Feeling destructive

 

Developed from a sketch of the Hole of Horcum, North York Moors National Park

In the early 1980's I was living in an attic bedsit in Streatham Hill in south London. I loved this tiny flat, I imagined that I was a starving artist in a garret in Paris in the 19th Century but in fact I was neither starving nor a real artist. I was working at a magazine publishers in a job that was unfulfilling and deadly boring that I felt had no prospects (other than a pension if I stayed there for my entire working life).

I had graduated from art college a couple of years before and had duly lugged my portfolio of work around from my parents home in Wellingborough to my first flat in Tooting and then carted it over to Streatham and up the stairs to the attic. I began to wonder why I'd bothered to keep all this stuff and I decided I'd feel better about life if I chucked it all out. So I did just that. I carefully reviewed every piece of work and concluded that the only place for it was in landfill. It took me two long sessions to complete and I did feel so much better. 

It turns out that I'm in good company. The number of artists who have done just the same include: Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg, John Baldessari, Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Georgia O'keefe and Banksy who is said to have remarked: “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge”.

Last month I joined in an art challenge: #30works30days run by 12ocollective. The invitation to join in popped up on the ArtQuest newsletter and over 500 artists across the world answered the call. We received a brief every day which we could either respond to or ignore and we had to submit something onto a portal by 11:59pm every night or we'd be kicked out of the challenge. I had imagined that I'd be making small paintings every day for 30 days, but no, I occasionally submitted a video, a photograph and a piece of written work and it really made me rethink my art practice. 

The brief for day 12 was: 'collaborate with someone else today' which I ignored and produced the painting above from a sketch I had made several years ago. The brief for day 13 was: 'remake yesterday's work' which made me think I should destroy the above painting and turn it into something else. I thought this would be easy having hurled out three years work without a backward glance 40 years ago but the more I thought about putting this painting through the shredder the more my heart pounded. But I did it and created the piece below from its ruins and I felt elated having done it.

Day 13: weaving something new