After three years of journalling weekly, I finally gave myself permission to take a break. I felt horrifically guilty about it for a while – breaking a commitment to myself always feels like failing – and journalling has always been a really positive way for me to reflect on what I’m thinking and feeling in any given week: a way for things I may or may not have noticed to bubble up to the surface. But, I also value experimentation and shaking routines and habits up a bit, at least for a while, to see what happens.

Stepping away has become an essential part of my art practice over time. I’d do some deep and extensive illustration work, then put it aside for a day, or sometimes a week, and re-visit with fresh eyes. I see things I never noticed before, and new ideas often come from a fresh look at work I was, at one point, so deeply in.

As it turns out, stepping away from the journal for a month has brought a similar sense of clarity and reflection to it. Not just about the day-to-day writing of the words and the weekly penning of thoughts, but the point of it; the purpose. Not only that, but there’s an eagerness within me that wasn’t there before, an eagerness to help other artists on a similar journey benefit from what I learn on mine.

Taking a bird’s eye look at the work on the journal, there are now over 180 individual journal entries! I’d never imagined that the journal itself would become a body of work but here we are. It’s an example of the things I’ve picked up over the years – things take longer than we expect, consistency over quality, chipping away at things, drip-by-drip, all come together to create something of substance. Something special.

Stepping away needs the opposite, too; periods of leaning in. And so now it’s time to do a bit of that again – just like refining a drawing after some time away. What I’ve learned is that perhaps three years of relentless journalling might be too much? Maybe the work would benefit from stepping away a little more regularly? But then again, maybe not. The fun bit is working it all out.

In January 2019, a study found that growing up in a house full books can be a major boost to literacy and numeracy. Could art supplies work the same way?

Availability leads to Opportunity

Occassionally, I get in the mood to play with stuff. Random stuff. And whilst I love watercolour, sometimes a mood strikes and collage seems like the fun thing to do. Other times, it’s coloured pencil rendering, or playing with ink, or playing with oil or acrylic paint. And so if that mood strikes and those materials aren’t available, neither is the opportunity. This is the story I told myself in order to give myself permission to start filling my house with art supplies to see if the study about books holds true for other things, too.

Opportunity leads to Experimentation

With a house full of art supplies, I’m more able to act on impulse. I feel like painting in acrylic? Bam! I whip out the acrylic paints and I’m on my way. If I feel like some considered, almost meditative pencil rendering? Bam. I’ve got that, too. I still consider myself a watercolourist at heart – it’s the medium I tend to enjoy the most, especially for illustration – but that doesn’t mean I can’t dabble in the others.

And the thing about dabbling in mediums other than my favourite one is that I learn things that my favourite one can’t teach me. I know that because of my dabbling in acrylic painting, I’m developing a better sense of tonal values and contrast. I didn’t know that before I started but it’s definitely happening. And because of my access to and use of coloured pencils, I discovered their strength in helping to amplify my watercolour work. It also helped to reinforce my love of watercolour.

This idea of learning through undirected play – the thing we encourage children to do so much of because we know it has benefit to them – seems to stop at some point after childhood ‘ends’. But isn’t the end of childhood just a manufactured idea? One that lines up strongly with ‘the time to get serious – set goals and achieve them’ as adults: the moment when we’re expected to contribute to the industrial complex of Work?

The truth is that experimentation – learning through play – isn’t just a child thing, it’s a human thing. And, in our attempts to transition ‘aimless children’ into ‘goal-seeking and productive adults’, we’ve also de-prioritised this method of experimentation as a way to learn. In fact, it’s so well removed from our way of thinking that we have to re-learn it as a skill as an adult. Corporations call this ‘Innovation’ but it is, in essence, learning through play.

Experimentation leads to Innovation

Followers of my work may notice something – my work is changing. I can feel it and I suspect that the growing availability of art supplies in my house has something to do with it – first we shape the tools, then the tools shape us.

Rosie the Rhinoceros is the first time I’ve used ink in a book. Why? Because I had it laying around one day – a 3-year-old ink bottle – and I just decided that I felt like playing with it. As I played, I learned what it was good for (and what it wasn’t good for). I used cheap paper, cheap brushes, and focussed on feeling ink – how it moves, how it dries, how it works. A short while after this, the Rosie manuscript came along. She was a bold, flowing character with more energy than watercolour was able to capture. I knew, intuitively, that ink was going to be needed for her.

And now that Rosie is out in the world, it’s led to additional interest for ink work – a manuscript of similar energy arrived. The work you do is the work you get.

Innovation leads to change

Whether its books at hand, or art supplies at hand, surrounding ourselves with novel ways of getting in touch with how we feel helps clarify things for ourselves. And the clearer we are about who we are, the better we can be for others. As someone famous once said, the only constant in life is change. But goal-driven change (I’m here and I want to get there) is only one approach. The other one – the much more interesting one – seems to be “I’m here, and I have no idea where I’m going, but I’ll play my way there”. And all it takes is a little access to something different in the first place.

For me, making art is a personal exploration. It helps me clarify my thinking and answer questions that bubble up in my brain – Queen Celine began with the question: what if free trade suddenly stopped? Rosie and Eric the Postie helped me explore the different approaches to finding one’s identity in a world that said you couldn’t.

I could explore these ideas intellectually – stare into the sky and let the idea roll around in my head – but that tends to lead to circular thinking and I end up with no greater clarity on what I think or why I think it. So, art provides a physical medium to explore the ideas and ensures that I have some forward momentum and an endpoint to the question I’m pondering. And note, I use the word ‘endpoint’ and not ‘ answer’ intentionally.

The problem with attempting to display one’s thinking in public (as art is so wonderful at doing), is that a vulnerability that exists. After all, what we’re really doing is saying, “I had this question, I explored it for a bit, and here’s where I landed. What do you think?” We’re exposing our workings (just a scientist or mathematician does), and inviting critique. Inviting critique is incredibly confronting.

Sometimes, it turns out that people also had similar questions to the ones we were trying to answer. They can see the work we’ve put in to try to answer it for ourselves and they can have a few reactions:

1. Appreciate the attempt for what it is – an answer – but realise it’s not their answer. Our work may influence their thinking somewhat, perhaps provide another perspective, but it’s not going to transform them in some meaningful way.
2. They disagree. Whatever endpoint we reach is not something they can understand or want to engage with. They have their own point of view and that’s fine. We go separate ways with things all the time.
3. They love it. Our endpoint resonates with them really strongly, it’s as if we’ve answered their own question that they never thought to explore in art but may have pondered from time to time.

It’s with this first audience that we can often get some thoughtful, perhaps useful, commentary – “I see what they were trying to do here”, “It’s a noble attempt at…”. There will always be the second audience, which may be most difficult to overcome. And it’s with the third audience, the ones who may have had similar questions, that we tend to get the warm and fuzzies over the work we’ve achieved with responses like, “I really love this, I want to buy it!”

The fourth audience

But, there’s another audience – the ones that prevent us from making the work in the first place for fear that this audience will be in the overwhelming majority. Sometimes, we find ourselves in a situation where no one else has asked the question that we’ve asked ourselves. No one could care less about free-trade, or whether the world may inhibit our ability to be our true selves. It’s with these audiences where we hear the most confronting commentary, “This is pointless. I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. Why would anyone waste their time with this?” This, to many of us, is a ‘disaster’.

When this sort of commentary is brought to our attention it’s easy to connect our work directly to our identity – if people think this is a waste of time, then maybe I’m a waste of time. If this is pointless, then maybe *I’m* pointless. If no one gets me then why would I bother to try to answer any more questions for myself? And so we stop making or sharing anything.

But, here’s the thing. Our work is not our identity, even though it comes from a personal place. Our work is simply and literally an endpoint for a question that no one but ourselves asked. Chances are, that question has an infinite number of endpoints and there are thousands of artists, essayists, scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers seeking to arrive at their own endpoints. Just because someone can’t imagine why anyone would bother, or that one particular endpoint doesn’t resonate with them, doesn’t mean we’ve failed or that we’re a failure.

If anything, our work is an act of generosity. We’ve spent a small portion of our finite time on the Earth attempting to provide a perspective on something – something that we’re interested in or something that’s been bugging us. Some people will value that and others won’t. But art, just like science, maths, philosophy etc, often deals with questions no one thought to answer. Without that innate curiosity paired with the courage to show our workings to the world, we wouldn’t have the rich, vibrant culture and knowledge we have today.

Today’s culture and knowledge have been built upon over 1000s of years – each of us attempting to answer the questions that plague us in our own way. To avoid contributing to that makes us all less well off, whether the small group of detractors know it yet or not. And so if our work is simply an endpoint and not an answer, the only thing we can do is keep contributing, learning, and watching for those who are interested in answering the same questions as us. Their contribution may help us refine our own thinking and improve the next attempt we make at arriving at a new endpoint. We might also do the same for them. That’s the way it’s always been.

Inefficiency is slow, sub-optimal, a waste. Why would anyone want inefficiency when the alternative, efficiency, could be achieved? Our whole industrialised world is geared toward optimizing for efficiency – faster, better, stronger in less time.

But there’s also good inefficiency.

Freeways could be straight. Straight freeways would be way more efficient. But, designers of freeways shape them with gentle curves because it keeps the driver aware and awake – requiring them to pay more attention to the road. A straight freeway may be more efficient but they’re also far more likely to encourage drivers to fall asleep at the wheel. Winding freeways are a good inefficiency.

Walking instead of driving is a good inefficiency because of its benefits to cardiovascular health and bodily strength. The time required to create a true sourdough bread (and the health benefits it provides) is a good inefficiency compared to the nutritional value and speed required for a more industrialised loaf.

When I first started painting with watercolour all I could think about was how incredibly inefficient it was. You mean I have to paint a layer and then, depending on the time of year, wait almost half a day for it to dry? I found myself frustrated with the process. I wanted to start painting, and keep painting. But watercolour (unlike acrylic or even oil painting) doesn’t allow for that. Digital, of course, is the most efficient – but the most efficient at what?

The inefficiency that’s inherent in beautiful, glowing watercolour is, for me, a good inefficiency (turns out it’s also commercially valuable too). Any other medium simply wouldn’t give the same result. And yes, I’ve tried making it more efficient by using hairdryers and warming pads etc, but there is simply no substitute for giving it the time it needs to soak, and run, and dry.

In a world obsessed with productivity and efficiency, there’s still space for the inefficient. In fact, those who dare to lean into inefficiency might find themselves with a scarcity that people value way more than anything efficient.

I come from a world of start-ups and big tech – a place where it’s all about how quickly you can grow and how much you can scale. If the numbers don’t grow exponentially in the shortest amount of time possible, an investor won’t give you a second glance. I have literally heard people say to those people who fail to meet the bar, “You haven’t got a business in this.”

So what does that mean for art because, well, art doesn’t scale? There’s one of me and that’s it. And so if this is a direct and immovable constraint, rather than focussing on what I can’t have or haven’t got, I focus on what it gives me.

Art and scarcity

The opposite of scale is scarcity, and, as it turns out, scarcity sells. Everyone has experienced this, in fact, most businesses that have reached scale attempt to invent scarcity to squeeze even more value out of their customers. Not everyone can fly business class on a Qatar Airlines flight. Not everyone can eat at a triple Michelin-hat restaurant that seats only 12 people per night. Not everyone can have the ‘limited edition’ colour of the latest Apple computer. If you are one of these people, then it’s not just the experience or product you’re buying, it’s the story and affiliation that comes with it – you can call yourself one of *those* people. The lucky few. It all comes back to selling status.

Art and status

At the time of writing, the latest sale of a painting by Van Gogh sold for 15.4m dollars (it was the scene de rue a Montmarte, by the way). But are people really buying the Van Gogh? Probably not. They’re buying the right to say that they are one of the few people in the world to own a Van Gogh – they’re one of those people. They’re in that club.

And so, what does that mean for the regular ol’ artist who is:

1. Still alive,
2. Still undiscovered?

Well, it depends on what we think we’re selling.

The thing that scarcity allows for is community – a group of people who are ‘in’ and a group of people who are ‘out’. If we begin to think about it like this, the thing an artist sells isn’t necessarily just the canvas, or the recording, or the drawing, what we’re selling is a ticket – a ticket to get in.

Now, if we follow this line of thinking about scarcity to it’s endpoint, the ultimate scarcity is a single piece, just one drawing – absolute scarcity. But the reason that doesn’t work is that there is no community in absolute scarcity, in fact, one of anything means the buyer is probably othering themselves in a negative way, not a positive one.

In 10 years, Van Gogh painted 900 paintings. 899 more than 1. That is an incredible rate of production for a single person – almost 2 paintings per week for 10 years. And yet, they sell for $15.4m a piece now. Why? Because being one of 900 people in a world of 7 billion people and counting is still being part of a community – I’m one of those 900 people that have a Van Gogh and that’s worth more than being the only one.

Art and community

The reality is that there’s no getting around the need to make work – make it often, persistently, and for as long as you’re physically able. That may mean 900 paintings. It may mean thousands. But perhaps in a world of scarcity, the art object itself is somewhat of a loss leader to something bigger. Maybe the art object is a way for artists to build something more important – a group of loyal fans and followers who enjoy telling others the story of their relationship and inclusion in your community. “I discovered them early”, “I was there before anyone cared”, “I’ve known about their work for years.” These are the stories one hears when people talk about their favourite artists, even before they wax lyrical about the art object they may own that got them in the club in the first place.

Maybe, through understanding the mechanics of scarcity, scale, and community, artists are able to do what artists do best – make work that matters – and the selling, status, scarcity, and scale will take care of itself.

I’m not sure when I felt comfortable calling myself an artist. I think I expected some moment of transformation – a day I’d wake up and say, “Hey, it happened, I’m different now.” Or, you know, I’d read a book about “How to be an Artist” and then I’d just be one if I followed the step-by-step guide – 4 weeks to becoming an artist. I think I imagined it to be like some diet book or some self-help book. Maybe if I just changed my social media profiles to tell people I was one now, that would do it? But, no. None of that ever happened.

To be honest, I don’t know how or when it happened. I only realised it did when I started to look back through this journal and realised something – change isn’t slow, we just imagine it to be fast.

Bursting forth from the cocoon

We love a good bursting forth story. A ‘transformation’. But the reality is transformation take time and energy, it’s normally slow and banal and requires a focus on the little, boring things. It’s just that we don’t see any of that in public because all the public cares about is the butterfly.

The question is, what do we need to do to be something? Because that’s what it is – the doing makes the being. One of the shortcuts we have for getting to know a stranger is the question, “What do you do?” What we mean is “What do you do for work?” or “How do you make a living?” And, curiously enough, we respond with “I’m a…”. It’s either “I’m a plumber” or “I’m a lawyer,” or “I’m a teacher” and so on. Someone asks us we do and we respond but saying what we are. Interesting.

And so if what we do is what we are, then, to be an artist, we just need to do what artists do. And not just occasionally, a lot. No one calls themselves a plumber if they replace a washer on a tap once a year. No one calls themselves a teacher if they share a recipe with a friend occasionally or provide some occasional advice to someone who seeks it. It seems that we already know that what you are is what you do, consistently.

So, what do artists do?

There are probably a million books on what artists are supposed to do to be considered artists. But, I don’t care about those things. In my journey, what I’ve learned to do, consistently, is become increasingly comfortable with seeking answers to questions that no one else but me has asked, and then put those efforts into the public. That’s it. But, it’s also really difficult. It still is. I’ve been doing that for 7 years now and, at some point along the way, realised that because I’ve been doing it, I’ve become it. It may not be the caterpillar to butterfly transformation emergence I’d had hoped it would be but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that with anything that’s as important as changing your identity.

Time is the only thing we can’t make more of. That’s it. That’s the lesson. Use it wisely.

It’s tempting to make projects that shoot for the broadest appeal – something for everyone. After all, if there’s something in it for everyone, then everyone will want it, right?

But the problem with ‘something for everyone’ is that it’s never everything for someone. And in a world of hyper-personalisation, where ads and products are being ever more targeted based on likes and interests, if it’s not everything for someone then it’s just irrelevant.

Because the internet can help us reach billions of people on any given day, shipping everything for someone is more likely to have that person pass it along to someone like them. And if that happens enough, if the work is specific enough and connects with enough of those people for whom you’ve made it, you’ve got an audience.

Depending on what you make, that audience may not be big enough to run a business or get the green light for a publisher, but even if that doesn’t happen you can sleep better at night knowing that you’ve made a difference to a few. It’s better than making a ho-hum difference (or none at all) to many.

Eighty percent of what comes out of my head is rubbish. Or at least, that’s what it feels like. But, it comes out regularly, and I suspect that’s more important.

To work consistently, rather than sporadically, means the feedback loops inherent in learning are exactly lack, loops. It means they can build on one another rather than fizzle off into an ether and be forgotten about. If we forget about what happened last time, the mistakes made once before are more likely to repeated again and it’s much more difficult to see improvement. If we don’t see progress, it’s more difficult to remain motivated. And without motivation, we stand still. Out in the cold. And freeze.

Keeping warm

To work consistently requires an acceptance of vulnerability. To admit to ourselves that, most of the time, what we produce isn’t good work but the work that’s needed to make the good work.

In sport, or in the theatre, we have training and rehearsals. These are the private arenas where athletes and performers spend 80% of their time making mistakes. The pole vaulter fails to clear the bar. The performer hits a bad singing note. But they keep going. They try again. They train at regular intervals – 2 times, 3 times, 4 times a week. They show up to the track or the theatre. They pick up their pole or the microphone. And they work, again and again, to learn from how they failed last time. And what for? So that when it comes time to enter the public arena, the work is as good as it can be; not perfect, but work that is as good as they can produce at any given time.

Visual art is no different, but the arena is. With pole-vaulting or theatre, the achievement is in the moment. For 20 seconds – you either clear the bar, or you don’t. You either hit the note, or you don’t. The nature of the work goes, generally, unrecorded. Maybe a coach or director watches with intent so they can provide guidance, but you can’t see yourself, most of the time.

With visual art, any attempt to clear the bar in our rehearsal is left on the page or canvas – etched in stone, to confront us with our vulnerability: we got stuff wrong.

This is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, the preservation of our failure can be useful because it provides us with something to go back to. Something to compare against when we produce the next thing, or the next thing after that.

But, on the other hand, it can derail us. Preserving failure is a good reminder that we’re not perfect. And, if 80% of anyone’s attempts to ‘clear the bar’ show us, in plain light, that we haven’t, well, that hurts.

We have two options, just like the pole vaulter or the performer. We can stop trying. We can decide that we won’t show up to training today, or rehearsals tomorrow. We had a bad day yesterday and now we just don’t feel like it. It may make us feel good in the short term, but in the long-term, no one benefits.

The second option is to keep showing up. To accept that, with most attempts, we won’t clear the bar. But occassionally, when things go just right, we will. We’ll sail over it. We’ll hit the big, spongy mat on the other side, look up, and see that the bar is still up there, wobbling away high above us but it won’t come tumbling down. And then, we’ll say to ourselves, “Maybe it’s time to raise the bar up a notch. I reckon I can go higher next time.”

Sometimes, curiosity can be overwhelming. There’s so much I want to know about. The vastness of visual art is just one of those things – to have a deeper understanding of how to work with oils or acrylics would be amazing. To make my own watercolour pigments, or craft my own paper. To work on animation cels, or have a deeper understanding of sumi-e japanese painting. To understand the art of comics and visual storytelling seems like a bottomless pit of lifelong discovery to me. It all sounds so exciting.

And, if that’s not enough, my curiosity often extends to realms beyond visual art. I’d love to understand more about contemporary dance – the language of movement. I’d love to understand plants more – their names, their structures, how they work. I’d love to understand music more – to play an instrument; cello or piano. I’d love to learn how to work with wood, or how to knit or crochet my own jumper. I’d love to learn how to fish (beyond the basics).

But with every interest comes a dilution. The constraint of our humanity – that we only have 24 hours in a day, and on average 80 years of life in the developed world – means we need to make choices. The trade off of experiecing breadth versus depth.

With anything, there is infinite depth. Enough for a lifetime of learning.

It’s difficult, no, heartbreaking, to say, “no, not in this life.”

Saying no – the idea of refusal – is often associated with loss, not opportunity. To know that, in this life, I may never know how to play cello, or knit my own jumper, fills me with a sense of ‘missing out’. What if it’s a natural talent? What if I love it more than anything I’ve experienced before? When I hear others play the cello it moves me in such a profound way that it makes me wonder, “is this my calling? My passion?”

Maybe. But also, maybe not.

Because the other question to ask is not what I lose by saying no to the cello, but what I gain from it. Because there are some things that, by now, I know I like to do. I lose myself for hours in drawing – just me, a pencil, and a piece of paper is enough for a lifetime of exploration. If I add colour to that equation (in my case, watercolour), that makes the pit even deeper because colour – the spectrum of it, the science of it, the physiological effects on the human from it – creates a fractal-like infinity of discovery and exploration that could go on forever. And to give myself the time to fully explore those paths, all I need to do is say no to an expectation of a similar depth of understanding in fishing, cello, plants, and knitting and, well, almost everything else.

How to choose when the world is so rich?

If what drives me to learn is curiosity, then saying no to some things means I don’t miss out on learning, I just learn different things. It turns out that, for me, persistence has led to a passion. And I think that’s how this passion thing works. By following a single path – let’s call the one I’ve chosen is visual storytelling – what I’ve realised is that the single path also has infinite branches just down the road – more choice than I can conceivably hold in my head at any given time. And, after a while on that path, I find myself thinking about the music and botany paths less and less and wondering more and more, what lies around the corner of the path I’ve chosen.