me kat

I've just had a look at the stats. I've had more hits than I have friends. So, unless, my few but dear friends are serial hitters (and we would be talking serious addiction), my bold guess is that I might be so lucky as to have people I don't know terribly well, or even perfects strangers come visit. That is both wonderful and daunting. Either way, it seems to me, I'd better introduce myself in a little more detail. Although I find these situations difficult - not because I don't like talking about myself, but I always have problems pinning down what this Self is. This, I'm sure is a common affliction. What are my salient points? My USPs? My vital statistics. With regard to the latter, never you mind, but as with painting a portrait, it is not enough to get a likeness, you must capture the essence of the sitter, which is perhaps why, one of the first things they often make you do at art school, is to paint a self portrait. Damn hard. Self knowledge, self awareness so easily turns to painful self consciousness. Better to be on the other side of the easel, behind the camera. Nevertheless, here I am, in my element, well, my studio. I start my days in a lovely cafe and the women there always laugh at my clothes and cheekily ask things like, where did you get those? is that the latest fashion?, did you get the shoes from the same store? The truth is, that those trousers are my uniform, my badge, I am a Painter! Whether I am a good one or a bad one is not the main point - although one always strives for betterment! - but it is the knowing of self. I recently re-read All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, about Deborah, Lady Slane who was Vice Reine of India and never, as far as we know, painted a painting in her long and terribly important life, but as she reflects upon it at the end, she knows herself to be an artist. That is not to say that an artist should not labour hard and produce good work, they should, as far as is possible, but I think the point that Sackville-West is making, is that it is not the objects we produce which make us artists, but how we live our very lives. The pictures, if you like, are a byproduct. That may be an odd thing to say in a world, so pre-occupied with the making of marketable objects. You may want to write me off as some qaint old romatic socialist or something much worse! You may ask, what is all this airy fairy nonsense about living the life of an artist? Such questions must have many and complex answers, but one simple answer is to do with truthfulness. To have a vocation is perhaps at odds with a world that demands flexibility and constant adaptability, to insist on a particular way of life, would seem obstinate, to the point of madness, but that is, I think, what an artist must do. Why? Well, because we have a job to do. Oh yes, painting pictures is a good start, especially if they are good pictures, but we must do more than that, we must see, we must reflect, comment, analyse, criticise, we must participate and offer something. But most of all, we must imagine. Think. And all that goes into our work. When things get too wordy, I like to destill what I want to say into an aphorism, and one I came up with the other day, when I was sermonising to a friend (you are beginning to see why I have so few, but so patient!):

Art is not decoration, but declaration.

An act of communication. Which is why an artist is always thrilled to get a response - even a bad one - the worst thing, by far, is silence, indifference. And at the same time, there is this tremendeous fear, a sense of 'why would anyone bother?' so an artist can be said to be that rather neurotic individual caught in a constant crossfire between a compulsion to communicate and abject fear that someone might notice. However, if you are here, I am glad you did notice. Now back to work.