Hello friends
With an exhibition deadline fast approaching, I’ve been in the studio every day lately, working to finish the last of a series of four big paintings. Here’s how it looks this week. It’s very, very nearly done.
I am completing this one just after the clocks have changed, when nightfall suddenly seems to chop the day in half. So, the title “Nightfall” seems appropriate. But I also like ‘Cloud, Moon, Wave’ which mirrors another in this series that I finished earlier: ‘Cloud, Wave, Breath’.
It’s been an intense few months of full immersion in the studio as I’ve been working on these paintings. My partner has been very patiently holding the fort, seeing to household and garden jobs, putting dinner on the table (thank you, Andrew!)
It’s not over yet. There’s a stack of other work-in-progress still to finish. But, as I begin making arrangements for framing and shipping the finished paintings south to Edinburgh, I can start to see the end of the tunnel coming into view.
Today brought a quiet, mild morning, so, after an errand to the post office, I took myself for a short walk to our local beach to get some air and reacquaint myself with what lies beyond the studio walls. This is, after all, what has inspired the work I’m making.
Stacks of kelp lay tangled along the high-water line, a reminder of last week’s storm. A thin film of fresh water was making its own sinuous drawings in the sand as a little streamlet made its way down the beach.
I stopped to chat to some friends who were contemplating the small waves, wondering if it was worth climbing into their wetsuits for such a feeble swell. I love how finely attuned surfers are to the sea’s movements, so I stood with them for a while, watching as they pointed out the little sets of waves rolling in.
Without much power behind them, the waves curled around the point and sprawled gently up the beach with a rhythmic sighing, throwing out sheets of silvered light and pulling them back, again and again. Each one the same as the others, a part of the whole ocean briefly lifting out then dropping back. Yet each one uniquely different and unrepeatable.
The paintings I’ve been working on are, on one level, ‘about’ this Orkney landscape, or, more accurately, waterscape: the clouds, fogs, rains, lochs, streams and, of course, the sea.
But the more immersed I’ve become in the making, the more layers of depth are revealing themselves to me.
I see that these paintings are also ‘about’ seeking a fragile balance between structure and chaos, planned and emergent. The first marks are literally thrown down and the liquid paint spills, pools, trickles, and evaporates in unpredictable, chancy ways. Over this I work layers of repetitive marks: dots, lines, circles, pentagons. From this process a structure emerges.
This particular series of four pieces are on a bigger scale than I have attempted before. It’s been a challenge, requiring a new depth of immersion in the process. Each painting represents hundreds of hours of repetitive action. Line after line after line after line.
Each mark arrives, like the waves on Skaill beach this morning, as its own unique, unrepeatable self, and yet it only makes sense as part of an accumulated whole, a rhythm. Each line is itself and yet it only takes on meaning in its relationship to all the others. It is related and yet differentiated. It is singular and part of the whole. There’s a fascination here that feels bottomless. How can such a simple action open into such far reaching questions?
The long hours in the studio making the same repetitive marks have given me plenty of time to examine the state of mind we call boredom. What happens when you stay inside boredom instead of giving in to distraction? Just watch as it rises up, coming in a wave of irritation and impatience, and then dissipates, only to rise again, dissipate, rise, dissipate.
Sometimes boredom becomes an intense impatience that waves its little fists in rage: Come on! Sometimes you have the presence of mind to laugh at yourself. Sometimes you look at what’s been done and feel a sense of achievement, that it’s worth the effort. Sometimes you look at what is yet to be done and feel daunted, overwhelmed, a bit panicky. Sometimes you tell yourself it’s all utterly pointless with the world in such a mess.
Eventually, you learn to let it all just come and go.
Then, a space opens up inside the repetition that feels like it could go on opening and opening. It feels like peace. Like solace.
A still point, right in the epicentre of all the whirling.
Join the Life Raft Co-Working
If you’d like to share a supportive space for working on your creative projects, come and join our weekly Zoom session. It’s free. We start with a quick hello chat and share what we’ll be working on, then leave our cameras on and work quietly together for an hour or so. Don’t forget the UK has moved to GMT so if you’re in a defferent timezone do check! A recording of the previous week’s session shared each Monday on the paid subscriber chat.
PS: I have an appointment in the morning this week. I hope to be back in good time to start at 3pm but please bear with me if I am late!
That’s all for this week!
Bye for now
- Sam
Thanks, Samantha, for providing the opportunity to learn about the actual execution of your work as well as the mental/spiritual influences which you translate into visual art. I’m always grateful for your taking time to call out from The Life Boat. We here in the US mess with our clocks, as well as minds, next week end in most of the states including Florida. “Falling back” adds another hour of darkness to my mornings, an unwelcome result. “Cutting my day in half” resonated with my heart. All the best, Sam.
Boredom is the state I have always rejected, but never, until your sharing, so fully understood. You continually help clarify creative ideas and I thank you. Also, looking for your coworker zoom information. I’d like to join you sometime soon.