…
2012 has been a pretty tumultuous year for Peter and me. Those who know us will be aware of the events that have made it a challenging time for us. No more shall be said about that here, and I mention the matter only because it’s meant I haven’t had the concentration for easel painting. But I’m a great believer in making the most of whatever the situation may be, and so I’ve entered into the spirit of moving forward and finding new ways to make images.
I’ve been fortunate in the projects that have evolved during this time, because while graphic in spirit, they’ve nevertheless allowed me to capitalise on my strengths as a visual artist without having to re-invent myself as an illustrator. Marly Youmans has suggested there have been significant changes in my approach to making images, and looking back over 2012, I can see that she’s right. She wrote today of a new collage completed for her poem Thaliad:
‘Your birds are changing–more elongated and elegant. Flowers, too. There’s a new bigness and a bit of a threat in places. There’s a bit of spear-and-trident in this one, for example. I wonder how this set of projects will change your big-scale work. No doubt the collages have been refreshing to your mind while you and Peter are in the midst of turmoil.’
Clive, it is late here and I wish I could read all the comments very carefully and spend a good few hours looking at all the work in the post…every stitch of this seems to hold something eternal. I just signed in to say that it has been, here, also a very tumultuous year. What I have finally learned, without any shred of a doubt, is that where we are wounded is where we know — as the wounds heal, and ever after — how to see and feel and understand the wounds of others. A strange peace, but a knowing peace. It is the peace we can begin to share: your work, above, calls out with this peace and strength and life…this knowing that can hold fear while not letting it set up a spot and stay.
The knowing is where the greatest of our powers comes from and grows stronger. The knowing is love.
You have captured it, and given it to us. I write this only to say: be sure of your power and wisdom, for it is fully grounded in the great knowing. We can see that, and what true gratitude this affords. Thank you, thank you.
Thank you Victoria. Sorry for the delay in replying. Life here has been rather chaotic, and I occasionally miss the ball! Thank you for your kind words. They are much appreciated.
Such a great year of work Clive. Sorry if there has been heart-ache and difficulty for you of late and I hope that you find healing and resolution. Sorry too that you have been away from the easel, but that too, I am sure, will soon pass. Be good to your self and rest a while, and then, like a fallow field, you shall spring back all the more re-newed. X
Hello Paul! Good to see you here. My thanks for your sweet thoughts. I’ve decided this is the year of work on paper, and that’s that. Happy with what I’ve achieved, even though there’s a definite underlying unease about not having made any large-scale work. However despite that unease I’m sure that the way things have worked out is also the way that will best lead forward.
I think so too. All creative souls need change and stimulation, that is their/ our nature. My apologies for such a long absence, but I have been standing by all the while and think of you often and with great affection.
I love looking at these images!
Thank you cous. Lovely, as always, to hear from you. Send my warmest to all the family.
Clive, I too am enchanted by your mini-retrospective – what a wonderfully satisfying idea! Sometimes we need to be our own best curators. And I have to quote Phil Cooper because I so heartily agree:
“…Your total lack of preciousness and snobbery about your work is so refreshing and honest, such a welcome change from the baloney that is so common in the art world…”
I sincerely hope that whatever ill wind has caused trouble for you and Peter is now making its way over and out. No ill winds can possibly prevail against the encouraging and loyal supporters and friends your Artlog has gathered around you. I am happy to be among them.
Natalie, you’re a lovely woman and I thank you for the kind words. I’m sure there are those who would say that I’m full of baloney, but I’m glad you’re not among them! (-;
I’m sorry to say that the troubles will continue for a while yet, but it’s true that the affection of those who visit and support the Artlog has been a source of great strength to us, for which Peter and I are most appreciative.
I really enjoyed this retrospective of a year, and looking at it I felt that there are so many interesting strands in there that I’m sure will run through into other amazing artworks in the future. Meanwhile, I was just sitting here this morning and realizing that I haven’t pulled a print in almost a year… I don’t even want to write it, I feel like it is a horrible and shocking secret. Perhaps some years are just mixed up, and maybe they are good for something anyway after all.
When I used to tell my grandfather my troubles he used to always just listen and listen, and then after all that was said could be said, a lot of times he’d tell me “just roll with the punches”. I used to hate that, but I was wrong, and so now I’m telling you (though I think you know it already anyway).
Thanks Jodi. Your grandfather was right. Rolling with the punches is the only option. Of course what we’d all really like would be for the punches to stop, but until they do, we must roll until fit to bust!
I empathise with the notion of the ‘dirty secret’. I think that’s why I wanted to share here that I hadn’t done any easel printing for so long, because the revelation had struck me hard, and I didn’t want to hide away from it. I am making progress in ways that feel significant, but a part of me crumbles when I don’t paint at the easel, and I must address that problem before too long!
Well, I think it was about a year ago that I first came across your work, Clive, and then found your website, the wonderful monograph book and the Artlog before having the great pleasure of meeting you and Peter at Sketty earlier this year. So, I guess i’ve known you only through precisely the challenging period you’ve been going through recently. Of course I’ve wondered about the different work you’ve been creating recently and how this might influence your painting, but I’ve just been swept along by the constant flow of creativity and brilliance in the drawings, collage, maquettes and book illustrations – the visual summary in this post is just wonderful, what an exhibtion it makes. I’m a great admirer of Picasso and he was never one to worry about what medium he was working in or where his creativity took him next. Your total lack of preciousness and snobbery about your work is so refreshing and honest, such a welcome change from the baloney that is so common in the art world and your work reminds me of some of Picasso’s best.
Discovering your work and getting to know you has been a great influence. I bumble along tryng to find time to paint and draw, it’s modest stuff but it is very important to me. I’d been meandering along down one artistic cul de sac after another for several years but someting has changed. My partner Jan told me recently that he’s noticed how I now have direction and focus, and that the paralysis of doubt about where to go next has gone. You have to take much of the credit for this, as you really have inspired me Clive. And the ripples continue to expand – I met my friend Maggie last night who had visited the Artlog after I was raving about you and she told me she’d almost completed her Alphabet for Alphaabet Soup – so i’d better get cracking!
Warm thoughts and hugs for getting through the dark stuff, you’re a light in the darkness if ever there was one.
Peter read your comment this morning, and suggested that if my funeral comes before his, he’s going to get you to give my eulogy!
So now you know!
I’m so heartened to read that you feel progress has been made with your art. I’m touched too that you feel I’ve played a part in your finding a way into what you’re clearly enjoying, but I suspect you give me more credit that I deserve. However, it’s a great compliment, and I shall shoulder your praise with delight. Thank you so much.
Dear Phil,
Please pardon my intrusion but your words feel as if they are my own. I had decided at some point to become “serious” about painting, muddling along in my studio. Clive popped up in my life through a mutual friend and he has without a doubt been an incredible mentor.
I agree his work reminds me in some ways of the best of Picasso- the sly, sometimes erotic humor a shared quality. But Clive’s work speaks more directly to me; that he is so warm and open is indeed incredible.
I am plodding through my own primer, will be very eager to see yours. Your friend Maggie has intimidated me, i fear I have only finished 5 or 6, better get crackin’ as well!.
Take care,
Leonard
Clive, Having only been a reader for the past year since seeing the exhibition in Abersystywyth I can only tell you that a new post on the Artlog makes my day. You may not know what you’re going to write until you sit down to write it but there are a raft of people out here in the ether who absorb whatever you send our way. I love that you show the makings of things and you are right about ‘soul’. None of us could replicate what you do or would even attempt it. That’s not why we log in most days to catch up. We log in to see what that enquiring and creative mind is tackling next. I also log in to learn something new. Many of your posts have sent me down avenues of exploration that have enriched what I know. Reading all of the previous comments and your open repsonses to them just demonstrates the value of what you are doing. I do not know what troubles you but hope the warmth coming back to you from Artlog readers helps to find a way forward.
Lesley, words can’t describe how moved I am by what you’ve written. Thank you.
Thank you.
For the past year, I have been enjoying your terrific output of inventiveness without realizing there was a reason for moving away from the large canvas. You have seemed to be exploring new ground in a very exciting and “out there” way. I hope that in spite of events, you have been deriving much enjoyment out of the creative process. As you know, my own life has been subjected to much change. This last few months, I have put an incredible amount of energy into learning to play the fiddle. Don’t ask me how I became so obsessed. I haven’t a clue and don’t question it too much. However, the one thing I can say is that making music seems to have been what was needed just now – a new direction that took my mind to places it has not visited in decades. Take care.
Bev, one of the things that brought me regularly to your blog, was because I admired the grace with which you incorporated change into your life at a time when things were extremely challenging for you. I admired it then and I do so now. Recently I’ve been too preoccupied with negotiating my way through this maze to visit you as much as I’d like. (There are other casualties too, other blogs that I stopped dropping by regularly because I’ve been preoccupied with dark matters.) Yet again I’m struck by some of the parallels between us, as when I moved here I bought myself a piano, though I fear I haven’t made a great deal of progress with it given that I battle to fit all the things required of me into each day. (Note to self… must do better!) I’m glad to hear that the music making is bringing you joy. Keep fiddling!!!
(-;
Thank you for your kind words, Clive! You may find that there will come a time when that neglected piano will call to you. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to play the fiddle. Two years ago, I used the proceeds from a photo sale to purchase a very modest violin, then struggled to learn to play. This year, quite unexpectedly, a fiddler came into my life and helped to push me along until I gathered enough knowledge to carry on. Just recently, I took a 112 year old violin (that had been sitting in a basement for 40 years!) to a local luthier to have it brought back to life. He says it will sing wonderfully when it is restored. Although it can be difficult to make much sense out of some of the events in our lives, so often one thing leads to another and another – and so it goes. I stopped trying to figure any of it out quite sime time ago. Better to just keep on keeping on! (-:
Well I know I am not the only reader eager to see new paintings but this paper-path you have explored so beautifully has been a joy to witness. I agree with you and with Marly that your work has changed/strengthened . i have mentioned this to you before and I am concerned it might be mis-understood but there seems to be an archaic quality to your newer work; robust like that Hittite lord i sent to you recently. I love and admire the direction you are heading towards. Happily the poetry is still quite present. So my friend ,snip and paint and sketch, such marvelous results from a gifted and kind man.
LG
You are the sweetest man. Thank you for the above. ‘Archaic’ and ‘robust’ are descriptions that I don’t balk at. Far from it, being qualities I’d have aspired to had I been thinking consciously about the changes rather than… oh I don’t know… discovering them as I stumbled along. Sometimes I think that becoming an artist, for me, has been like opening a trunk of stuff I’ve hoarded throughout a lifetime, and have been unpacking again for the past twenty years. To begin with all was muddle inside, and I had to pick things out layer by layer to make sense of the contents. As I’ve got further down I’ve rediscovered and been drawn deeper into the worlds that informed my earliest visual interests, and it’s with a sense of surprise and wonder that I find myself looking at THIS, the earliest drawing surviving from my childhood… indeed the only drawing that survived… and comparing it to THIS, my most recent ‘painting’.
Leonard, I am so pleased that you are my friend.
Why are so many of us drawn to Egypt as young artists? i suppose they grasped the essence of existence. Happy to see your very well crafted monarch and even more ravishing princely knight.
I really love the notion of an overstuffed trunk; i too find my scrapbook of memories and aesthetic affections to be my guide as i muddle along.
I’m rushing off, the airline waits for no man, but I wanted to respond to your words, and yes, I am blessed to call you friend,
LG
Hello Clive,
I’ve been following your artlog in silence for the last six months or so, amazed and inspired by your artistic output, and impressed by your open and articulate sharing of your process as well as your daily activities. Your artlog is a joy to read, and I’ve learned much from it.
I don’t usually comment on public forums, but your latest posting about the difficult personal times you are going through prompts me finally to write to you.
For what it’s worth, I think you are going through what Joseph Campbell called a “Hero Quest” – starting with a “call to adventure” that takes you down into the Underworld where you battle (and eventually overcome) personal demons. Your insistence on “making the most of the situation” and moving forward with your art is exactly right, and the fact that you’re allowing your art to change with you is also very constructive.
I think you know this, but I just wanted to remind you that no matter what you’re experiencing, or how long it goes on, you *will* rise out of it with “expensive wisdom” that you wouldn’t have gained otherwise. You will not be stuck in the Underworld, and you are not without protection while there.
I offer these words of encouragement as one who has been on my own Hero Quest, which I discuss in much more detail on my website, http://www.QuestCycles.com. All my best, and thank you so much for your artlog and your website and most of all, your exquisite art.
Linda Griggs
Hello Linda
The fact is that I bumble along at the Artlog, and no matter how things may appear from the outside, I have endless misgivings about what I try to achieve on it. There is no template that I follow. I never know quite what I’m going to write until I sit at the keyboard. I worry about being quite so open as I often am, while all the time wanting to be truthful. I believe the truth may help others find their own creative paths, for I know how much I valued honesty about the making of art when I was struggling in my early years as a painter. (The painter Dick Chappell was both mentor and friend at a time when I most needed help, and his honesty and generous, straight forward craftsmanlike advice were so refreshing in the world of unbridled artists’ egos and petty jealousies I found myself struggling in.) At the Artlog I walk the delicate route between honesty and protecting my own privacy and the privacy of those I love. I set out two years ago to write occasionally about the processes of making art, and ended up keeping a sort of studio commonplace book, a journal not only of the art, but of the life that produces it. There have been times when I’ve agonised over what to write and what to leave out. I’ve balked at describing processes because others have advised against the stripping away of the mysteries. However I can’t bring myself to hide the machinery that chugs away beneath the surfaces, because at the end of the day it’s just the mechanism, and not the ‘soul’.
And so I thank you warmly for breaking your usual rule about commenting on public forums, and I thank you for the observations offered. It helps, Linda, to know that visitors get something out of what transpires here. While I have a band of Artloggers who regularly enter into the debates and explorations, I know that the vast majority of visitors pass through without comment.
I’m familiar with Cambell, and the ‘Hero Quest’ is something I’ve explored in various strands of my work. (Most recently in that made on the theme of Gawain and the Green Knight.) But although the notion is one that clearly attracts and fires me, it’s not something that I associate with my own path. Perhaps it seems too fanciful for the day to day of an ordinary life, and I’m wary of mythologising my experiences, because I want my life to be real and not a story. That having been said, I can see order can be quarried out of chaos by rationalising the muddle of life into a quest… though I’m no hero…. and I’m in sore need of such a simplification. Hope of purpose coalescing out of a state of existential angst is about where I am right now. And purpose comes best when I’ve a pencil or a brush in my hand. Ever onwards.
Linda, I’ve looked briefly at your site and I can see there is much there to make me return. Please continue visiting the Artlog, and if the mood moves you, it would be lovely to hear from you again.
“Perhaps it seems too fanciful for the day to day of an ordinary life, and I’m wary of mythologising my experiences, because I want my life to be real and not a story.”
I see that since you first posted this entry, you have been changing (adding to and rearranging) the images representing your last year’s work. With the addition of the very ominous wolf images at the beginning, through the devil/demon images from the Soldier’s Tale, through the lighter images from Thaliad, and ending with the Green Knight, it seems so clear to me that you are, in fact, chronicling your Hero Quest journey through your art.
Believe it or not, you *are* an archetypal hero in your ordinary life, and the artist in you can’t help but depict that. You have had the rug pulled out from under you (with the wolf images), you have gathered your spirit guides (in the Thaliad images), you have put on your battle gear (Green Knight), and you have crossed the threshold to face your demons (Soldier’s Tale).
You *are* coalescing your purpose through your art. God Speed, Clive.
Linda
Well, I’m smiling at your words because there seems no arguing with them in the face of your evidence. Hoist with my own petard, or in this instance, with my curatorial tinkering!
And now, armoured in green, I must pull down visor, take up arms (i.e. paintbrushes) and face down demons. There are rather a crowd of them gathered in the shadows waiting to pounce. I shall do my best to be courageous, though I don’t always feel it.
Thank you Linda. Your persistence has won me over. I am the reluctant hero in this quest. I see it now.
Very Best.
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Bravo! Recognizing you’re on a quest is half the battle.
If you ever want to discuss this whole questing thing in more detail, please don’t hesitate to email me directly. And of course, please feel free to explore my website for whatever help you might find there. . . .
Linda
What a bold year it was–and why shouldn’t you be transforming your visual vocabulary, so soon after that important moment, the 60th birthday retrospective?
Quite right Marly. Not for the first time in life I find that I’m upturning apple carts. Change is always unnerving… or it is for me at any rate… and yet at this time, when unsought changes are rendering me scarily unsettled, here I am throwing all my toys into the air to join them! It’s a mystery! I feel like the still point in the middle of a storm that I wish would stop. And yet still I add fuel to it. Ho hum.
Things will calm down again one day. I must say I’m looking forward to that, whenever it may be.
Well we have thoroughly enjoyed walking along with you and peeping into the treasures you offer us. There is a gentleness and an exquisite delicacy that shines through your work as well as those dark shadowy corners. Maybe the book cover will be the canvas for you. Still love the green on that sash, I nearly found it for the wedding but not quite and had to settle on a top slightly lighter… I am still searching.
In art, as in life, there must always be light and darkness.
I’m sure that green is out there somewhere for you Jacqui. You’ll find it one day.
i’ve been amazed by your output this year–the breadth of styles! i have, as you know, a particular fondness for the st. kevins–the black and white ones as well as the ones presented in vivid blues–but have been really inspired by the devils, violins, and the images for the thaliad. but you should add here from your paper-engineered “bad things” as well!!
Thank you, Zoe. And yes, I missed the ‘Bad Things’. Oooops!
Of course there are/will be changes if one is to keep growing as an artist! I love this online mini-retrospective and do see changes, hurrah for that! In the meantime, I’m sorry for the personal turmoil in yours and Peter’s life (though I don’t know any details) – but that too will affect change in your work, I believe. Onward with chins up!
Everything feeds into the work, both the good and the bad. I wouldn’t want to duck the latter… there needs to be balance in all things… but the last six months has been particularly gruelling on many fronts, and we could do with a break from feeling continuously in a state of siege.
All things pass, and so will this. In the meantime, I keep working. Work lightens the load.