Searching for The Grit

The post-Christmas sunshine gave the rare opportunity for a morning walk around the 'green block' - a two mile circular walk from my front door across the border into Hampshire and back into Berkshire.  

Walking creates space to think - and for me, 'thinking' means worrying about making art. I am trying to process all the stuff I have been grappling with during my first semester of the Fine Art MA. My thinking owes a huge debt to course leader Nick Stewart, who has been meditating on this stuff since the seventies and whose ideas have got under my skin.

A flock of Fieldfare flies over, and in the distance a Buzzard is circling.

If making art is about exploring what excites you, what you experience - your authentic voice. Then what is it that I want to say through my art that people don't already know, or don't know how to know, or don't want to know? I'm thinking about this in relation to an interview with Marina Abramovic I read in Third Way magazine over the Christmas break: 

"For me, the purpose of doing anything is to lift the human spirit. It's so easy to put the human spirit down - you can do it in three seconds - and I'm fed up with art that shows how shitty reality is, because we already know how shitty it is. I want to know what I can do change it. Even if it is the smallest contribution, It's still a contribution. And if everybody had this kind of idea, the world would be a different place."

A Dunnock sings from a hedge-top. A Great Spotted Woodpecker flies towards Admiral's Copse; a silent undulating flight.

I try making a mental list of the things I care about, that excite me and that I want my work to be about:

• uses of power and control that perpetuate inequality
• ambiguity, interpretation, hermeneutics - fundamentalist belief systems within a complex, nuanced, unstable and diversified society
• The idea of embracing 'the other'
• The non-material aspects of existence, of consciousness - the sense of there being 'something more'
• kindness, generosity, gift, optimism
• the simple pleasure of enjoying birds in nature

Some or all of those things have been referenced in my recent work but how have people experienced it - and how do I move my work forward? Working mainly with woodcut prints, I find that there is a tension in the stuff I make between art and craft, or between art and design. Concept and representation. 

A Jay flies over - that's the fifth crow species I've seen this morning.

Art needs to break the rules of craft and design - there is power lurking in the spaces at the edge where there is an absence, a lack or a brokenness. Moving forward, I want my art to break the rules. To create 'feedback' like Hendrix playing the Star-Spangled Banner. 

A female Chaffinch hops quietly in a hedge. Blue Tit and House Sparrow flit around a feeder outside a cottage.

Woodcut is such a slow, laborious process - but I love it. Can I make it more raw, immediate, energetic, free and instantaneous? Kiefer's recent show at the RA included messy, energetic woodcuts that were sloppily made but brimmed with vitality. I need to push to find the edges of the woodcut medium within my own practice. 

And I want to push my drawings too - towards a place where I feel they are doing something real.

It's about finding the grit that creates the restless irritation that forms the pearl. 

Watch this space for progress.

Round Oak Piece

Making the most of this week before my next Semester starts at art school, I decided to stay home today and walk my local patch. More snow fell last night so there is a good three inches still laying. Grateful for my long-johns and gore-tex boots I trudge off through the scrunchy snow for a woodland walk.

The path begins a few hundred metres from my front door, at Holden's Firs Bronze Age barrow cemetery. It is incredible to think that there were people living and being buried on this site during the time of the biblical patriarchs. What was this landscape like back then? Not a managed conifer plantation but probably oak forest with areas cleared for agriculture.

Much of the land in this area is now owned by the Englefield Estate,which has been in the ownership of the same family since 1603. Mostly down to managed woodland, with gravel extraction and timber being the main products, along with shooting and riding. The heir of the Estate is also the local Tory MP - it was ever thus! However, the Estate is well-managed for wildlife conservation and public access. A network of maintained footpaths criss-crosses the woodland allowing local people to enjoy the woods.

(Some optimistic Gorse is in flower beneath the snow.)

I am heading for Round Oak Piece, about a mile away; one of my local birding spots. In the summer this is one of the best places in Berkshire to see and experience the nocturnal appearances of Nightjar and Woodcock at close-quarters and I am to be found as dusk falls, being bitten to bits by midges and watching these wonderful birds on the wing. The scene is very different today, under thick snow. The tracks of a couple on intrepid dog-walkers and several deer are impressed in the snow ahead of me. Probably our native Roe Deer.

I am a member of contemporary art group arjeea21. We have an exhibition coming up next month, in Bracknell, where I will be showing two or three pieces of work. I have to think about my biographical details to send to Robert, the curator, for inclusion in the publicity. I'm thinking about this as I walk.

(Time to do a quick sketch - un-gloving my fingers; today's tally of bird species scribbled across the top as usual.)

(Two Goldcrests are feeding in the tops of the pine trees, dropping down occasionally to rummage in the bracken in their search for food. The UK's smallest bird, neat, greenish and capped with bright yellow, they are always a welcome sight. It is a wonder they survive these cold winters but they seem to do okay.)

My artist's statement should give an indication of the type of work I'm doing. That's quite tricky as I seem to diversify with every new project... I settle on a form of words:

"Peter Driver’s practice employs drawing, painting, printmaking, and other media to explore everyday objects, poetic and societal themes and embodied experience of local landscapes. Formal concerns include compositional strategies, uses of text and language within visual artworks, and human interaction with landscape.

Peter is studying BA Fine Art at Winchester School of Art.  He lives and works in Berkshire and exhibits regularly with arjeea21."

That just about does it.

(My first Treecreeper of the year drops down to the base of its next tree-trunk. Working it's way up the trunk with agile feet, it's white belly contrasting against the bark, with its elegant curved bill it seeks whatever insects or grubs are lurking in the crevices.)

(The Oval Pond is iced-over. Quite a large pond, it drains through a sluice into a small stream through the woods. It is a useful water-source for wildlife and regularly attracts Little Grebe, Mandarin and Mallard ducks as well as the resident Moorhens. There is not a sign of any of them today but the trees above the stream are full of the peeps and seeps of Coal Tit. The star bird of today's walk; Coal Tits are like a sepia-toned miniature Great Tit with a neat black cap and broad white strip from crown to nape, their warm buff tones appear more colourful than usual today against the snow-laden branches.)

I am pleased to note that there is ice-free water at the marshy end of the pond, as well as in the stream below the sluice so the wildlife have access to drinking water.

Heading for home I reflect on how this use of the land by one rich Estate enables a range of leisure uses for the local population. There is a sense of benign patronage in this relationship. I am not sure how to engage with what feels in some ways like a throw-back to the feudal system. I am grateful for the opportunity to access this landscape. There are over 500 hectares of scheduled ancient woodland within the estate and a sense of responsible stewardship pervades all the work that goes on here. As a council estate kid, only two generations away from the Victorian workhouse, I carry a sense of my class but it does not define me. I wonder if the weight of 'stewardship' is a heavy burden for the responsible rich.

(Only 24 species seen today. That is to be expected on a walk without a significant water-course or wetland habitat).

Walking-Birding-Thinking

Another sub-zero morning. The snow that fell over the weekend is still laying, compacted and icy but there is a thin bright sunlight and another opportunity to stretch my legs; taking the St Swithun's Way out of Winchester for a mile or two along the western edge of Winnall Moors. Birds are easy to spot against the whiteness of the landscape and show themselves easily as they busily search for food. 

The track past the allotments and desirable north Winchester residences leads to a footbridge at a farm gate. Beyond this the path is narrow between fence and stream. Un-gloving my hands I make a quick sketch of the northern end of Winnall Moors.

The fingers are too cold to allow more than a sketchy impression. A magnificent Buzzard quarters the field to my left, close enough to see the colours and patterns on its broad variegated wings and fanned tail. 

I'm reflecting on my studio output - not enough for my liking - and wondering where my work will take me next.

I have made some charcoal and oil 'paintings' on primed paper experimenting with observational drawing/layering and surface.

Quick drawing in charcoal, achieved with a few strokes of the charcoal stick over an old piece of letter-press, primed with acrylic primer and washed over with oil washes, diluted with turps.

(From overhead, a female Sparrowhawk flies down the hedgerow and settles in a tree about 80 metres ahead. She is looking at me. I am looking at her).

I used a similar approach in the red painting - then layered over the top some text and drawing in crayon - based upon images from the '15-day process' project and woodcut/letterpress work.

An experiment with superimposing monotype-drawing onto an oil-painted canvas, again there is a debate about surface and what comes in front of what. Conventional wisdom would suggest that blue should recede and the warmer orange should advance but this is reversed here. The type of line and application dictates which colour appears to be 'on top' of the other. 

The next monotype over a dramatic painted canvas took this idea further. 'GREENWOODPECKER' Has been a constant companion for a few months. Once the time has been invested in carving letters for a woodcut block it is hard not to use them everywhere. In this case I reversed the text onto a photocopy and then drew onto the back of the canvas, laid over almost-dry relief ink to impress the letters and drawing onto the surface of the canvas.

(I think Long-tailed Tits are among my favourite birds. Matt Sewell has described them as 'tiny clouds in track-suits'. In the winter they hang around in gangs and are constantly on the move. A bunch of them is feeding close to where I stand.)

There is a long way to go in  thinking-through my creative process. In the last three months it has taken-in aspects of the random to generate compositional strategies selecting elements by random numerical process. I made some progress when I tried to scale this up to a room-sized installation.

This brought together a lot of the ideas into one place. I need to extend this to bigger work and also to extend the vocabulary of my mark-making to emphasise and contrast the variation between fine-drawing and gestural painting, clean lines and dribbly splashes of colour. I was pleased when I took the sheets of paper off the wall that some stood up as compositions in their own right. 

Reminiscent of Freud's work 'on dreams' - the image is made up of disparate, unrelated elements.

(Returning across the playing fields, onto the Wildlife Reserve, a Water Rail is squealing in the snow-draped sedge-bed. Although I have seen them elsewhere, I have never set eyes on a Water Rail on Winnall Moors. I hear it often but it's just about being in the right place at the right time - and being there regularly helps increase the chances).

I am really pleased that this random-process drawing and the small monotype on canvas will be included in an exhibition in Bracknell, in February - about which more later. 

The other thing I am contemplating is how walking and experiencing the landscape influences and informs my work. There is a conference in Sunderland this summer that looks at this subject. I want to investigate this more closely and integrate my outdoor and studio work.

(39 bird species found in a two-hour walk, not bad - but several obvious suspects are missing - House Sparrow, Starling, Reed Bunting, Rook!)

Fifteen-day Process

Rules:

a) one drawing each day for 15 days - any time, any subject

b) drawing on any 'found' paper - not sketch book

c) text to be added to the drawing selected by the following process:

-  from random.org generate one digit between 1-9

-  from random.org generate one digit between 1-32

-  use the two digits to identify a book; the first to identify the bookshelf, from living room book shelves (numbered 1-9), the second to identify the book, counting left to right

-  within the book, use the date to select a line - e.g the twenty fifth line of the tenth page (or where there is none, the twenty fifth line if the tenth chapter, or where there is none the tenth line of the twenty fifth page etc)

- use the whole line of text, or a phrase from it as the title of the drawing.

Fifteen-day Process

  

Put itself at the distance from it

In order to observe it (to no real purpose).

From the long tradition, you have to write a little,

Assuming the average format, seek to escape.

Strangers’ leaves arriving on the lawn,

Unquestionably one of the most perplexing aspects,

The evidence of his senses,

Because contexts are so different.

And when the man began to murmur,

It is possible to estimate the number

of singing males.

He had known, to use his words,

a peck of trouble,

The downside of introducing LVT in stages,

Sustained by Atlantic world slavery.