Art does not 'speak for itself'
Artists have a responsibility to write and speak about our visual art
Hello friends
Ta da! It’s finished! (I think….)
If you’ve been following along you’ll know that this painting has taken me about 126 hours of painstaking work to reach this point. If you Zoom in you can see the detail.
I’m now swithering about the title. Originally I was thinking about the salted sea mist that hangs over the Atlantic here when it’s been windy and then sunny and the air sparkles with salt. “Salted Light” was its working title and I still like it.
But I am realising that in its long making, the painting has accrued new layers of meaning, new associations. It’s become less about how something looks, and more about ideas, about how we are all webs of connections, about how all our edges are fogged, our boundaries blurring with the world around us, how we are all, in a sense, clouds. So words like ‘cloud’ and ‘breath’ and ‘blur’ and ‘web’ seem to lean towards this more expansive set of associations. A new title is forming.
The words we hang on our art work, or use to speak and write about it, are fundamentally important.
It’s a tired old cliché that good art should need no further explanation. It should speak for itself. Here’s Henri Matisse on the subject:
“You want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue because your decision takes away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.”
Sorry, Henri, I beg to differ.
As visual artists, it’s part of our job to help others to see our work. And by that I don’t just mean by showing them lots of pictures on Instagram. I mean that we have to help others to really see it, to take a little longer over it, to go a little deeper with us, to engage with the ideas and values and processes that have shaped it, and so to more fully appreciate it. That’s one of the reasons I pour so much love and care into this weekly email. I want you to really see my art work, and appreciate the thought and work and care that goes into it.
If we want people to get behind our work, we need to involve them. It’s a question of inclusivity. For many people contemporary art is baffling, intimidating, sometimes downright off-putting.
As
puts it, we have to ‘be the gateway’ for others, to help them enter our work and our world.And the tools that do this best are words.
Because what Matisse forgot to mention is that a whole industry of art critics, journalists and scholars used their tongues and pens to advocate on behalf of his art so he didn’t have to.
Most of us aren’t that fortunate. We have to do that job ourselves.
But in the course of 25+ years of coaching, mentoring and teaching other artists I have realised that this is something that many, many artists find a struggle. We have to do so much writing: biographies, artist statements, social media captions, catalogue entries, proposals, funding bids, website ‘about’ pages, talks and presentations…So. Much. Writing!
Cue Drumroll…
So, I am really excited to launch a short, practical four-week online course that I have designed especially to help visual artists draft and polish a set of core texts that you can use again and again.
You also get two 1:1 coaching sessions with me to help you find the right words to speak and write about your art, as well as written feedback on your draft texts.
I’ve been a practising artist myself for 30 years, as well as a published author with a PhD in creative writing. I’ve written successful funding bids, residency applications, gallery outreach, presentations, catalogue essays and of course this newsletter that I’ve been sending out weekly for the last three years.
So if you’d like me to help you find your words and draw more people into the world of your art, click below to find out more.
Life Raft Co-Working
Our little Life Raft session meets again this afternoon at 3pm (UK time). Come along and work on whatever creative project is foremost for you right now and share a virtual studio space. We get together at the start, say hello and share what we’ll be working on, then settle down quietly together for the rest of the hour. We close with a bit of conversation, building connection and creative community. Maybe you can help me decide on a title for my painting!
And if you missed last week or your timezone (hello Emily!) or timetable means you can’t join us live (hello Nina!), here’s the link to last week’s session. The passcode is: 2^Mf.OKj
Thanks as always for joining me in The Life Boat!
all best for now
Sam
Your words arrive at an interesting time for me as I have been pondering this idea that art should speak for itself. I keep thinking about doing all these book events and how sometimes I want to say 'just read the book!' but knowing that's not enough. But hold this in contrast with poetry books and how poets are rarely asked to do Q&A's in the same style - they are asked to read their work at poetry events as if it speaks for itself and should be enough. But more than anything I think poets should talk more about their work as a way in to a medium that readers often feel 'scared of'. I am also thinking about a zine/pamphlet I am making, and how I am trying to write an introduction for it because I suppose it needs that pre-amble because my work doesn't speak for itself. These are all disjointed thoughts, but I appreciate your clarification that actually we DO need to speak for our work, and that's not a shameful thing, or a sign that somehow our work shouldn't need that and would be better for just sitting 'unspoken'. xx
Thank you. I love your art and writing! Maybe Mattise could not write! We all see differently - lazily, too quickly, without much focus. Yet there is so, so much to be explored, to linger with and comprehend.