Returning to the studio

Universe

It has been a while since I posted on this blog. The reason is because I have been working on the M.A. And have been a practising artist for the last few months since graduating and finishing work as a nurse. Looking at the stats for this site, I realise that there has been a consistent readership despite my lack of posts ! First of all thank you to those who have taken time to read my ramblings, I will try and update you on where I am now.

I graduated with a Master of Arts in Fine Art - Contemporary Dialogues from Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David on 23rd June this year. It was a difficult time to graduate because we were all working remotely from our various workplaces, mainly from makeshift studio spaces at home.

I valued the connections we made during that time via Teams. Seeing the work of my fellow students develop over time was both exciting and challenging. A lot of the work was being made in response to what was happening both politically and environmentally. The course opened up a whole new world that I had not been conscious of before.

The course ignited my reading and research into the environment and has fuelled a resurgence of work that I had started in the eighties but had forgotten how to make !

I would recommend undertaking the MA if you want to open up your practice. I am not saying we need letters after our names to justify ourselves, but the experience of doing the course plugs us back in to the arts, particularly to what artists are addressing in their work in the contemporary world.

I now see making artwork as a form of activism, in the sense that it puts a voice out there into consciousness, into the physical world.

Craig gigfran

Vessel in which hope sails

It is hard at any stage of life to 'emerge' into the art world, but being over 60 puts a bit more pressure on !

I have decided instead to just enjoy making within the resources I have. This takes off any pressure and allows the inner voice to continue speaking. I see collaboration with each other as the only viable way forward, to link with like-minded artists and makers and organise our own projects. I want to celebrate diversity. Diversity is the way of mother earth. Monocultures, separatism and hard boundary setting are all borne out of a particular way of seeing the world, and seems to be the cause of most of our ills.

I am currently working with 3 other artists, Eleanor Greenwood, Lily- Ella Westacott and Dylan Williams. We are aiming to have an exhibition in October 22 based on our connections to the landscape and each other.

I have submitted two works into the Swansea Open at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea. Both were accepted. They can be seen from Saturday 20/11/21 until  Sunday 30/1/22 . They are physically fragile works made of my favourite material plaster of paris. The fragility is deliberate. They both exist because I exist, we exist together ! The ravens in Craig gigfran exist to call us to attention. To be attentive to what holds both us and them, we cannot be separate, our mother is the same earth, the same air, the same soil, the same water.

Vessel is a casting made from the bark of trees in Craig Y Nos Country Park. It is a small ship, a container sailing with seeds of hope into a future where humans and non humans value each other as equals.

I have recently been working on the piece headlined above at the start of this blog. I work with huge doubts about my output as an artist, I think this is common to most creatives. Who would want fragile plaster works ? We all want solidity, permanence, but in truth nothing is permanent. Our universe is expanding out into infinity.

Universe is another reflection on our common heritage, our common minerality. I exist today and there are more cells dying than being renewed, my universal body is disintegrating, dissipating back to the elemental. What holds all the whirling atoms together ? Is it love ? Does love bear all things ? Darkness and despair as well as explosive light and energy, burning and yearning ? It seems all entwined there. Love is sadness at loss, that awe when seeing the colours of Autumn. That feeling of wanting to curl up by the fire. The agreement with darkness and light - we are truly found there.

Universe is about all of that, it is based on a casting of my umbilicus (belly button) the scar where we were once nourished and attached to our mother, and her mother and everyone's mother. It is the swirl from which we all arrive into consciousness, from fusion, from energy, from atoms and finally into breath briefly.

Paul.