 – The Consulting Artist

Principles of Work – By Hand

In March 2014 I published my Principles of Work, a simple series of things you can expect from me when we work together. This version of Principles of Work was compiled using Haiku Deck, and the simple mixture of brief text and photos struck a chord. To date, the Haiku Deck version of Principles of Work has had over 7,500 views, and is in its second iteration.

As part of developing this idea, Neil Usher recently suggested to me that I could apply a more personal artistic filter to the principles. I love Neil’s suggestion, so I decided to do some tracing and sketching of my own, blending Art for Work’s Sake with the Principles of Work.

Many hours, much sketcher’s cramp, and lots of ink, pencil and marker paper later, I ended up with a series of images I’m happy to publish.

As I developed the images I chose to share them on various social networks and I benefitted from lots of great feedback and suggestions as I went along. The network I am a part of is a lovely, supportive group of people – thanks to each and everyone of you who helped me get this piece of work completed. Although it took a lot of time and concentration, this wasn’t that hard to do, so if you fancy trying something similar with your work, I encourage you to give it a go and I’m happy to help in any way I can.

I’m a big fan of showing your work as it develops, and the next step is to experiment with a video to tell the story behind the images in a little more detail. I’ll keep you posted, and in the meantime, if you’ve got any ideas about what I could do with the original sketches – I’d love to hear from you.

Working out loud, learning all the time.

Martin and Mark

A post about being in a hole, and finding a way out.

Suddenly I stop
But I know it’s too late
I’m lost in a forest
All alone – Robert Smith

The impulse is pure
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference
Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence – Neil Peart

Change is the only constant – A. Smartarse

Sometimes, work sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fortunate compared to many people, but sometimes, work sucks. Projects get deferred, postponed, parked and abandoned. Plans made carefully over time, can drift apart in seconds. We all now how that feels. It’s quite common for things to shift, and it’s thankfully less common for so many things to slip at once. Right now, I find myself in the middle of a lot of this stuff. A few short weeks ago I felt like I was on solid ground, currently it feels more like quicksand. I’m not complaining – just noting this is how it is some times, and it gets me down. I’m only human.

Martin

I caught up with Martin Couzins earlier in the week. Martin is a great guy and we had a lovely, lively conversation. We spoke about all things good and bad, challenging and frustrating, uplifting and depressing. We spoke frankly and honestly. Martin is a great listener, generous in spirit and also with his time. We parted company after a little over 90 minutes, with me in a very different place to when I arrived. Thank you Martin, you are a good friend and I needed to see you more than I realised. My work doesn’t suck so bad.

Mark

As I walked to the tube station to start my journey back to the office, I passed by a guy and his dog, sitting on the pavement near Gloucester Road tube. I saw some sketches at his feet. I stopped to admire the artwork, sat on the pavement with the guy, and we started to talk. Mark is homeless, he’s been on the streets for three years. When he found himself homeless, he couldn’t bring himself to beg, and he didn’t want to start drinking, so he decided to make art instead.

As you can see, he’s quite the artist, though he assured me that when he started drawing three years ago, ‘it was all stick men’. I showed him some of my pictures, and he showed me more of his. Two artists (and a dog) sitting together on the pavement outside Gloucester Road tube. I gave Mark a few water colour pencils – treasured possessions of mine, time to pass them on. He offered me the picture of his which I had been admiring, I took it and insisted on paying for it. I tucked £10 under his pencil tin, and he put it away. ‘There are a lot of people on the streets who will have that away if I leave it in sight’. We talked a while longer about our art as our work, and parted company. Thank you Mark, for helping me reconnect to my work and realising, it doesn’t suck so bad.

So what?

Things go wrong all the time. When this happens, I have a tendency to keep things bottled up. This is partly because I’m an optimist first and foremost, and partly because I feel a sense of pressure to comply with a culture of ‘Everything is Awesome’, which often pervades my social networks.

The truth is, you cannot know joy without despair, happy without sad. Life is a wonderfully mixed bag, and to deny this, is unhelpful, even dangerous.

Conversations with good people are a great way to put things in perspective and move on. My day concluded with me finishing a key part of an important project. Thank you Martin and Mark.

What Moves You?

What Moves You? Art as a trigger for the importance of subjectivity and different perspectives.

Since being established in 2012, World Art Day has been celebrated on April 15th – the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci. I had no idea such a thing existed until I saw my friend Crystal Miller had linked to it when sharing a few examples of ‘Art that moves me’ on her Facebook timeline. In addition to posting some of her artistic favourites, Crystal asked, ‘What moves you? and ‘Who is your favourite artist. I replied:

I love art in part because it is subjective, my answer to this question could change every day, hour, minute even. I see you have a Klimt in your montage. Last year we visited an amazing exhibition in a disused mine in Baux, southern France where works by Klimt and others were projected onto huge underground walls. There was musical accompaniment – the whole thing was incredibly moving. This photo may give you some idea of the huge scale of the thing. So today – I choose Klimt.

Sticking with subjectivity, I like to experience art I’ve not seen before now – I recall being particularly inspired by a chance visit to Tate Britain to see work by Kurt Schwitters. I joined Tate primarily to encourage me to experience more art for the first time and these new experiences in particular, deliver great value to me. Of course there are also times when my artistic encounters backfire, and occasionally I even seek out art I know I won’t like to reflect on my reaction to it.

I recently visited Inventing Impressionism at The National Gallery. The exhibition features a collection of impressionist paintings bought and then sold by art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Durand-Ruel backed these fledgling artists when pretty much everyone else ridiculed them, and his early support was instrumental in the success of the movement.

When I visited the exhibition I experienced both the joy of unexpected beauty, and the trials of ugliness. The beauty was particularly stunning in a series of five paintings of poplars by Monet. Not only are these paintings individually beautiful – they have been curated wonderfully. This is an art experience in the moment, as I doubt very much that these five paintings will ever share the same wall again. For me the ugliness arrived in the form of Manet’s work, sorry all you Manet fans – but he does nothing for me. I have also noticed that each time I see work by Renoir I find his soft focus approach increasingly not to my liking either, it all feels too cutesy for me.

I enjoy the way art enthuses and challenges me, it offers a powerful reminder to acknowledge the importance of subjectivity. Even when we’re certain about what we are seeing – others may have a very different perspective, and I find it useful to be reminded of that.

What moves you?