The great procrastinator and other tales.

 Since I started finally writing on this blog last month I’ve been thinking about the nature of my creative block and more specifically my quite spectacular procrastination skills. I’ve actually procrastinated writing this particular post for a good week or three. 

I’m treating this as a fresh start and like I’m going right back to the beginning (whatever and wherever that is), with that in mind I figured it would be a good idea to try and see what patterns I have to my personal roadblocks and self sabotage. Time to try and break some of those and find a way around those blockades.

One of my favourite and most used excuses to myself regards my work space and environment, like I can’t start making anything until my work space is ‘just so’ and if I can just get this space sorted or add/remove this piece of furniture then I can think and create. It’s odd how I feel like I just can’t create within any sort of chaos, everything has to be tidied and sorted first. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s I literally (and happily) lived within a maelstrom of utter chaos and filth, it didn’t bother me at all. I’d just push things aside, set up somewhere within it all and draw/paint, completely engrossed and utterly oblivious to whatever was around me. The first Deviated Instinct covers and a bunch of Napalm Death album covers were created from within that detritus. 

In the middle of a Napalm Death cover back in my old bedsit days, a free penny chew for anyone who can tell which record cover that is. Also note all the big crazy canvas paintings/collages on the wall. I miss doing big stuff.

Since my bedsit days I’ve lived in 5 different houses and trying to find and make the perfect work space has always been a struggle and an excuse I’ll use as to why I’ve not been able to work. After I finished my visual Studies degree in 1999 I finally did what I’d always dreamed of and got a studio. I got a space within the Warehouse Artists Studios, a co-op studio space in the centre of Norwich (sadly no longer there and long since demolished for a housing development). You had to be interviewed to get a space and once accepted had a space among 20 odd other artists. There was also communal spaces for workshops and group shows, a darkroom and access to computer and admin stuff for networking and promotion. I had a space for about 5 years and spent some of that time serving on the management committee as well as working as the marketing and media manager for a while ( a role I got a reduction of my studio rent for). Looking back it really was perfect and I miss it a lot and yet it still didn’t lead to me making huge amounts of work or taking great creative leaps. Sadly moving into that space also coincided with a time when big aspects of my life were in turmoil and falling apart coinciding with a rapid downward spiral for my mental health. Much of the time I had that studio I was struggling with at times crippling depression and anxiety which literally took me years to work through. Coupled with having to constantly increase my hours at my day job I was able to spend less and less time there until I just couldn't justify the money I was spending on rent for an unused space and had to reluctantly give it up. By this time I’d then moved into a small flat on my own so also had to move all my accumulated art supplies, tools and often very large and cumbersome work into every corner of my apartment. 

My old studio circa 2000-ish.

Gubbins in my old studio during the dark days.

As I was writing this a memory just popped into my head, there used to be a local regional arts magazine style TV programme called 'The Biz' on ITV in the early noughties. I can't remember how it came about but I recall being featured one week and someone who used to be in Eastenders coming down with a camera crew one day to film me and my work in my studio. It was all quite surreal. I recorded the short piece (where they also created a montage of my work to a Napalm Death soundtrack) onto a VHS which is gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere. I haven't seen it since and haven't had a VHS player for a decade or so, I should try and get that converted and post it though, unless it's too cringingly embarrassing. Anyway, I digress...

When I’m feeling particularly hard on myself I tend to beat myself up for wasting such a great opportunity but in truth it was just shitty luck that the universe had various planets colliding for me at once and I’m not sure there was any other way I could have muddled through. In the years since though I do feel like I’ve lost all connection to any kind of local art scene or network. Also my work when I’ve done any has had to adapt to my lack of space, thus I went from making big, messy relief pieces and large wax sculptures and 6 foot charcoal drawings to tiny, tight illustrative drawings and not much else.

Since we moved into a new place last year I've actually got a choice of spaces in the house I can work in but still find myself making the same lame excuses. However I’m really trying to make the effort to just shut up and work through it this time. I’ve set up a little drawing corner in the spare bedroom we’re lucky to have plus we have the luxury of having a large garage (with currently no car) so have no excuse for not getting back out and dirty, making some bigger, looser work. I’m looking forward to sharing this as it develops, definitely feeling some Spring optimism growing.

So basically so long as I can find some spare table space somewhere or room to set up my easel if I want to paint I have no excuses, even if I had an amazing gigantic dream studio no doubt I’d be able to find a reason it wasn’t quite right yet. That’s not to say I’d not like to get back to having a proper studio space of course. A Mid can but dream.

One of my current little sketching corners. From here I plan to conquer the universe.

One of my other primary creative roadblocks is too many plans, ideas and infernal lists to the point where I just can’t focus and feel totally overwhelmed by it all, which leads to not knowing which to start with or focus on and thus nothing gets done at all. I’ve started multiple little journals and sketchbooks that are just full of lists of proposed projects and ideas and inspirations. These go back years and years and then I see I’ll go back and revisit old lists and leave myself snarky little comments about not having done something five years later or something. I mean, scribbling ‘fail, fail, fail’ over something really helps!! Yeesh.

I did just look over a bunch of pages and lists I’d made back in 2010 and noticed a good few things (that weren’t even new in my head then) that I’ve still not got around to and would still like to do.

I’m not sure what the answer to all this is, I know that I should just choose one thing, focus on it, work on it start to finish, sounds simple but yet I seem unable to quieten the noise in my head whilst working already thinking about the other things I want to. Maybe I’ll actually write myself some sort of timetable for how I propose to use my free time over a 2 week period and see if I can stick to it. I’m usually hopeless at these things though, my many futile attempts at “okay, I’m going to draw every single day even if it’s just a two minute doodle” rarely get past day 3.

I probably need a list of ideas of how to tackle my lists. Yep, that’s the way.

I need to reboot my brain.

Other things...the pressure of feeling like I need to justify everything in a piece of art. I blame art school for this but that’s a whole other post at some point I think.

Also, the scourge of social media and the modern brainfucking disease of distraction and total lack of an attention span and…..

...oh, look, a butterfly.

Yep that’s another topic to tackle in a post of it’s own.

I think there is a lot more on all this I could waffle on about but that’ll do for today. You see what I mean about attention spans, mind you when I wrote a post on facebook that was longer than about 2 sentences my brother told me “no ones got time to read all that”, so cheers to anyone who got this far.

Things I've been digging this week - 

I’ve been really getting into the ‘Gas Lit’ album by Divide and Dissolve. I usually find I can take or leave a lot of drone/doom but there’s something otherworldly about the whole vibe of this album. I can’t quite put my finger on the feeling it evokes, even though they sound nothing the same I get a similar under the skin feeling from Ulver’s ‘shadows of the Sun’ album.

Also I guess some of the oppressive noise is in a similar vein to the Body but I get more of a positive kick. Whenever I listen to The Body I always have the mental image of a beaten naked man chained up, kneeling in his own piss in the corner of some vast empty warehouse while a figure in a pig mask holds a snarling dog and shrieks at him as he weeps and snivels. Happy stuff.

Divide and Dissolve don’t make me think of that.

Also it’s all about Context.

The world probably doesn’t need any more bunches of beardy blokes just tuning way down and playing very loud very slowly.

Divide and Dissolve most certainly aren’t that.

Taken from their website -

Divide and Dissolve are:

Takiaya Reed (Black and Tsalagi [cherokee])

Sylvie Nehill (Maori)

“We would like to observe a radical shift in the current paradigm of complacency in regards to oppressive power dynamics, genocide, racism, white supremacy and colonization” the band have previously said “to give weight and validation to voices that are traditionally misrepresented and crimilinized before given a chance to speak”

I was also going to write about a couple of great books I just read but I think I'll save that for next time. This has already taken me way too long to post. One of the reasons for doing this blog was just to get a flow going, keep it fairly brief, rough and ready but I've already found myself sort of obsessing over it and things taking 10 times longer than they should. Not to mention that I'm continually thinking of other things I want to post about that then get added to all the physical and mental lists and suddenly I've got even more stuff to get overwhelmed with and slow me down.

So enough.

Hit publish, move on and stop wittering ya dithery old get.