Creative Artist - Issue 10_

FROM THE DRAWING BOARD

Brett A Jones

Hi Brett,

How on Earth does anyone i nd the time to “be

an artist”? I have been trying ever harder to make

enough time for my art but it seems the harder I

try the more demands there are on my time from

outside sources. Any advice would be welcome,

it’s driving me crazy.

Regards, Helen

Hi Helen,

Oooohhhhhh yeah, the eternal question. I’ve been

asked it a lot over the years. Unfortunately it

comes down to two main things. You have to

prioritise your art over a lot of other things you

want to and even some things that you need to do.

The second and much harder thing (and the i rst

one is hard enough) is to not only tell others that

your artistic aspirations are very important to you

and you need time (and peace and quiet) to be

able to do it, but resist all attempts (and they can

be relentless) by the other humans to sabotage,

distract, defer, demand, insist, cajole, argue, sulk,

debate, tease, reason, persuade, belittle, or bully

you away from your stated position of wanting to

spend some (or a lot) of your heartbeats creating

artistically just because you want to. It’s a very

hard thing to do this i ne art business, made

ini nitely harder (or quickly impossible) by being

constantly poked by other humans. It seems the

closer to you they are, the more you wanting to

disappear inside your own head seems to scare,

of end, or just annoy them. The premise seems to

be compounded for women, particularly mothers.

Once you become the go-to receptacle for other’s

problems, hygiene, shelter, and hunger, it is (so

it seems from what I have been told) all but

impossible to reverse out of that slot, even a little

bit. I have known many students in my drawing

workshops that dei nitely have the talent and

passion to take their drawing as far as they want,

but are very badly hamstrung by a seemingly

unwitting partner and/or children who expect

them to be “the service department”. It’s always

astonished me the lengths people will sometimes

go to stop others from chasing their creative

dreams. Generally for seli sh, lazy, or control

reasons although they would never acknowledge

that being the case or admit to it if put to them. Or

even realise it’s the case at all I think mostly. The

answer to your question then, sadly, is to i ght i re

with i re and tell them all to just leave you

alone sometimes. And at the same time have

a cold-hearted look at your own schedule and

habits and start pii ng some of the obviously

extraneous stuf. I speak from experience, I am

an insanely committed professional artist living

on my Pat Malone, and even I am constantly

struggling to not let “all the other stuf ” from

keeping me away from the drawing board so

much, that so iittle progress is made sometimes,

you wonder if you still even ARE an artist, or just

another pointlessly distracted human wandering in

ultimately fruitless circles. Being an artist HAS to

be a constant mindset or you’ll look up one day and

realise it was all a dream and now it’s gone. Just do

it. Time only ticks over once. The other humans will

i nd food once they get hungry.

Hi Brett,

I’ve read in your articles about you calling the

place you go in your head when drawing the

tundra. Why do you call it that and where does it

come from?

Regards Joe

Hi Joe,

It’s a term I picked up from my cousin many years

ago, he in turn was quoting a lyric from a Frank

Zappa song of the “Apostrophe” album (I think the

song is “Nanook Rubs It”). The line goes “trudging

across the tundra, mile after mile”. He meant it

as forging relentlessly across unknown territory,

utterly oblivious to any and everything not directly

related to the current mission. To me it’s the perfect

description of where I have to go with my mindset

and general attitude in order to get any serious (is

there any other kind) artistic project underway and

done. Not just for an hour or even a day, to go out

on the tundra properly you have to have no plans

to return. You have to come back sometimes (to

do things like write advice columns for money to

eat) but the overwhelming aim and desire for me

is to be out there as much as I can for as long as

I can as far out as I can till I run out of heartbeats

altogether. I suppose it’s also another way of

describing the act of desperately exploring the

ini nite artistic option with absolutely no regard for

things like common sense, logic, or the ‘normal’

boring human sensibilities like eating and cleaning.

It’s nice out on the ice. Actually it’s not, it’s an