I like Brian Cox with his hair and his enthusiasm for describing the Cosmos with the help of an empty beer bottle and a stick, but I was very sorry to hear him dismiss art in favour of science*. If I ruled the world (though better hope I don’t because there would be laws against leaving lights on in empty rooms and the airing of Count Arthur Strong on the radio, ever…) I’d just lump everything under the collective heading of ‘creativity’ and be done with dividing the arts and sciences.

Today I have been mapping out my latest print and it raised a philosophical question for me: was the process art or science? The print is a complex one: a view from inside a shady spring wood out over a bright spring landscape and I confess I did have to switch off Radio Four to concentrate. I’ll describe the process and you decide what was actually going on – maths, art, physics, alchemy?

I begin with a line drawing of the whole image. This I use to trace the separate parts of the design onto wood, creating multiple woodblocks (a block being the area that gets printed, not the whole piece of wood). Each block is printed in turn to form the finished image.

If it were just a matter of splitting the design into a block for each tree, patch of grass, field etc it would simple. However, I am exploiting the fact that I am working with transparent watercolour and can layer washes of colour to build up the image. This is irrespective of the different areas of the design, so the blue of the sky can also be used to create the blue shadows in the wood by cutting a block the full size of the print rather than one the size of the sky. Likewise I can play with building the depth and texture of the grasses and trees by what print surface I leave and what I remove; cutting blocks covering large areas of the print rather than specific subjects. I ink up the woodblocks with brushes, not rollers, so each block can be inked solid, or with bleeds or mixes of colour.

To work this out I hold the image in full colour in my head. Then I mentally pull it apart, like old fashioned animation, into its separate layers of colours and visualise how layers one to fifteen (it’s a big complicated print) look alone and then together in various combinations so that I can work out what part can be printed with one block and what part will benefit from several blocks printed over each other, where the shadows should be deep or sun should dapple etc. Then I delve into my experience of the paper and paints I plan on using, mentally running through how the pigments will actually work (some resist layering and others accommodate it) and what the paper can stand in terms of pressure, over printing and time spent damp. Then I start tracing, making adjustments and changes as I go.

Now I seriously think about it, my process (all art has processes and I’m nothing special) doesn’t fit neatly into ‘art’ and I bet scientist would say the same about themselves. So while you can play the ‘is it art or science’ game with the results of all our labours, isn’t that a bit pointless? Wouldn’t it just be better to mix everything together and value the creativity? I worry about our politicians and their need to push science over art at present. So perhaps best if I do take over world domination – when I’ve finished laying down the laws on radio content and unnecessary illumination, I’ll be changing the education system a bit too.

*
He suggested that ‘we can live without art, but we can’t live without science’ which is a whole other argument (perhaps to have with our early ancestors). What interested me was his need to have a division in the first place.

Every profession must have its frequently asked questions and most of the ones I get asked are perfectly reasonable, along the lines of ‘How long does that take?’ or ‘What’s that white stuff?’ (The white stuff is the rice paste I combine with water colour paints for Japanese woodblock printing. I am thinking of perhaps having this tattooed, in gill sans, across the back of my hands. It would save a lot of time. Though perhaps it would lead to endless questions later in the care home at a time in life where I would have neither the energy nor patience to answer.) As a rule, I enjoy these questions and reaping the reward of passing on a bit of knowledge about my passion.

There are two schools of thought which are less fun. First is the assumption that there must be an easier way and that it is the job of the viewer to solve this problem for the artist. It’s usually meant in the kindest possible way, but most artists I know experience a barrage of suggestions which for me include ‘send the blocks to India to be cut, use a router/computer/laser cutter, use acrylic paint/fabric dye/different printing press/mangle’. As a species, we are instinct driven to want to solve problems. Though you might think, in twelve or so centuries, the Japanese would have ironed out most of the kinks in woodblock printing and that perhaps I, with a few years of experience, might have given some thought to the router/computer/laser/India question, people are only trying to help.

Secondly, and this is more serious, there are the comments about the time and effort taken. ‘Why do you make it so difficult for yourself?’ ‘I could never spend (waste) my time this way’ ‘Surely there’s a cheat, who would know?’ and, my all time favourite, ‘Don’t you have a television?’ I’ve asked a lot of my artist friends and most come up against this one in some form or another and it makes no sense to me.

If you look at it from the perspective that printmaking is my profession, that I expect to sell work to the public and that I take their money in exchange, then I wonder on what level I am wasting time in working to the best of my craft and ability? Why is an artist wasting their time in handling a process well, when in other professions this is expected and respected? Who wants a doctor who can’t be bothered to read the big books, who’d go to a concert where musicians left out the hard bits and who would buy food from a deli who thought food hygiene was an optional extra? The fact is that I can only do the work I do in the way that I do it and I choose to do it properly. It does take time, but I think that is a fair trade for people’s hard earned cash. I wouldn’t be happy cutting corners and my customers don’t deserve it.

It’s interesting that on the one hand we are questioned about ‘wasting time’ while on the other we are often seen as being ‘lucky’ to be artists with the suggestion that somehow it is not a real job. Surely that, for people who apparently spend most of our time languid on a chaise longue, we should be expected to do a proper hand’s turn when we do finally get going? I do wonder if there is any other profession out there where doing things properly is seen as a waste of effort and time? It’d be interesting to know if we’re alone in this…

I’ve written in the past about money and for many of us it still remains the embarrassing end of the business of being an artist. It’s taken me ages to get to the point where I can dislocate myself enough from my prints to be able to stick calmly to my guns in the face of wheedling, questioning and sometimes outright rudeness.

I’m not sure when it happened, but look on the TV and there seems to be a multiplicity of programmes where jolly antique experts, with or without dazed members of the public in tow, scour the countryside for artifacts and antiques to resell. The conversation, once a ‘piece’ (and they always are ‘pieces’) is found runs along the line of

‘Oooh this is lovely.’ Coos the expert ‘It says £350 on the label, what’s the death?’

Man in shop frowns ‘I couldn’t take less than £325’

Expert recoils in horror and then says flirtatiously ‘How about £200?’. Man in shop caves in immediately and agrees.

Now that’s all well and good for TV cameras and antique fairs, but I’m seeing this crop up more frequently than before between art buyers and artists, especially at fairs and open studios. There does seem to be a certain proportion of the art buying public who see art as negotiable and artists as having one price for the tag and another for the sale. I simply don’t work that way and I don’t think many other artists do either. Yet we are perceived as fair game and it is often the people who can most afford to pay who are the keenest to secure a bargain. At best this shows a lack of understanding of how narrow most of our profit margins are and at worst it can become straightforward bullying.

My stance on this is fairly simple and, while I may have to fight a pink face and wobbly voice, I do always stick to my guns. I set fair prices and I charge the same for work wherever it is bought. The upshot of this fairness is that I would rather lose the sale than be pushed into charging less than ticket price. It helps enormously to think about the kind and supportive people who collect my prints: they buy regularly and never, ever ask for or expect a discount.

There are a couple of exceptions. I will negotiate a discount if a client is buying a significant quantity of work at one time and I may have a deal on sets of prints where they cost less than the individual price. Very occasionally it is quite clear that the decision to buy my print means a serious dent in day to day finances for the buyer and here I reserve the right to knock a bit off the bill in homage to their pursuit of art over gas bills.

So while this craze for ‘Hunt Antiques Bargain Super-Expert’ continues to suggest that anything on a stall should cost at least sixty percent less than the label, I will continue to state that my prints are a fair price for a fair day’s work. Perhaps I can find a pokerwork sign to that effect – at a knocked down price of course…

I’m usually good at deadlines. I went to the sort of school where handing in essays before their due date wasn’t seen as a revolting bit of crawling by the class swot, it was considered the least you could do. In fact I expect some of my classmates probably had essays written just in case, like newspapers awaiting a royal death. Good training, but it didn’t leave me much time for smoking behind the bike sheds.

That said I very nearly missed the deadline for writing the paper I am shortly due to deliver at the International Mokuhanga Conference in Tokyo. I suspect my subconscious to be at fault here, throwing up an endless list of important alternative occupations. The mere title ‘Educational Practice Report’ is a tough one to see sitting at the top of a blank page and sit it did, right up until a day or so ago.

Backed into a corner I started to write about my teaching. Given that I teach short courses to people who learn for pleasure and my approach is always to be friendly and informal, my ‘educational practice report’ swiftly started to turn into a long blog. This is easy, I thought as I began to expand on why teaching is such a benefit to the working artist. Then I noticed the dog in the garden. We don’t own a dog.

He was big and white and of the sort that Channel Five might excitably describe as ‘killer pit bull’. The only threat he actually posed, when I went out to catch him, was killing me through sheer relief at seeing a human face. We lurched around as he tried to climb into my arms and I tried to read his collar. Finally I shut him into our enclosed passage at the side of the house while I called his owner. The owner couldn’t have cared less. He was on holiday and Ozzie had already escaped once since they left he said, cheerfully promising to send his mum round to collect. Ozzie was by now living up to his rock star namesake; dancing up and down the passageway, making a great deal of noise and peeing lavishly and indiscriminately.

I went back to the writing, waiting for Mum to arrive, only to be called away for a delivery of picture frame moulding in three metre lengths. The delivery man sank into deep gloom when I explained it had to come off the lorry and into the passageway where there was now a large mad dog. The atmosphere became increasingly charged as I caught the baying Ozzie, held the door and asked him to lift the moulding onto a shelf above the piddle. Apparently lifting, along with speaking, was not in the delivery man’s repertoire and I can’t say I blamed him. However, slowly, and in a pregnant silence worthy of Pinter, he obliged and I re-shut the door on Ozzie who wept and howled. The delivery man departed without comment after a long stare, mulling over both my cruelty to animals and to him.

I went back to writing, now feeling raw and distracted. Eventually Mum arrived. Boy, was she cross. Cross at how hard our house was to find, cross that she had to park in the road, cross she’d been called away from her decorating and, above all, cross with Ozzie. I led her to the passageway where Ozzie burst out, a missile of love and delight, to have his bottom well smacked by Mum (by this time I was half expecting her to smack mine). He was ecstatic with the smacking and shouting game so we obligingly chased him around the garden for a while and then she was gone, still grouching.

You’ll be surprised to hear, after all this, that I did complete the paper that day. You can read it here. It celebrates the benefit of teaching for pleasure and, I hope, shows how important my teaching and my students are to me. It’s not much of a serious paper, but then what can you expect from a dog trapper and exploiter of innocent delivery men?

One of the less enjoyable things about being an artist and teacher is just how often I get to watch decent, clever people beating themselves up for failing before they’ve even reached a level where real failure is an option. At this point I offer an apology for the half dozen students who’ve been in my latest class: this isn’t about you. Honest.

I’ve been thinking about this more in the light of many classes this year where students have offered me the opinion that they were rubbish, hopeless, useless or, and this seemed a bit extreme, ‘totally without any talent’. What I think they were actually saying was ‘this printmaking thing is new, a bit confusing and I’m scared because I can’t see how I’ll make a print by the end of class’. I just wish that this absolutely reasonable concern over the unknown didn’t get turned inward and become so abusive. I wonder sometimes if students even know they are doing it. I have listened in the past to the occasional unconsciously murmured soliloquy of such self loathing that Hamlet sounds positively jaunty in comparison and this from the very student who, in the next breath, is kind, positive and enthusiastically supporting the work of her equally inexperienced neighbour. Trust me, the only person actually deserving of abuse would be me as the teacher if I failed to lead students through the process clearly and well.

I feel strongly about this because I used to do it myself big time. I never really thought about it until my first residency in Japan. There I was, before we all settled down, pretty much alone and stuck with my inner voice for company. It’s not much fun being half way up a mountain in a very strange place, so many things a total mystery, feeling awkwardly huge, too hot and profoundly worried by the outsize insect life. Add to that the constant nagging voice telling me I was the wrong person in the wrong place and would never, ever, ever get to grips with the process and it made for some very weepy emails home. After a week I couldn’t bear it any longer and made the conscious decision to stop. It wasn’t easy and having an inner Pollyanna along with the inner critic was a bore, but it broke the habit and I am much more conscious about self criticism these days. Nothing wrong with striving for better, but if I feel myself sinking I just imagine how it would feel to be caught muttering the same words to a fellow student. Unthinkable to be so unkind and thoughtless…