Musing On Art

I have recently taken to painting again. Art was a childhood love along with singing and dancing, oh and acting. My best friend at primary school and I once ended up putting our self written plays on stage for the whole school. The teachers thought Aggie and Mildred with their posh accents and our mother's costume jewellery were hilarious. We also did cockney women discussing their washing and the price of eggs over an imaginary fence. This was late 70's Zimbabwe. All our cultural influences were British, and a little hackneyed. Last year I staged my first play in London and I recently had a small crack at something reasonably innovative for the stage involving all my loves: God, poetry, dialogues, music, song, visual art and dance. I did it for the joy of it and the exuberance I felt at eleven was the same. Collaborating with the actors was even more fun than the writing of it.

From 2000-2013, I was a novelist. There were exciting times - winning things, good reviews, appearances. Pressure came. To succeed. To perform. In 2013, I looked into the faces of my children and my husband and into my own spirit and began to question my motivations and why I create. So, after the birth of my last child, I decided to lose my agent and 'lay down' my own writing career to help develop other writers for our fledgling publishing company. In the process, I have been rediscovering what an artist actually is. Over the past few years I have had the privilege of nurturing three very talented individuals and publishing another writer, whose work has beauty in it - simply for that reason; I knew we were unlikely to make money from this project, but time will tell. The point is, we are not motivated by money, which is just as well, all things considered. We did it for the beauty - for the soul of the writer, that was in the work.

During the time I was 'successful' as a writer, in that I won a national writing award, had a well -known agent, garnered good press and sold thousands of copies of my first book, I lost my way. I was no longer an artist, looking to reveal beauty and truth; my 'success' was based on opinion, sales, attention, feedback: in short, the opinions of others. Recently I rediscovered some of my contemporaries from my days of agents and awards and fuss over being a 'writers of the future.' I felt a pang - for  what? Their fame? I questioned my wisdom for leaving. But then the wise person I live with reminded me why I left. I did it for the art.

My art needs to exist on the edges. It comes from me and that is where I have always thrived best. Of course I am thrilled when people like and respond to my work, but I don't want to be part of a production machine that brings expectation and direction. It limits. The best art lives in a transcendent space where expectation and deadlines do not transgress. What happens after that is up to the artist, of course. I think motivation is key. Art must come from the heart, unclouded by the expectations of the surrounding culture and all that arises from it.

Educating off piste (not off pissed)

It's been absurdly long since I wrote a post - Christmas was the last one. Actually I drafted this one on the third of March and didn't send it! Then, like Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole I scarpered to London with my daughter for my production, Children of the Resurrection in which she danced.

The year thus far has been filled with a heady mix of book editing, play writing and home educating, the latter being by turns productive and often bonkers, but the children are progressing well using these methods: productive in that it happens most days and on those days English and Maths and many other things are taught to my young children. I use a variety of materials including a basic curriculum that I sometimes follow, but generally we go off piste - hope you grasp the spelling of that last phrase and don't call the social services. Just to be clear, I never go off pissed when I am educating my children (and neither, for the record do they) we certainly travel off road at our homeschool - and yes, in this case we sometimes learn off site, as in today when we met up with some other homeders (is that a new word?!) for various creative activities (including glass painting!) and drama and chin wagging (in my case). We also learn outside, at various castles and National Trust properties, in the woods and down on the beach - with sticks and pebbles and water obvs!

I have found, as I suspected, that the more creative the task, the more engaged the kid is. Thus there is often a zany atmosphere (particularly if my toddler is rampaging around yelling 'bottom!' or 'toilet!' - not as a request but as a response) and a creative task in most things we do. Having said this, I do ram some of the traditional (and the spiritual) into the day: The Lord's Prayer and dictation and proper story telling for my elder daughter as well as poetry writing, and presenting (aka 'show and tell') and so on, but invariably there are drawings, toys and puppets involved and many obstacle courses for PE - inside and out - often on the beach where crazy races feature. Often one activity will produce a theme that is then carried through from one subject to another - the other day PE involved puppets (including our letter 'G' puppet Gilbert who, thanks to my youngest disrupts the class by showing his bottom all the time, and a word building treasure hunt with word and number prompts and ended in a lesson on fractions (that involved cake!) I find with kids, that the more comedy there is, the more they want to learn, though of course there are days when gravitas is required, but not for long.

There are many pleasures to home schooling - not least being at the frontline of their responses - and being able to tailor make the style of education to fit the learner - my son learns differently from my daughter - but quite simply it is a joy to be able to share the learning journey with them, and the many others whom we meet with who have chosen to educate outside the societal norms. One of the things I most enjoy is watching my kids get up in the morning and draw or make paper sculptures. My son is obsessed with chameleons and frogs, so there are many painted and sculpted creatures around the house that he has made with whatever he hauls out of the art drawer. He now seems to be moving on to traction engines. Similarly my daughter gets on with her multi media projects or paints murals on the back of the house or all over the Wendy House. There is plenty of time for her to pursue her dancing and singing interests and to take part in her mother's productions too.

Not trad, but thus far they are well adjusted, well rounded, and well ahead - smaller classes = faster and more holistic learning. And we have only just begun.