Art.

The other day I was invited by a friend to the opening evening of Spike Island Open Studios, an event where artists would literally open up their studios to show a curated selection of work, or sometimes their work-in-progress. It made me realise I hadn’t gone to a place with the specific goal of looking at art in years. It’s something I used to do a lot of, particularly during my university days and in the years after. I’d book trips to London to meet up with friends and see exhibitions, sometimes spending the whole day traipsing round various galleries, catching up over coffee in the cafes afterwards. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I stopped, but the end of a long relationship in my late 20s may have had something to do with it. I felt it wasn’t my world anymore.

Art show openings are a weird thing because you’re ostensibly there to look at art, but really everyone is there to get drunk and soak up the vibes. Because of the crowds it’s hard to stand back, take your time over a piece and let the work speak for itself. Your attention depends on whether something grabs you in the first few seconds — or, sometimes, whether the artist is on hand to “sell” you their vision. And there’s a lot of art I just don’t get. But that’s ok, not all art resonates with everyone all the time. Sometimes it snags on something in your brain in a specific time and place, in a specific set of circumstances, but sometimes it never does. Sometimes it’s just for the artist. Even the stuff I don’t get is fascinating in many ways, as it’s a little window into someone’s head, someone who thinks entirely differently to you. Sometimes you can see the questions they’ve turned over in their head, the journey they’ve been on, what moments have clicked for them. I used to think art has to have some kind of message, but really art doesn’t have to have any purpose other than to express some part of someone, and it doesn’t have the responsibility to do it articulately.

Where money becomes involved with art it gets a little murkier. Artists have to make a living, after all. Does art have more responsibility to be “crowd pleasing” when it’s receiving public funding, for instance? I applaud any artist who can truly maintain their integrity in the face of financial hardship, or commercial success.

Art requires work on the part of the viewer, but in a world where we rarely stop and think, putting in that work can feel like a luxury that many people don’t have. I understand how art gets a reputation for being elitist. It sometimes demands you educate yourself before you can appreciate it. But occasionally a work of art grabs you out of nowhere, rings pitch-perfect against the tuning fork of your soul, and penetrates layers deep within you. That’s when you feel a moment of connection to another human being, one perhaps you’ve never met, but you’re suddenly seeing the world through the same eyes.

A few people inspired this post:

• Ana Rodrigues, whose recommendation of The Creative Act by Rick Rubin has sent me on a path back to creativity, and whose blog is always an inspiration.
• Jessica Bartlett, the artist and good friend who invited me to the open studios, and who inspired me to join her in the month-long writing challenge.
• Hidde de Vries whose talk Creativity Cannot Be Computed helped me clarify my thinking around AI and gave me hope for humans.
• Max Naylor whose beautiful paintings spoke to something in me that I couldn’t put into words.