playtime is here

Regular readers of this blog will know that I was fortunate enough to have my first solo exhibition, ‘episodes’, at Farnham Pottery last summer. A surprisingly busy Autumn followed, with between 1 and 6 ‘episodes’ paintings appearing in the following exhibitions: ‘and we meet again’ at the Lightbox, Woking; in the Second Saturday group exhibition ‘breathing spaces’ at Cranleigh Arts Centre; at the Creative Response gallery in Vernon House, Farnham for Surrey Winter Artists’ Open Studios. The first part of this year was quiet when my depression was at its most vicious, but spring brought an opportunity to sell some ‘episodes’ prints to a company of interior designers responsible for refitting various mental-health facilities for Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust, and I sold a big painting, ‘seafoam’, at ‘Flourish’, the annual Creative Response summer exhibition. To receive such affirmation over the course of a year is really amazing and humbling…

… so it is with quiet pride that I can now announce that I have been awarded a bursary from Disability Arts In Surrey (DAISY) designed to further my artistic development. DAISY have partnered with the prestigious New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham, Surrey, to provide me with a five week residency at the Gallery this August and September. In addition DIASY will provide funding so that I have the amazing opportunity to work with Caroline Jackman as my artistic mentor throughout the summer.

This is the first time DAISY and the New Ashgate have partnered to offer a bursary for the development of an artistic practice and given a space in which to experiment, in the form of a residency at this gallery which is dedicated to displaying the best of contemporary arts and crafts. So actually to be the first person chosen feels frankly miraculous.

It also feels extremely scary.

And yet it also feels ‘time’. Time to step up and out and see what opportunities lie outside the four walls of my bedroom. Time to open myself up to the challenges and opportunities of a very public project. I will be writing various posts (I hope) over the course of my residency to show what I am doing in more detail. For now, though, it feels like time to ask myself: can I make specific work which speaks to a wider audience about something they know matters – the built environment of their town? (I’m continuing to ignore the little voice on my shoulder who whispers ‘who do you think you are kidding?’ and ‘you can’t make any work which means anything full stop!’ etc)

I will be holding open studio times when any member of the public can come in and talk to me about what I’m doing. Laying oneself open to the opinions of others is challenging enough when you are presenting finished work, but being prepared to show work in progress is a whole different thing.

Gulp.

And I know that the people of Farnham who visit their Gallery will have an opinion of my work, since the focus of my project is the controversial town ‘regeneration’, the BrightWells Yard development. This is designed to be a mix of retail units, apartments, social housing, a restaurant quarter, a new town square, and a 6-screen cinema. The site dominates the eastern approach to this historic market town, and has been mired in negativity and controversy. It has taken over twenty years to ‘break ground’ while town planners and local residents argued ferociously over various proposals. And while the plans went back and forth, the site which has an eighteenth-century grade-II listed house (‘Brightwell House’) at its heart, was left to moulder and become a derelict eyesore in the meantime.

There is also the small matter of managing the residency alongside managing my health.

But I keep coming back to one crucial factor of this residency – why it feels like it has been ‘grace-curated’ to fit me: I am not expected to come up with a definite outcome, like an exhibition, or a series of prints or photographs, at the end of the five weeks of open studio time. For a recovering perfectionist like myself, this open invitation to keep exploring and playing, rather than producing, feels like a gift. The DAISY bursary is given to help my artistic development, it’s about what I need not about meeting somebody else’s expectations.

Mind you. that means this project will bring me into direct confrontation with my own expectations. Can I avoid all the self-sabotaging mind-talk so I can keep turning up to the blank sketchbook and indulge my curiosity? I know from bitter experience that those inner expectations have the power to derail any planned project, and make me very poorly indeed. Yet my soul keeps singing ‘K, it is time’: time to work differently, leaving boom/bust, goal-orientated, people-pleasing coping mechanisms behind as a set of outdated tools no longer needed for the artist I am now. I need to nurture the self-compassionate voice in my head, giving plenty of room to my Inner Encourager so I can play with Spirit and see what happens…. so watch this space!