Following my tutorial with Jonathan, I decided to test the theory that if you say something to yourself enough times, you’ll start to believe it. So, I’ve been doing lines. To be honest I didn’t have to do lines as a punishment at school: I was a conformist.

We make marks everyday in one way or another. An obvious one is our handwriting. I learnt handwriting at school in the same way as every other child, in the book with the lines which indicated where the top and bottom of your letters should go, and the line in the middle indicating the height of the small letters. Once we had mastered the basics, we were allowed to go free range, first with a pencil, and then with a pen, as a reward for continued neatness, and perfection. Those were the days when everyone was taught to write with their right hand; left-handedness was not tolerated. But the need to express ourselves in how we write the words, not just with the words we choose, will always out.

Our handwriting reveals things about us, from the tilt, the size, the pressure, the failure to close our loops. I’ve never had consistent handwriting. It changes depending on my mood. I wonder what that says about me. Maybe I’ve never found a style which says to me: yes, this is you. And maybe that’s the point – I’m forever changing. Or maybe I just haven’t found my mark-making processes. It doesn’t really bother me, but at times I do feel jealous of the beautifully formed letters of others. I think – yes, you’ve got it together; you know who you are.

Doing Lines I

I like that the redaction is scruffy and that there are jagged edges. When I was doing it I wasn’t aware how scruffy it was because I was doing it against a white background, and so it just looked like the redacted words were disappearing. Surprisingly, I didn’t even have the urge to tidy it up once it revealed itself to me. As I was going through the words trying to make different phrases each time, there was a section in the middle which became a bit negative. It’s quite difficult to find different phrases from the same words in the same order. Phrases like ‘I worry about not making’, ‘Is it enough that I enjoy the process’ and ‘I worry about not making the mark’ started to pop up.

Doing Lines II

Well, I’ve written the words that many times, that if they haven’t sunk in by now, they never will.

It seems to have all been about words recently. What are words worth? That’s what the Tom Tom Club asked in their rather bizarre new wave hit from the early eighties, Wordy Rappinghood. You have to be of a certain age to remember this one. I rather like the artwork.