The Road to Degree Show - 1

So this is it.

On May the 19th the Goldsmiths Art Practice 3rd years have to clear out their studio spaces to make way for the building of the gallery that will house their degree show.

What this means in reality is that we have 16 days left to complete whatever breathtaking works of art we will be displaying. Not a time for coasting I think you will agree. At this point you might imagine that we hall have a pretty good idea of what we will be displaying, and proabaly have progressed significantly along the process of creating these works.

This is certainly true for some, and for those students we reserve the title of 'Smug Bastard' - for the rest of us it is time for panic.

You see, over the last 3 years the art course has poked and probed our process, concepts and execution with a constant stream of critique. It is the practice of an ethos that has reduced my friends (myself included) into gibbering wrecks of incoherent art-trollop and as such we arrive at this final term, this final push, not as confident artificers of beauty but as morons with brushes.

It is in this state that I find myself gaping at the 3 x 2.2m canvas I have built and stretched and asking myself, "What the hell was I thinking?!?"

I have painted biggish canvases before, maybe 1.5 x 2 at the most, and they are a lot of white space to fill. However next to my current blank canvas they look like postage stamps and my brushes all suddenly seemed to be right size to paint miniatures.

Leaned up against the wall (it doesn't fit in my studio) it towers above my head. I have to reach upwards to paint the top third of it - when I primed it and spent so long with my arms raised high above my head that I had pains throughout my body for 3 days after. Sun salutations did not prepare me for this. At each step of making this behemoth I have found myself struggling with the physical size of it but instead of thinking, "Hold on Rick, maybe you are being over-ambitious here - it wouldn't be the first time.." I have ploughed ahead regardless. Now I find myself with 16 days left to paint this beast and its little brother (which comes in a minisized 1.9 x 2.2 m).

Actually not quite 16 days as I am in Manchester over this coming weekend and I have childcare duties the weekend after. Maybe more like 12 days.

12 days. 12 DAYS!! Aaaaargh!

The truly tragic part of this is that I actually enjoy being in this state. I get off on the rush of the last minute - I love the adrenalaine shot you get from it. It doesn't phaze me that I could be sitting calmly chatting to someone and then in the next instant scream and start to chew my own elbow. Mostly I've got the elbow chewing under control.

So, hi ho, its off to work I go. Thankfully I have plan B - which is basically to throw a load of pretty colours on it in some incomprehensible arcane marks and hope the viewing public will be so lost when trying to read it that they will assume it is brilliant beyond their ken.

Stay tuned to see if I manage to create a miracle or a pile of poo. Either way its going be pulled out of my arse.