The Suffering Is
Important
By Tim King
One Autumn I was painting in Woodstock in the rain. Despite my clamp-on umbrella my kit was
soaked but I was determined to get some lovely street reflections ‘nailed’
before I gave up. A passer-by stopped
and asked me why I was painting under such awful conditions. I said, ‘The suffering is important to
me’. He looked into my eyes, thought
about it and then turned away, apparently satisfied.
The suffering artist is the butt of much humour and
irony. The irony once came to me very
forcibly when I received one of those polite rejection emails from the
Woodstock arts festival. With it was a
short promotional film encouraging artists to participate. That was fair enough but it included footage
of me painting. The organisers obviously
saw nothing strange in using me to promote the festival whilst rejecting my
actual participation. The irony was perfect!
Those of us who paint out of doors all year round become
inured to the discomforts and inconveniences: being there is too important to succumb
to them and run for shelter. Eugene
Boudin (1824-1898) once said ‘Everything painted directly, on the spot always
has a strength, a power, a vividness of touch that one does not find again in
the studio’ and for observational painters it is so true. I have lost count of the number of times I
have scaled up a plein air sketch in
the studio and destroyed the magic. And one
May, as I watched my box easel blow over in Mousehole, scattering my kit along
the harbour wall, I realised that I was no longer upset by such a thing – it
had become part of the process.
Rejection comes hard (and in my case frequently) and one is
forever searching for that elusive thread that will lead out of the labyrinth
of failure to the bright light of success.
I am always impressed by the doggedness of my plein air colleagues. In an
almost perverse way, the psychological suffering just makes them more
determined. Buffeted by disappointment, discouraged
by the attitude of many gallery owners, often wracked with self-doubt, they
just keep going. I sometimes wonder if
we are not all suffering from the same obsessive compulsive disorder. For
studio painters it is no different.
Dennis Syrett, past president of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters,
once confided that it had taken him 15 years of determined effort to succeed in
becoming a member. Despite years of
disappointment the thought of giving up was, well, unthinkable. For him achievement could only come through endurance.
I have just reread a great statement by Derek Balmer in the
Catto Gallery’s catalogue of a one-man show of his work. In it he lists 19 different categories of
people for whom artists create employment, including curators, gallery owners,
art critics and white van men. And of
course they all get paid before we do.
Are we mugs? Was it just for
commuters that the graffiti, (now sadly obliterated along with ‘F... Blair’ and
‘Marry Me Pam’), was written on the famous M40 wall ‘Why Do I Do This Every
Day'? Poor sales at a show; a botched
attempt at an easy subject; the pressures of work or domestic life; yet another
rejection by a gallery: all these must make us wonder why we bother.
St Paul was right. What
makes the difference in the end must be the hope that perseverance will finally
be rewarded: a conscious decision to accept all the physical and psychological ‘negatives’
and keep going. David Curtis ROI RSMA is
adamant that it is not always the most talented artists who succeed but those willing
to stay the course.
Creating art is a lonely
business but there is strength to be had in like-minded friends – those who are
willing to share the difficulties and support each other. I certainly owe a great debt to my plein air painting pals. We sometimes think we are crazy painting in
those conditions but being crazy together
does not seem so bad. So perhaps the
message is ‘Embrace the suffering - it will come anyway – but never give up’.
