Hundreds of times in my life I seem to come to a crossroad with signs pointing in all directions and I stand there bewildered: which is the right road? Which one is
my road?
Usually the befuddlement doesn't last very long simply because it's impossible to stand there gaping indefinitely at the signs. You have to keep walking. So I keep on walking in the same direction I was going when the crossroads appeared. But I still am not sure that I'm on the right road - please don't ask me to define 'right road'. All I know is that I would know if it was the right one for me.
Here I am again at crossroad number umpteen and it's to do with my artist-life which is to say, my life per se. For me, there's no separation between being and making stuff which may be called art. It's not a job or hobby or ambition but simply a characteristic, like my height or eye-colour or fingerprint. When I say I don't know if I'm on the right road, I don't mean that I'm wondering if I should be doing something else, like plumbing, or horticulture, or brain surgery. I'm not completely bonkers, there's reality, there are limitations. The art-making thing is a gift I was born with and that's that. The crossroads puzzle is about what to do with that gift which is the same thing as saying: what to do with my life? What shape should I give it?
Anyway, ruminating in this fashion I decided to put together a kind of retrospective catalogue of my paintings in the hope that the past trajectory can point the way to whatever my future (whatever's left of it!) may be. Like the photobooks of old drawings and of bookworks I made a while back, only one copy is being printed for my own use, but there's an
online link that I can share.
