Very occasionally a day just seems to lead to better decision making. When one comes along its as well to keep moving, make the brushes and paint do your bidding, put down the marks as fast as circumstance allows. A recent new website (of interest to those of us wedded to abstraction) called Abstract Critical ran a lovely video interview with Alan Davie. Now 90 he suffers from still being fit and healthy and working in that because he isnt long gone the reputation isnt fixed and therefore he rarely gets the accolades his immense talent deserves. I doubt he cares much though - too busy getting on with it. Davie championed a vigorous form of abstract expressionism that was never easy and therefore not easily pigeon holed. To my mind he's always been the artist that Pollock ought to have been but never was, instead of being seduced by the process Davie kept at his autonomism, adding in imagery that informed and enriched the canvas. In the interview he reminded us of Klee's 'walk' maxim and emphasized its importance.
This is what came back to me today - sometimes one just instinctively understands what shape, what colour and what directions a line must go and when that happens you just hang in there for the ride, hoping it lasts as long as possible! It has a strange quality about it as a process in that it often seems that you have started doing it before you are conscious that it's a decision you have taken.
Davie has a particularly strong place in my artistic affections - at 14 I went into the bookshop in Exeter that was part of my regular Saturday morning routine and saw a gorgeous monograph on him. The price however was, to my mind, astronomic but I decided I had to have it...it took me over four months to garner the necessary cash, forgoing much else. It still sits on my bookshelves today, minus the dust jacket, frayed along the spine and much thumbed.
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