It’s been a long time since I last added to this blog. But here goes….
Let me take you down a road which seemed futile whilst I was on it, but which I suppose might just be another of those many learning curves we all go through.
You see in my life, like probably many other artists like me, I have done and do things we don’t quite like or would have thought we would be doing. And like many other artists like me our mistakes might have taken us out of the route towards fulfilling a goal we had, and although the goal remains it ain’t easy to just step back in or even get into the right path to try.
Eventually, if you are like me and critical of your own work, there comes a time you get to hate your own work, something which happens to me more often than not. Lately it has come to the point that there is little I like, even though in a strange way I still like things, I have come to dislike everything I’ve done recently.
The last time I wrote I had started a new journey trying to get away from letting my work become stagnant. Was it a good move? Well for many months it all seemed futile but with a purpose. Then it was futile but with the loss of the purpose as I couldn’t justify to myself the reasons for doing what I was doing. Except maybe wanting to succeed.
To put things in context you have to remember I stepped away from the arts and designing many years ago and let life drag me into the mundane world of working to feed your household, you know hat thing that we all tend to do. Stamped upon on so many times, with so many barriers, art was a doodle here and there and nothing more for a while until some old man with dementia (probably the wisest man on earth whose advise I cherished) told me I was wasting my life and asked why I had never gone back to painting. Many others had told me the same and tried to get me back in but I never seemed to move to take it up again as seriously as I should have. I am still far from where I ought to have been and far from moving in that direction. Many a time because I have stopped back myself and not taken opportunities.
Yes he was my dad, and in his last weeks with us said something, even though he had dementia, which impacted on me. He was right, why had I not returned and why was I doing things I never did actually like. I mean I’m a reporter, I write everyday, yet the reality is I never read books, I failed my English first time round and had to repeat it, and I only got to start writing because one day as an advertising consultant I needed my clients to have additional exposure, so I combined my creative skills with my media experience and started to write for my clients. One thing led to another, then to another and I have now spent decades as a reporter and using written words instead of visuals to put things down. Yet I am still not a writer and given the choice I would illustrate or create visuals of what I’m saying rather than put it in words (ironic isn’t it that I’m actually writing this). Words to me have been difficult.
Anyway, cutting a story short, the words of that old man led me to pick up a pen and sketchbook and start drawings. I promised myself I would try and draw more.
That was just five years back, and slowly it grew into a habit and now a daily occurrence. Unless I have done something, no matter what it might be, I will go to sleep thinking I haven’t actually done anything.
Obsessive isn’t it?
Well yes indeed, it is very obsessive, but that is what has characterised my art since even those years I did not do much or anything I still had that one ambition to return and make something of it.
But the past few months have been a learning curve on another level and it’s the realisation that you also have to admit to yourself at what level you are in and what level you might be able to achieve.
I used to paint a lot, or so I thought. And I used to use colour a lot, or so I thought. But these past months trying to get away from letting my work become stagnant it has been colour and paint which I have struggled with.
I’m the type who keeps trying, even when failing, until it is apparent that you won’t succeed or you realise that you have succeeded just not the way you wanted. Colour and paints have been just this latter for me. Trying to do something which causes me anxieties, and which deepens the feeling of your work being just mediocre.
Even the paint brush strokes I once used to talk so highly as a way of expressing myself no longer expressed themselves. And there is a reason for this. Basically I am no painter. I realised that When I painted in the past it all came from the same origins which was drawing and it walked forward by itself from there. Colour was not something I thought of it happened to be. It was just part of it, so what was a seemingly futile, unsuccessful venture has ended to be just that a futile and unsuccessful venture in trying to paint, but a realisation that I am who I am and painting is not what I am it is just a tool which I can use when I need to.
I also rediscovered sculpting and carving, and this was something I always shun away from, but lately I have delved back onto trying it and again it’s a tool. Carving actually is not some much just a tool than a way of pulling myself back into my focus point and removing the clatter around me. Just stripping into the wood bit by bit, digging in, shaping, … it’s the gestures, the actions that mattered and not what I was doing. Maybe it’s because there is no pressure from within myself to creating anything relevant.
Anyway. The past few months have taught me a few things, the most important of which is that at some stage or another there has to be a realisation of where you stand at and where you can go with what you have. To me my realisation is that in the whole scheme of things mediocrity is dictating my work and it’s why I tend to hate my work.
Trying to do things which I am not as comfortable in doing whilst shunning the things that make me only because others might not view it relevant or valuable will always mean that I will continue to be mediocre.
It has also taught me one thing, that no matter what I do in life, the one thing that dictates who I am is my love of the creative visual arts as it is what has been the one constant in my life. And aspiring to get better at it even at such a late stage in life and continue to try and break into new grounds even at this late stages does not make it wrong because it’s at this late stages.
Giving up would be the wrong thing… even whilst being mediocre.
stephenignacioart 
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