Or (Ill-)Applied Commuter Skills
I used to be a great commuter. Admittedly, given that I work at home, commuting in the classical sense is always limited to going from one room to another, but I also had the same attitude to my work. Dedication to efficiency, single-mindedness of purpose, focus on mapping out, setting down, masking off, all those precise gestures geared – or so I thought – to getting the job done. To getting from point A (the commission) to point B (calling FedEx for a pick-up).
First of all, a sketch taken no farther than necessary for the client to gain an idea of how essential elements would sit, transformed into a tight drawing which would allow me to work basically stage by stage from back to front, masking of foreground elements, creating a seamless backdrop, peeling off the frisket, masking the background, doing the elements in the fore. Everything designed so no time was lost, no effort wasted. Rather like choosing the best bus to catch the correspondance, taking the route with the most obliging traffic lights. More or less linear, no detours, no surprises.
Somewhere along the way, all this efficiency began to feel just too… well, efficient.
So now I’m the opposite. An impenitent dilly-dallyer, explorer of overgrown and little-trod paths, eager chooser of the high road, unless the low road looks longer or more winding. Now I do intricate and thoughtful sketches (or none at all), not necessarily of the subject at hand, start painting more or less directly without really bothering to transfer too much to the paper, work in a totally haphazard fashion – a bit here, a bit there – as strikes my fancy, change my mind in the middle and do something entirely different (editors LOVE this kind of unpredictable artsy-fartsyness), or if I do miraculously keep focused, send in a version of the painting when it fits the commission sheet, and then go on to finish – and occasionally ruin – the piece completely differently. (Editors LOVE this too « Can you send us the original artwork ? » « Well, I’d LIKE to, but I stupidly carried on with my characteristically beatific optimism, subsequently ruined it and tore it up into minute but cathartic little pieces. What’s your FedEx account number again? It’ll all fit in a small envelope. »).
Now, before you shake your head sadly and think a few wires have come loose, or a few bricks toppled off the load on a tight curve, let me explain.
In the fine art of getting from point A to point B, arrival is only part of the deal.
It’s how you get there that counts.
Of course it helps if you can actually pay the rent from an activity that consumes you heart and soul, but the WHOLE idea is that, independantly of invoicing properly, this job is supposed to take you somewhere and show you something on the way. It’s all the difference between a straight line with a ruler and a freehand curve. I agree that singlemindedness of purpose is a valuable trait, but not when it is used as an excuse to tread a far-too-familiar and well-worn path. Hopefully, I have come around to an obstinate commitment to mindless wandering. (It’s so easy to confuse rectilinearity and rectitude.) Mind you, I don’t rule out the occasional straightedge, but I’m not talking about what ends up on the paper.
It’s something like life. You don’t really live it JUST to get to point B.
I was never good at straight lines anyway.
After all, to quote Chesterton:
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
AT HELL, TURN LEFT
OR THE FINE ART OF APPLYING ONE’S OWN ADVICE
As I was going to Saint Ursanne in the Jura, about an hour and a bit from Neuchâtel, for an important meeting, (humming all the while “As I was going to St. Ives” despite the extra syllable) I met a place called Les Enfers…
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Naturally, I suppose there’s a perfectly logical explanation for calling a little town “Hell” (plural), but it seemed the ideal spot to take some of my own advice and turn off the main road. Take a left when you reach Hell, how marvelously mythological thought I, hitting the left blinker. (I stopped to take the picture of the sign on the way OUT of Hell, which seemed far more prudent.What Greek legend never says is that Orpheus actually turned to take a quick snapshot for his web log.) Then I took the first left that I found off the main road, and finally a gravel road off that.
The landscape was beautiful. Normally, I would have sped to my appointment, arrived far too early and cooled my heels turned my thumbs checked my watch for half an hour. (I wonder if it’s not something to do with all the watchmaking in this part of the world. You can’t accuse the Neuchâtelois of being ahead of their times, but they certainly are punctual.) Bad habits die hard, but dilly-dallying in prescribed doses can do wonders.
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GUEST APPEARANCE
Recently received a very pleasant letter asking if a text of mine could be reproduced on another site.
Check out the Artletter by Martha Hart.
Simple. clear, legible and readily readable.
The joys of the ubiquitous if unpredictable net: finding pen pals at the speed of light.
BOOKS
Currently reading “What Am I Doing Here?” by Bruce Chatwin.
Not only is this a question I constantly ask myself (though in my case, it’s rarely metaphysical, and more likely limited to getting on the wrong tube train or making a wrong turn – at which point I raise my eyes to the sky and lament “Oh God, what am I doing here?” In response, a great deep voice from the heavens says “That’ll teach you to pay closer attention to the exit signs.” Rhetoric and road maps are not necessarily percieved in the same manner…) but it’s a worthy purchase just for one of the chapters on the nature of nomadism entitled “Nomad Invasions”.
As a species, we seem to have passed from nomad’s lands to no-man’s lands (I just made that up, no, I’m not kidding, I did). Wherever it is we are headed, one can only hope it’s not in a straight line…
