52 - Art, huh, what is it good for?
What is the point of all this art? Opening my studio over the summer has brought me face to face with this question. For some people, it would seem, art definitely needs to have a purpose. I have a set of rather beautiful triangular prism canvases which will stand on the floor or hang on the wall. Their 3D form has tempted many people who have seen them on display to urge me excitedly to stick a lightbulb inside them and turn them into lampshades. Others have been inspired to muse “I wonder what you could do with these!”. But they are not lampshades, and the only thing to be done with them, imho, is to hang them on the wall or stand them on a flat surface and look at them, and let imagination do the rest.
Two mixed media drawings from Yaverland Manor by the author (top and left), and three 3D canvases painted in oil
This search for some reassuring function in art re-emerged one day during Open Studios when a gang of six people turned up at my door. They looked around, bewildered, desperately searching for something they could relate to – something that had meaning for them. Eventually one of them spotted the coffee table with the drinks coasters I’d set out in case anyone should want a cup of tea while they engaged with the art. “Oooh! Now these are lovely!” they said, clustering round the colourful floral pattern printed on them – did you make these?!” “No, they’re just something to put cups on” I mumbled, making a mental note to hide those coasters as they were upstaging my artworks.
Monoprint by Sara Truckel
Such experiences have caused me to reflect on the purpose of art. It isn’t just a pleasure and a challenge for the artist creating it, a means for the artist to express themselves, to record a view, to make money or to improve their own mental health, to provide a splash of colour or a contrasting note as part of an interior design scheme, nor is its primary purpose to provide a way for the artist to show off their skill and craftsmanship. I do very firmly believe that art has a very valuable raison d'être beyond these things.
Drawing by Jane Grant
As well as opening my own studio over the summer, I have had the chance to visit others and to contemplate and in some cases to purchase work from other artists. I did not necessarily seek out the artists who confirmed my own abstract predilections. Indeed, not understanding or particularly loving a painting can make it all the more intriguing. The puzzle is all part of the fun. One of the studios I visited was that of animal rights campaigner, Sara Truckel. Some of her work is viscerally graphic, and even her more cute paintings of cows and sheep draw attention to the brevity of the lives of her subjects. “You wouldn’t want that in your kitchen!” she reported one viewer as having remarked on one particularly explicit piece. Actually, I might, but what I picked out was a stylised monoprint showing a mechanised rotary milking parlour. The awkwardly beautiful symmetry of feeding cows appears at first sight like a cake or a carousel, or a many-legged spider. Reflecting on these purchases and how I arrived at choosing them has drawn me to the conclusion that art is mainly there, in my view, for the purpose of challenging us visually. It is that awkward beauty and ambiguity that gets me every time. It emerges again in the charcoal figure drawing I bought from artist Jane Grant. Rough and inelegant with clumpy footwear and stocky tights, it somehow oozes delicacy and love. I love it, anyway, and, although the person in the picture looks like nobody I know or love, it reminds me, in its strange vulnerability, of people I have loved.
Distance Theory - painting by Adeliza Mole
My third summer purchase was a mysterious painting by Adeliza Mole. Its enigmatic title is “Distance Theory”. It is a landscape, or perhaps a skyscape. The artist was looking back at the Isle of Wight from the mainland, and wondering what was land and what was sky. She seems to give equal weight to both, and the painting is as challenging and tantalising as all of Adeliza’s work. I will spend many happy days communing with it and trying to work out the confusing theory of distance. Like all of my recent art purchases, it has its awkwardnesses – it doesn’t reveal all its secrets all at once, or even at the second, third or fourth glance. There is much still I have to discover and ponder as my eyes wander about in it.
Oil portrait of the author by Melanie Georgiou, and (right) my own ink marks on khadi paper that I gave Melanie in exchange for it.
With my own art, that is all I can offer any viewer. My drawings and paintings are just marks on a surface, some perhaps beautiful, many perhaps awkward and confused. But, when a receptive viewer comes along, those marks can open in that person a treasure trove of connections, imaginings, stories, reveries, memories and problems to solve or to accept – just the same kind of escape or awakening as a book might provide – they are there for the reader to spend time with and dip into whenever they get chance, and in this way, art can be a high-return investment.
This reminds me of one opportunity to invest time with art, about which I’ve promised the organisers to spread the word. A diverse group of us were lucky enough to spend a sun-dappled summer’s day this year drawing and painting in the manor grounds and church at Yaverland, Isle of Wight. The work from this happy day was hugely varied in terms of subject, media and approach, and will be displayed in the church over the weekend of 19 and 20 October. Those wishing to simply spend time looking are very welcome. But if you do need a reason to think about investing cash in a piece, the work is being sold to assist fundraising for facilities at this historic and, no doubt, awkwardly beautiful church. Perhaps too there will be something there to jolt us all out of our individual comfort zones. You never know. Art doesn’t need to have anything done to it to make it useful, it doesn’t even need to be framed. I have happily hung Adeliza’s masterpiece on a bulldog clip and it is providing great satisfaction like that. Art doesn’t even need our love at first sight. It just wants to be looked at. Pictures are for looking at, as music is for listening to, over and over again. If we can just do that with art, the rewards to us, the open-minded viewer, I think, are endless.