Whilst I can see the need to make a product for the Christmas market I have been very disappointed to find myself competing with the mass production of cards etc that I have sold the partial rights to.I fear people think they benefit me by purchasing them.Yet of course I am pleased when something I crafted has been produced well.It is probably the watering down by juxtaposition with text and photo shopped photos that demeans my good intentions when crafting them.I feel that the energy and enthusiasm is missing.Whilst I neither want to make over holy Christmas cards nor sacrilegious jollies of local scenes n seasonal gifts I deeply want to make the lovely lino cut and playful joyful world around me more fun.I will try and put some cards out but no not a range for bulk purchase.I really want to do some handmade prints and some gentle less is more books.I know some souls like what I do.I am hoping it is the melody and the gentle lyric and the heartfelt childlike joy they like.Not the Disney jingle of the overproduced must have one of his -sort of thing.Terms I am coming got dislike- cause well they just aint Christmas or thismas for me are: critical mass and exponential growth.I can only pray (and mean that) for the one offs, the editions, the hand made, gentle and personal commissions.For the idea that every home would have or indeed should have the same picture as everyone else, just so one is comforted by the sanity of sameness is not a demand that I feel is rational nor comforting but homogeneous and watered down ...i fear cliche.Just plain sad. I will try to put the images of Hoylake (following the work on the open all year festival map into a less is more book and the images of West Kirby in their book (followng the planks for the memory show) and to get out the childrens idea I drew for my grand daughter i.e. Frankie the elephant that just for a moment wanted to be a bird because he thought a tree looked lonely. I say all this not just in case people are looking for the individual Christmas cards I have sought to generate each year,but because I just havent got it in me to add to fine attempts of the other good souls out there who are trying to swim against the tide of the mass produced volumes .Yes I need the money too.But the steam to keep going when mindfulness offers a possibility of slowing down and reconsidering it all. Oh to sit with a little piece of box wood or lino or take a scalpel to a piece of paper oh to play without product in mind...I know I shall be poor but well I must free myself to be artist If the term is still to have (childlike) meaning in this world so fast n furious it has no time to try giggle n grin and groove uniquely to the rivers n birdsong of going out for walk and getting wet in the rain n picking some unknown shrubs,tasting the new and being kissed afresh by the sincere and hope fuelled.Oh how I pray for freedom from the commercial daftness of it all.And no tis not cause artists are lazy.The opposite in fact.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 09:47:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015