the artist's path

Having looked at Norman McLaren's life a little , and realising the impact of the Spanish Civil war on him, I was moved by the recent programme on Peter Howson. War has been a huge topic in art and writing. From Picasso's Guernica to Howson's Bosnian war paintings one can see the agony of human suffering war causes.
Again looking at these I am reminded of the creative path and the importance of the process for the artist.  For Howson, working on a piece about John Ogilvie, his work over 9 months was in the end the preparation for the final work. Almost completed, he painted over what he had created, ruining the work, and completed another painting in little more than a week. But without that process one could say he would not have been 'ready'. Peter is autistic, only recently diagnosed, and struggles to communicate emotionally. Without his art he says he would go mad. But like all good artists he pours his body and soul into his work. If you missed the programme about him catch it ...'The Madness of Peter Howson'.

Earlier on this term we had Nick Waring talking to the masters students at DOJCAD about his walking project. He had put forward an application for funding to document his journey to the exhibition ...walking! He was accepted. His talk was about that journey but also about walking as art, his notebooks, the importance of keeping notebooks and journals and where his inspiration comes from for some of his other projects.I found him very inspiring, and talked with him later about my own practice of journal keeping.I have a number of journals all for different topics. I have one which I only ever write in trains.....so it is often a long time between entries. I also have one in which I have recorded my exploration of what it means to be scottish and my current development of that idea into a more general theme...still starting with Scotland. And now of course I have another journal about Norman . What I really loved about Nick Waring's  journals for his journey was the fact that he had so little space in his rucsac that he had to summarise everything into little drawings and captions..in tiny books...obviously he could not carry 20 notebooks across Europe!!! I would like to try this!