Part 3:
Where Now?
In the same way I can recognise that Part 1 of my journey made the transition into Part 2, so Part 2 has become Part 3; but, this time, there’s been an abrupt transition. The critical step occurred on 30 August 2019, the day I became an exhibited artist with a body of my work, six photographs, hanging in the Great North Art Show, in Ripon Cathedral; and semi-professional to boot – one of them was bought by an unknown member of the public, another by close friends.
You can read more about the Great North Art Show – my first exhibition [ HERE … ]
But did this mean that Part 3 must be about ‘putting away childish things?’ Did this spell the end of the sandpit time? Will it now be all about fame, fortune and searching for those streets of London, paved with gold? Have I crossed a Rubicon? Is that what the journey will now become?
Look Right, Look Left
Crossing the Road by the Engineering Faculty
from 'Take a Little Walk with Me' Series
There was a joke (although I use the term loosely) in the University when I was a young undergraduate, ‘last week I couldn’t spell engineering and now I are one’ (I did warn you it was a lame joke) and something similar could now be said of me, suddenly I are an artist. I’d responded to a call to artists, I’d written my artist’s statement, worn my artist’s badge at the preview evening.
Suddenly I are one.
Being selected for the Ripon exhibition has had a huge impact; validation; boosting my confidence; permission to take my work and ideas seriously, to see myself as an artist. But, equally, it’s been confusing and disorienting. What does ‘being an artist’ really mean? Is engineer-me lost forever? Is my work saying anything meaningful? Who is it for? Is that an end to spontaneity and experimentation?
For anyone brought up amongst the arts, these questions asked by a 67-year-old, must seem frighteningly naive but remember I started to specialise in the sciences from the age of 15.
Some days I can look at a group of images, randomly scattered on the kitchen table, and feel strengthened by their collective sense of self, identity, sense of place; I can believe that my art has purpose and direction. But other days, the same images can disturb me by their sense of panic and anxiety – not the natural doubt of an artist, but the dis-ease of a bruised mind, damaged by past medical trauma and, as yet, incompletely healed.
And this, I believe will be the essence and the purpose of the next part of this journey; not fame, fortune and bright lights. Instead I’ll be following the route of many around me into ‘Therapeutic Photography’.
Now I confess, I don’t know precisely what I mean by this – that will be the fun and the challenge of the coming months. But I believe that, potentially, my art and photography have the power to heal, not just improve my wellbeing; a belief based on the knowledge that there’s more to ‘Green Therapy’ and ‘Forest Bathing’ than just walking in the woods and feeling better because one’s mood is lifting.
As yet, it’s largely an instinctive, intuitive faith – though first signs are promising, as my series ‘Take a Little Walk with Me’ is proving (see the images above and alongside)
But, perhaps, as Pete Seegar sang in the 60s, it’s the ‘season’.
It’s my time to heal; to build up; to laugh and dance; above all, my time for peace.
If ever there was a time to travel hopefully, this is it.