Randomness, chance, and surrender
How I have been incorporating intentional accidents and luck into my work.
Much of my life is often about being organised and in control, even when making art, which sometimes requires an element of planning and keeping track. It’s not all flourishing brushes and splashing paint around, for sure.
But in a creative practice, accidents are like open doors - you can decide to go through them or not, and you can even kick new ones open if you need to, just to see where they might lead. When you mix a colour into an old pot, sometimes when you then paint, a blob of old dried acrylic from that pot will find itself on the brush and then land on the canvas. Usually, I let that happen. I might even not fully clean my pots and palettes in the hope that it does happen.
Making art is not just an intentional act of ‘creation’, but also a journey of discovery that brings with it the unexpected.
What of accidents that definitely take place outside the space that was created/allowed for them? Dropping the vacuum cleaner and making a scratch on a painting that was drying nearby (real-life, recent and still-raw event…) is an example. Swearing loudly, then making decisions on how to deal with that bloody scratch: hide it, leave it, or use it - that can also be part of the process.
For me, randomness and chance provide a welcome relief from choice and decision-making, and can be used to generate ideas or move on when I’m feeling stuck.
If an artwork isn't working, particularly if it's been left alone a while and that still hasn't helped; if it's on the verge of complete abandonment or destruction, then doing something drastic sometimes helps. Turning it upside down, cutting it up into pieces and rearranging them, picking a media or colour from a box at random and forcing yourself to do something with that on it. Looking at it with the closest thing you've got to fresh eyes, basically. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.
Inflection also inscribes itself within this context: letting someone else give me a starting/turning point that is completely out of my control, and then committing to follow through.
I find that I'm always on that pendulum that moves from regimented, methodical control to instinctive, loose surrender - and back again. My best work tends to be when I'm in the surrender zone. But, as with a pendulum, you can't keep it there. It has to reach one extreme to gain the momentum it needs to go to the other side again.
Some of my work is on display until Sunday, 9 March at the Brick Lane Gallery, London. Details here. Do message me if you’d like to know more.