The life of the great black bird

Readers may remember how after much blood, sweat and tears (only figuratively, I don't really think of myself as that sort of an artist, although maybe I should), The Great Black Bird was completed.

It was a strange feeling to complete the painting I had put so much time and feeling into, I was left wanting more. Not more from the piece itself, after a couple of days and much thought I became more comfortable with it than I had at first -- the curse of being self critical is I feel like nothing I can do will ever be good enough. Apply this to every area of my life. And yet, it's not always being a perfectionist -- I wish I could say I always strive for greatness, instead I am more often than just dissatisfied. Anyway, I was left wanting more -- wanting to carry on painting -- except I was also back to square one. Wanting to paint, but having no inspiration.

[Unfortunately this lack of inspiration has also been affecting the blogging lately. If anyone still reads this, I apologise for the silence. The words wouldn't come.]

After the completion of the painting and the preparation of the gallery, came the gallery opening itself. The First Time Club gallery was part of the BA Fine Art graduate show of Goldsmith's University -- Hannah, the hostess of the First Time Club had turned her final year project into the First Time Club gallery. And in my humble opinion, hers was best of all the installations I saw.

I arrived in New Cross early on the Thursday evening of the private gallery viewing. It was due to open at 6pm, and perhaps naively I thought that this meant everyone should be -- and would be there for 6pm. I was earlier still, but had enough time to find the college, and make my way back to the station where I was due to meet my guests.

First to arrive at the station was The Girl, who had spent many days carefully planning her outfit for the evening, but unfortunately due to personal reasons and a bad week, Dune was unable to attend on the night -- though she sent her kind words and good luck wishes to me. Running slightly late on the evening, but helping to make up the Aussie contingent were Non-Blondie and Jiminy Cricket.

In the lead was Non-Blondie, who was less-than-impressed with the university's lack of signage and unhelpful staff -- but I took it as a testament to her dedication that despite my bad directions and the other obstacles she didn't give up -- and didn't tell Jiminy to save himself and get away before he arrived.

Because I hadn't been around for when the other members of the First Time Club had set up their art works in the gallery, I had only heard about their individual own projects and not seen any of them. The Girl wasn't over thrilled when one of the first art works to greet her was a semi-nude collage portrait of San. In my defence, until I saw it I hadn't known myself what my ex-girlfriend had produced for her own art work, since it was a closely guarded secret.

Maybe I'm biased, but I thought the work produced by the First Time Club was much better than many of the fine art students -- one piece was a series of audio interviews with people, asking about their first times. Their first time what, they would all ask, first time anything he'd tell them -- so there was all kinds, from their first time making a cocktail to the first time they slept with a woman to the first time they smoke a cigarette. Another piece was called "Cleaning Up London" and featured the contents of a hoover bag, presided over by Ken Livingstone. You might roll your eyes at what seemed to be modern art wank, but that was exactly what the artist was doing himself -- a sly dig at unmade beds and exploded sheds (although I am actually a big fan of the latter piece).

Strangely, on seeing the other installations and art works for the first time I was glad not to have been an art student. Many times when I was at university people immediately assumed I was on an art course, and in the years since I've wondered if I might not have been better off doing a Bachelor's degree in photography -- but on the night there were some times when the other galleries represented everything that gives "modern" art a bad name. Non-Blondie herself put it quite eloquently at one point with the immortal words: "I hate art".

The Great Black Bird had a spot on the wall where it was reportedly lit by the afternoon sun through the window. Because I'm vain, I often liked to stand near it when the gallery was busy, just to see what the reactions were on the faces of the people. I wouldn't talk to them or tell them it was mine, I just liked to quietly watch people. As with the responses here, the people I knew who talked to me about it were nice and complimentary -- and Hannah asked me if it wasn't better in the end doing it the way I did, than trying to find some way to paste an image onto the canvas. The nights I spent drawing, and sketching, and painting, experimenting with colours and textures and styles until it lead me to my final piece? Yes, it was all worth it.

The night ended in a somewhat surreal way, in a local pub that was having a (far too loud) ska night and served Thai food.

I've been thinking about my next painting recently, even though there will be no gallery to display it and few adoring fans to admire my Neanderthal-like style of drawing. My next piece I intend to call "Maelstrom", and as the name will suggest it will be some kind of representation of a storm at sea -- with much more colour than before. Expect many more late nights and rainy afternoons spent with sketchbooks and an old NASA mug being used as my brush pot.