Can a doodle be art?

So I'm - perhaps a little stupidly - about to embark on a 6 week experimental art e-course, having very very little 'artistic' experience and with quite a low sense of my own creativity or ability in the visual arts. The first assignment won't be posted until tomorrow, but I got my sketch book out tonight... and I didn't know what to do with it. Total fear of the blank page....

Then I decided just to start writing and drawing something, with no pressure or sense of having to be 'artistic'. I drew what I felt. A big scared face shouting out 'BLANK PAPER. AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!'. It was the kind of drawing I do all the time. It was a doodle. My friends and I do these doodles at the back of our lecture room during research seminars (they generally are drawings of glasses of wine with 'I neeeeeeed vino!!' underneath or pictures of how we might escape the room, in search of wine). But a doodle is not art, right? Then I thought, well maybe if it is, I could start here. In a place I know very well. With a doodle.

Here are some examples of very cool doodlings that most definitely are art.










Via cariblogger and richworks

Beautiful Losers

I recently watched the wonderful documentary 'Beautiful Losers' and was enthralled by listening to the late Margaret Kilgallen speak. Her work is absolutely stunning. I have often said that beauty is found in things that are off, or 'wonky', and that this imperfection is beautiful. She expressed that thought so much better than I could:

'I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is'

"Margaret Kilgallen" on Art:21, PBS.com, 2005 (via Wikipedia)

(Images via The Initiatives and Visualingual)

Women reading

I came across this photo by Tom Hunter called 'Woman Reading a Possession Order' from 1998, which I hadn't seen in some time. It's based on Vermeer's 'A Girl Reading at and Open Window' and is a beautiful contemporary take on the old Master. Language is power...

(Photo by Tom Hunter)

Lovely words

Isn't this a beautiful print by artist Lara Harwood? I love words that make me smile and this print is inspired by the word 'gaudiloquent', which means 'speaking joyfully or on joyful matters'. It makes me feel joyous, just looking at it. It's from a brilliant exhibition called 'The Art of Lost Words' , which showcases design, typography and illustration inspired by forgotten words.

My friend Alison and I used to look up new words in the dictionary when we were at school, and we'd deliberately try to fit them into conversation, or into our homework. My favourite words at the moment are 'thrilling' and 'darling' (as in, 'isn't this a darling teapot?' - more on teapots tomorrow) and I shall try and squeeze them into conversation/writing as much as I can. I think they're ever so 1920's. Lovely words make me happy. What's your favourite word?

Maternal bodies

I've got just over two months to finish writing my book chapter on maternal bodies in popular music and I've been thinking about space and the maternal/female form. Antony Gormley famously represents the interior and exterior spaces of bodies, but uses his own body as a template. He talks about 'the voided space of the body as a visible emptiness'. I wondered whether he ever thinks specifically about the female body - a sort of double void, a body with a womb - and how we might represent this doubled space. I'm interested in how he might approach the relationship between this visible emptiness and a concurrent emotional emptiness, and wondered whether a miscarrying body might be a particular embodiment that troubles our understanding of a single body, with clearly defined boundaries. I've written to him, to see if he might have a response to this.... I know he's a very busy man but I wonder if he will reply? Watch this space!!