Happy New Year

I am writing this on New Year’s day 2017. This is the time of year when we have the leisure to review the past year and many of us optimistically make resolutions for the year to come knowing that they might last no longer than the fire works that explosively marked midnight. We always hope that this new year will be more peaceful than the previous one and 2016 certainly held plenty of moments for me that I am happy to see the back of and also memories that I will treasure.
 
So this has got me thinking about seasons since we have just past the winter solstice, or the shortest day in the year for those of us living in the northern hemisphere, and can begin to look forward to longer days with more light. Here is one definition of seasons that I read this morning: a season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology and hours of daylight. I can’t disagree with that but in my review of my life I realise that I have recently come to the end of a personal ‘season’ which I think began roughly in February 2015 and ended in November 2016.

I am an artist but I was trained as a graphic designer. I practised as a designer for around 35 years and for the most part it kept a roof over my head and food on the table. I did not have a stellar career but I know that my work was often appreciated and occasionally I made the most all mighty cock-ups. For many of those 35 years I had a hankering to develop my life as a artist and slowly, slowly I began to concentrate on that side of my life.

It is common for those of us who describe ourselves as artists to follow a path which goes something like this. Produce, produce, produce work of varying quality and exhibit, exhibit, exhibit anywhere and everywhere it in the hope that sales will follow. This strategy of spreading yourself too thin can occasionally be successful but it doesn’t work for me.

Back in early 2015 I was offered the opportunity to rent part-time desk space at Fish Island Labs in Hackney Wick. This proved to be a turning point for me as I needed to experience a form of retreat and really consider what the hell I was doing as an artist. Hackney Wick is walking distance from my home yet feels a million miles away from anywhere in spite of its proximity to the QE Olympic Park.
 
To all intents and purposes I was doing much the same things as normal. I was still socialising, visiting art exhibitions, hanging out with friends, going to the hairdressers but internally I was experiencing my own winter. This was a prolonged period that I needed to live through before I could see the green shoots of spring. I didn’t feel very productive since I only completed two paintings but I redesigned my website, finished and launched my ebook of drawings around north London and undertook a series of drawings along the Hertford Union canal before the property developers change it beyond recognition plus I recognised that my life as a designer is well and truly over and that I am an artist.

Last September marked my 60th birthday and I threw a big party. It was a great success and all my guests enjoyed it. Now I see that as my way of announcing that my period in retreat was coming to an end but I still had a couple of months to go before all the loose ends were tied up and I could leave Fish Island with no regrets. 

Looking back I can see that my personal ‘seasons’ tend to overlap each other like an untidy pile of paper and they don’t begin and end neatly one after another like a tidy ribbon which might explain why I don’t feel a need to celebrate New Year because I’m not sure when my new year begins or when the old one ends. 

Happy New Year!