| When I last updated in August, I mentioned that I had been working on some drawings exploring impermanence as a deeper investigation into themes inspired by Buddhism and Buddhist imagery. I felt quite drawn to these principles, especially as I had been encountering a great deal of uncertainty and change in my personal life. It seems somehow poetic then, that the result of these developments, culminating in a series of five digital collages titled Impermanence Series, should be receiving an airing as my final exhibition of work before I leave Manchester for pastures new. Even more so as the images contain drawings made in and around the area I'm moving to! The new work will be in display at the Manchester Buddhist Centre's Arts and Imagination Festival show 'Touched by the Dharma' throughout November 2015. I have always found my work driven by responding to the environment I find myself in and so it's no surprise that place and my movement from one to another should be featured in my work. I can only imagine what inspirations I will find following my relocation to the Essex coastal town of Leigh-on-Sea but as it has already found form in my work I think it's a fairly educated guess that it will affect the future of my creative practice, whatever that may be! |  Impermanence Series 3 - October 2015 |
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Having taken a laid back and flexible approach to producing work for The Serenity Series, (as would only be appropriate for the subject matter!) I didn’t set out with a goal in terms of how many pieces I expected to produce.
I’m not yet certain where these new sketches will take me though I’ve titled the book ‘Everything is Changing’ and I’ve enjoyed their creation so far, which can only be a good sign! I’ve now added some them to the Sketchbook pages of this site and have recently published two new poems, (linked below and also on the More Words of Mouse page) which instead engage with the concept of impermanence from a literary perspective. In writing this update, I have also just noticed the title of my last posting; how right I was!
The sculpture is one of the Four Heavenly Kings, huge figures that are often represented at Buddhist temples as guardians of the buildings. Zēng Zhǎng Tiānwáng (The King of the South's Chinese name) is the 'one who causes good growth of roots', which seems particularly relevant for a spring painting! He is also ruler of the winds and is associated with the colour blue, which I have tried to emphasise in the work. His symbolic weapon is a sword held in his right hand, that he uses to protect the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha as an interpretation of the laws of nature in a system designed to reduce suffering. The concept of allowing the growth of strong roots is one I find interesting and can apply to more than one area of my life at present. It seems especially relevant to this whole series, which is certainly proving to be a 'slow burner' as I evolve my own understanding of it from slight bemusement (Why am I making these?) through questioning the value of them (is this a bit self indulgent?) and now on to recognising that there is an intrinsic value in producing work that people can simply enjoy looking at without trying to address any wider social issues. (If you're not familiar with my older interests, that statement might make more sense if you look at some of the PlaceMaking and This Place Is project work). Of course, there is always slightly more concept than that, even with work that has an obvious aesthetic appeal and I have been interested to watch these pieces pop up almost as elements of visual grammar to punctuate my own changing approaches to life. Learning the purpose of slowing down and taking a little more time over life objectives (letting strong roots form perhaps) has been a key feature of recent months for me whilst questioning our modern, Western, hell-for-leather-must-be-done-yesterday attitudes and how productive that kind of lifestyle can really be in the long term. The slower, seemingly more purposeful, Eastern attitudes I have encountered in my work and leisure travels in recent years are certainly exemplified in the Buddhist imagery I've been using.
In many ways, the initiative has been far more successful than I could have hoped and it feels like a genuine achievement that so many people interacted with and through the meetings. I feel we can take real pride as a group in the many genuinely productive sessions we enjoyed, as well as the high points that were the collaborative projects and the group CRITshow (pictured in the slide show above), 2 years ago in May 2013. I am also incredibly grateful on a personal level to all the speakers who gave their time to share work with us, and to everyone who contributed in other ways, be that through full engagement with a collaborative project, helping out with bits of administration and organisation, or simply providing an interesting opinion. One thing must end for another to begin however, and I'm sure we'll all stay in touch. Who knows, maybe now we've chopped out a bit of creative dead wood, our roots can grow stronger and there will be some new, hardier shoots in the not too distant future.
I’m not even pressuring myself to necessarily get lots of them produced or work at a specific scale, or worry about consistency. I’m really just letting it come out as it feels like and I’m sure the confidence to do this has come from recent discussions at CRITgroup. Voicing doubts and finding that others are perplexed at the cause of them is very liberating and I feel I’ve given myself permission a bit more as a result to just let it flow.
The most exciting update however; and a really enjoyable end to my creative year came in the form of a weekend of PlaceMaking workshops with students of the International School of Creative Arts in Wexham, near Slough.
It’s impossible to pick favourites so this is a fairly random selection just as a flavour. Please do check out the project pages to see all the work and read a little about the ideas behind each of the sculptures.
That's all for now. December is upon us and shaping up to be as busy as ever. It seems like only a month or so ago that I was reflecting upon the conclusion of 2013 and wondering what was in store for 2014. It hardly bears thinking about that a whole new twelve months will soon be upon us! Nevertheless, I'm optimistic. Finding out is half the fun! It was with mild embarrassment yesterday that I noted my last post was in August. The cause of this embarrassment was mostly due to the fact that at the time I was using my own blog as a quick example to a student, upon whom I was pressing the importance of regular updates to engage with an audience. Whoops. Physician Heal Thyself. Fortuitously, I was also but a few brush strokes away from completing the fourth painting in the unexpected tangent that has been The Serenity Series and so today I felt I actually have something to post about. In my defence, September is always a very busy month (Yes, I know, we’re a third of the way through October) and so it’s been a genuine challenge to squeeze the painting in at all, let alone find time to write about it!
Whilst I was pleased to know that others could identify with having experienced something similar, the fact that the origin of those preconceptions were questioned by others was also a reassuring point of view. Why can’t the act of producing a creative outcome be at the same time enjoyed by both artist and audience? Though I am yet to fully resolve this in my practice, the discussion has at least given me some motivation (permission!?) to carry on. This new painting is titled Yongzou Lotuses and is composed from photographs taken at Yongzuo Temple and pencil drawings made on site at Chong Shan Si Buddhist Monastery, both in Taiyuan, China. The recent work has been part of a bit of a reset period for my creative practice, I think and this is something I always struggle with. Though I recognise it is perfectly natural for things, work, creativity, life generally, to reach natural conclusions or fallow periods, I find it incredibly difficult to not do something. Whilst I know that rest and reflection is essential for progression in many fields (here I am specifically relating this to my experiences of running and training plans!) that doesn’t mean I’m any good at it. I’m coming to the conclusion that this recent series of paintings is something of a displacement activity as much as it is an exploration of the photographic material; something creative to do while I rest my artistic muscles and store up some psychological glycogen to power me into a new socially creative phase. I do have some genuine ideas for this that are slowly coalescing around the edges of my consciousness. Needless to say they involve running, community engagement, art, and… well I’ll see if I can squeeze some cake in there too and hit all my favourite things in one project!
Though the PlaceMaking work has taken something of a back seat to the The Serenity Series of recent months, I have also been invited back to Hulme History Society to re run the I Remember workshop I first delivered to them in 2011. As they have many new members who were not involved in the original session, they have asked me back to work with them again in sharing some new perspectives on the local area. This will take place in a couple of weeks, on August 14th and I shall look forward to sharing the resulting photos soon!
 April was a busy month for a variety of reasons but one of the main things that seemed to take up most of my time and head-space since my last update in March was my first ever attempt at running a marathon. I did this on the very clement April 6th at the Asics Greater Manchester Marathon and in so doing aimed to raise money to fund arts workshops to be delivered to users of mental health charity Imagine. This is a local charity, based in Liverpool but with ongoing work nearer to Manchester in Salford too. I was keen to support a small organisation as I believe this means donations go further and one of the additional benefits of doing so is that it is possible to work closely with staff to ensure the cash goes exactly where you want it to. Having raised over £400 for Venture Arts last year by running a 10k race (my first of those too!) I thought I’d push it a bit and set a target of £500. I was absolutely delighted that I managed to inspire such generosity from friends and colleagues alike who between them have smashed that target absolutely to pieces by more than doubling it. It was then lovely to receive a thank you card and letter from the charity director and arts group service users and even better because what I didn't realise is that the existing arts group for Imagine is actually based in Liverpool, not Salford. They are now however, in a position to use the money we raised to initiate a whole new programme for delivering arts workshops in Salford which is a massive deal in this age of budget cuts for the arts and for health and I feel confident that my supporters have really truly made a difference to individual lives without their donations getting sucked in to a huge charity with massive overheads and generic budgets. If you are interested in more details about race day, you can read the update I wrote for the charity on their own blog page.
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Glittermouse has a background in visual arts and education. You can read more on the 'home' page of this site.
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