My art ‘out there’!

So Facebook sent me an email the other day saying that my Facebook fans missed me.

(!)

I hadn’t posted anything on my Facebook page for a while so I guess Facebook got all twitchy and decided to send this message – devoid of all finesse – which was in fact just a simple, direct plea to my ego.

My fans! I thought. My fans!

But you know what, it worked 😉

My ego got all puffed up for about 2 seconds, and then I remembered that it’s just me who likes to have a look at my Facebook page. Oh yeah.

Anyway, I decided that this message could still be useful to me – as long as I did have something to share, and if I did get around to sharing it…

And I do have things to share, but you see, I find the creative bit (the writing and the drawing and the painting) so much more enjoyable than the nitty-gritty stuff of actually sharing it, and I really do have lots of other things to do… (like wiping grubby faces, making food, publishing books and helping out with maths homework!).

So here is what I want to share – my art is finally ‘out there’ in the wide world. A picture that I drew of Alison Moore, the author, is now hanging on the wall of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio. (That’s me, the bespectacled one, by the way.)

The fab Alison Moore alongside my art at The Nottingham Writers' Studio, photo courtesy Andrew Kells.
The fab Alison Moore alongside my art at The Nottingham Writers’ Studio, photo courtesy Andrew Kells.

It kind of feels strange to have some of my art properly ‘out there’ (although some of my images have already appeared in a couple of online magazines) but really, it’s no different to having my writing ‘out there’. I’ve sometimes heard writers and artists say that the reason they create is because of the desire to connect with other people – for their ideas and creations to touch others’ lives. Undoubtedly I feel a need for this too, but with the world (and online world) being so immensely vast I can’t really comprehend how far my work will travel, or whether it will, indeed, make an impression on someone. And this topic – of connection, of ‘making an impression’ – is just a bit too interesting to my ego who thinks that the idea of ‘connection’ is a good excuse to keep a beady eye on site stats and other things like that 😉

But it’s a time sink – all this ego rumination. How much more interesting (and worthwhile) it is to create. Perhaps my work will connect with others, perhaps it won’t. I will potter on and continue, instead, to ruminate on the rather wonderful magic of creating a 3D image on a 2D surface with only a few layers of graphite. I probably know much more about the structure of graphite than I know about the complexities of portraying hair, fur, or skin (tricky stuff, skin!) in graphite. So I need to learn, I need to practise. So if I’m silent for a bit I’m sure ‘my Facebook fans’ will understand 😉

Alison Moore by Marija Smits (based on a photo by Al Brydon)
Alison Moore by Marija Smits (based on a photo by Al Brydon)

Thanks to Andrew Kells for taking the photo at the launch night of The Nottingham Writer’s Studio new premises, and thanks to Alison Moore, of course, for being such an inspiration!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “My art ‘out there’!”

  1. Wonderful – both the picture, and the having it out there. There’s a bit in one of the Little Women books where Jo March has submitted a manuscript and then, I think, been given lots of editorial changes, which she makes and then sends her little plucked sparrow into the world to fend for itself. That feeling of getting something out feels like that, I think, whether or not you know it’s going to get any kind of reception – you’ve been protecting it, it’s your baby, and at some point you have to dump it out of the nest and see if it flies!

    1. Thank you Helen for your kind comments 🙂

      I remember that bit in Little Women well. And yes, one day the creator needs to let go of their creation and see how it fares in the big wide world. Eeek! But then it’s on to the next project 😉

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