[this is the main text from my newsletter - you can subscribe to it here and read it 24 hrs earlier (I know, quite an incentive, right??)]
Yeah. Another year almost done. Yeah. More wise words, another artist newsletter to f***ing read before we clock out of 2024. Yeah. Yeah.
But I am not looking back, no way, last year was a bit too far off for my taste. However, focusing on what's to come seems even harder, as there’s never been such uncertainty ahead of me as today.
The time between Christmas and the New Year is usually reserved for calming down, reading books about artists (this year it's Monet all the way), admiring and analyzing their work, wandering in their shoes and their times a bit, feeling how they might've felt – and contemplating what I (the artist) want (need!) to be doing next. There are all these ideas, thoughts, rough concepts, the nonsense and the rage, swirling around in my head. Nothing really to hold on to, but that is anyway not what I am aiming for – I try to be as free as I can in this phase. No restraints. And no pressure.
Somehow achieving this state of mind this year seems more difficult than usual.
But look, here’s what I did to nevertheless get to the place I need to go to:
I picked up a new sketchbook from under the tree, a present from my son Melvin, one he watched me unwrap with a big smile on his face. As a sketchbook, it is not really that good: the paper is thick but really cheap, so my ink bleeds out if I'm not careful, the binding won't fold up enough, so I gotta hold the pages down while drawing. It is one of those sell-out products you get at Museum Stores; Melvin picked this one up at the Tate Modern. But I do like it, it is making money for one of my favorite artists, David Shrigley, and on the front he drew in fat letters:
MY ARTWORK IS TERRIBLE AND I AM A VERY BAD PERSON
As an artist and a father, probably not the nicest words to read on Christmas Eve on a gift from your son, who's also been your gallerist, but I know how well Melvin meant this and we do share the same humor. So yeah, we had a good laugh. But what Shrigley says here is very true - I guess this "feeling" is in many artists' heads, and not just the struggling ones, because it is about coping with doubts, which probably most of us do a lot more than necessary. And once you're finished diminishing your talent and artwork and career, you go on to feeling poorly as a person too. I mentioned earlier that I love reading books about famous artists, so I feel authorized to say: most of them did feel shitty about themselves a lot throughout their glorious artist lives.
That is roughly where I found myself: instead of quietening down, I stood at the entrance of the rabbit hole, not sure whether to crawl inside or turn around and just shrug it off, as I am usually more than capable of, dealing with this kind of life for such a long time already. The book and the quote came at a pretty good moment, when I just wanted to figure out what to do next, not really getting in the mood to let go and think freely.
And so, early in the morning of December 29, 2024, I picked up my fountain pen and that lovely grey ink I got from a friend, and began to fill the 144 pages of Shrigley's mean sketchbook – well, only on one side because of the mediocre paper quality, so it comes to 72 in total.
And: I didn't stop until I finished the last page, some time after midnight.
The drawings all are pretty moody and dark, for the first time I am using French instead of English, there are also lots of flowers and other references to art history and artists I admire (Monet! Schiele! Pettibon! Even Shrigley gets a page, that old bastard - yu can find it at the bottom of this newsletter.), some are pretty bad (I can be a terrible artist if I want to) and some are just mean (I am a bad person, remember), but most are like climbing on a ladder out of my dark thoughts, leaving them on the cheap paper, and diving back into my own head, refreshed and oblivious, where I will rest now till the end of the year (and a bit beyond that), before I go back to the studio and paint and build and carve and draw the f**k out of 2025.
I wish you all a great start into the New Year,
may all your hopes and dreams come true.
Let's all work together and make the world safe and lovable again.
I see you on the other side.
Jörg
