What Does An Artist Do All Day?
DAY ONE
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DAY ONE 〰️
And here we are at day one of my very public life of being an artist. My instinct is to write about what I did yesterday but that only focuses on what is in the past and then only what is remembered of the past. What Does An Artist Do All Day is all about the here and now. Living in the moment. So three minutes to 07:00 and I am already sat at the table at home working. Yes, journal keeping is working in this instance as it forms part of my ‘installation’ exhibition. An installation that has yet to be fully ‘installed’. Some unfinished paintings are up, a very large blank canvas awaits Day 1 on a studio easel facing out into the big wide world through the Gallery window. A white blank canvas is scary enough but when it is as large as this one it is almost threateningly so. A little bit of panic creeps in when I think of the stark emptiness and size of it. Will it get finished? Will I get any paint onto it before the end of this weird exhibition? Will I even get the remaining parts of the exhibition ‘installed’ before I throw open the gallery door to the public.
If you are reading this then you already know what I, as an artist, do at the beginning of my day. I think. I reflect. I plan. Some mornings I get stuck at the thinking stage. I indulge my creative wandering brain to think about all the paintings could, would, should do. Inspirations come swiftly to me in the mornings usually. I don’t always follow them through though because it takes me a half an hour’s drive to get from home to studio and in that time I have travelled many miles and thoughts in my head. I look forward to the mornings when I can think then wander a few steps through the town to my studio. But the studio move from Coupar Angus to Kirriemuir is a few weeks away and I have to do more, much more, than just think during this time.
One of the first things I do in the mornings, after the horizontal thinking (in bed) and the active getting things down on paper thinking, is plan the day ahead. Anything further than the day ahead gets logged in my diary or back-office ‘schedule’. I rely a lot on my back office system but I will talk about that another time. Each day I start with a new ‘Day Sheet’ (explained this yesterday). Any tasks that I have not completed I change the text colour to green. I remove the tasks that I have done the day before. I remove the appointments and any other notes etc that I had typed into this document the morning before. This Day Sheet then gets printed ready for me to hand-fill with actions, meetings, notes, expenses etc etc. My brain on paper. It helps to keep me organised and planned.
The first thing I have done today though is write my ‘Blog’ as part of my daily exercise / task for the What Does An Artist Do All Day. I do hope I can log a few more ‘What I Have Done’ notes here during the day. Otherwise all the readers, if there are any, will think all I do is create a Day Sheet.
Here we are at the end of the first day, 23:20 to be precise. My intention was to write up something like a log of the day, what I had done, what I had messed up, what I had neglected to do. But writing did not happen. Another neglected ambition. And here I am now, sitting alone in the almost dark sitting room of the West Wing, wanting to write about the article I have just read from the InsideArt email I have just received. I guess America is still in daytime. It is worth reading this article again and certainly worth sharing around for others to be enthused, encouraged and entertained by it. The article? For The Love of Art by Stan Miller. The link to read this online is: For the Love of Art (activehosted.com) A nice inspiration to take to the land of sleep
