It’s All In The Tag

11th Feb 202512th Feb 2025Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I was surprised when Jonathan pointed out in my tutorial that the most frequently used words in my tag cloud were ‘mother’ and ‘drawing’.

I thought that it would be words like ‘death’, ‘emotion’ etc – I feel that I’ve written enough about them. So, I’ve been through all of my posts and checked that I’ve categorised and tagged them correctly. I haven’t. I’ve failed to use more general terms – words like ‘resentment’ and ‘loss’ appeared but not the umbrella term of ‘emotion’. It’s important moving forward that I keep on top of this as the tag cloud will be integral in determining what is important to me.

Having completed that exercise, the words of the moment are ‘emotion’ and ‘process’. That sounds about right…

Reflecting on Resentment II

26th Nov 20249th Feb 2025Kate McCalmont-Woods 3 Comments

I’ve rewritten this post so many times. It has become progressively shorter. Sitting back and reflecting, I can see what is important. The first version was just a rant.

In late 2022, my mother was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. No treatment was offered. At best she had 6 months left. Her GP had messed up. The hospital messed up. My sister and I cared for her full-time. It was the worst, and darkest period of my life.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Six months to live? Well, we could go places and make the most of it, create some new memories. But she was already too weak. Instead, the memories I have of that time seep into my mind when it’s not thinking of something else, usually before I go to sleep; then I can’t go to sleep and I sit up alone in the kitchen turning it all over, reliving it. Nothing makes it feel any better.

My mother died at home in the spring of 2023, three days before her 85th birthday. I cannot say with any honesty that she experienced quality of life in those last months. She was waiting to die, and I was just watching her gradually turn into a skeleton.

I resent that medical professionals have failed my family, not just in respect of my mother, but also my father – I made formal complaints in both instances – lessons will be learnt, apparently – but this has done nothing to ease my resentment.

I resent that because she was old, my mother was effectively written off.

I resent that everything was such a battle and I had to spend so much time chasing and making sure things were done.

I resent that there are old people in hospital who are overlooked, and who don’t have a voice or someone to speak up for them.

I resent that my sister and I were left to deal with everything, both before and after my mother’s death.

I resent that in the last few months of my mother’s life the days were short, and the nights were long.

I resent that those last few precious months were stolen from me.

I resent that the last words my mother spoke to me were when she wasn’t herself.

But, most of all, I resent the resentment that I feel: it’s preventing me from moving on.

Reflecting on Resentment I

24th Nov 20249th Feb 2025Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

During the last session we considered the premise that resentment blocks creativity.

Resentment is a feeling of anger or unhappiness about something that you have been forced to accept and you don’t like, or think is unfair. It comes from the Latin verb sentire, and so it is an emotion which is ‘re-sensed’ time after time, perhaps even increasing in intensity. Perhaps we feel resentment that other artists are better than us, or that they have works accepted in exhibitions and we don’t.

As I get older, I try as best I can to keep as much negativity out of my life as possible. I may initially feel it, but then I try to process it by turning it on its head, or actively dealing with it. I can’t feel resentment (in the sense of it being a recurring emotion) that other artists are better than me or are more successful – instead I use the initial negative feeling (which is probably more envy than anything else) to spur me on to try again, to fail again and to fail better, because inherent in that form of resentment is the feeling of failure.

For the last few years I have submitted work to the RA Summer Exhibition but I have never made it to the next round of judging. Each year I experience a moment of crushing disappointment and vow never to do it again, but then January comes around and off I go again. I’m clearly looking for validation, but I often think to myself that if ever I do get in I’ll probably never submit again, and maybe it won’t even make me happy.

My husband confessed to me that he had always wanted to paint. Why don’t you just do it, I asked him. He started with watercolours and over time became good at it. I suggested that he try oils as they are far more forgiving and I thought he might enjoy the freedom of using them. I bought him some as a gift along with some boards and brushes. He signed up to an oil painting class and shortly afterwards submitted one of his oil paintings to the Summer Exhibition. He made it through to the last 4,000 out of 16,000 entries on his first attempt. Did I feel resentment? No – I felt proud, with a strong sense of irony. He felt ecstatic with a strong sense of embarrassment.

If someone treats me badly I tend to think that it is more about them rather than me, but if it is something that I know will eat away at me and become a resentment I try to deal with it head on, unless doing so will cause irreparable harm. But, there is one particular instance of resentment which I haven’t been able to let go of no matter what I do, and I feel it as strongly today as the day I first felt it.

Caught In A Paradox

30th Oct 20249th Feb 2025Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I’m typing this just as I’ve finished my tutorial with Jonathan, whilst I can still remember what we discussed – I did start taking notes at the beginning but ditched them as the act of note-taking became too intrusive. Consequently, I will probably forget bits, but this is the gist.

I explained that I’m feeling really positive about the course – just to be in the process is enough, and anything over and above is a bonus. Jonathan asked me what I wanted to get out of the course. What I would like is to find out who I am, which is a bit of a cliché, and to develop a rhythm of working so that art becomes a major part of my life: up until now I have had to carve out time to spend making art.

Jonathan asked me what my life is like in terms of whether it is ordered: no, it’s totally disordered with no real routine, fire-fighting issues and dealing with lots of things at the same time. Jonathan commented that the idea of spinning plates has its own rhythm. It has, but I feel that I need to develop a discipline in my artistic practice – I have no real self-discipline in many areas of my life.

Jonathan then asked me what my strength is. It’s getting things done: I can be determined, persistent and I don’t give up. The downside to this is that I’m goal driven (which causes issues in terms of concentrating on the end product, rather than the process), and I tend to jump right in. Thinking about it now as I write, not giving up can result in me being relentless and not knowing when to walk away and leave something – my mother used to describe me as a terrier.

Jonathan mentioned the story on my blog about my shopping habits: the act of wandering from shop to shop contradicts the idea of jumping in. I agreed that actually I should shop more like my husband in terms of reaching a goal, and that the act of wandering is not enjoyable but full of pressure: to find something which meets the criteria by the deadline. Not buying the first thing I see which would suffice, may indicate a reluctance to commit before exploring all the options.

What does it feel like to be working at my best? I lose all sense of time. I’m lost in time. Nothing else matters. I can look up and find that it’s dark and it’s 9.30pm and the dogs and my family haven’t eaten. But then I can look at what I’ve done and, if I’m not happy with it , think how I’ve wasted those hours of my life which I’ll never get back and which I could have spent doing something more productive. Jonathan commented that there was a paradox in terms of being lost in time and losing time. He asked me to describe the sense of loss of time: it’s huge and full of resentment in the moment, but then dissipates as everyday life starts to take over again, until it eventually disappears.

We talked about some of the things that I’ve been trying out, and I explained that I’ve been purposely not viewing things as good or bad (although I did on my last post!) or as a success or failure. You can only fail if you have an expectation and that every experience, whether good or bad, is a valuable learning experience. Jonathan agreed and commented that the purpose of the act of mark-making is to tell us what to do next and if it does this, then it’s done its job, even if it is to tell us not to carry on. He sensed a real frustration in my experiments with the iPad. I did feel frustrated but even though I had reached the view that it wasn’t something for me in terms of producing a final piece of work, I did appreciate its usefulness for preparatory work. Jonathan mentioned that a lot of artists use it for this purpose in terms of working things out, like composition, and referred to Justin Mortimer who produces large oil paintings.

I explained that I have been doing a lot of thinking recently and have a lot of ideas inside my head – In fact, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve also been getting a lot of inspiration as to how to express these ideas in terms of producing work. If we had had this tutorial a few days ago I would have been excited and energised, but I now seem to be less so, as I feel a resistance to attempt to translate the ideas into actual work. It’s not a fear of failure as such, but a reluctance, or maybe a fear that once I try to capture the idea it won’t be as good as it is in my head. I would usually jump straight in and, more often than not, end up feeling frustrated or disappointed. I’ve recently found that thinking about and planning a work results in less dissatisfaction in the end result, but it seems that the act of stopping and thinking creates a barrier, an inertia, to moving forward. It’s a bit like how I would imagine doing a parachute jump: I check that I have everything I need in order to jump safely, but I still can’t get myself out of the plane. The other side of me would just jump. I mentioned the blog: I’m not on social media and I like to keep myself to myself and fly under the radar, yet I enjoy the process of writing the blog and this is fine as long as I don’t think too much about it ie that it’s public (as an aside whilst I’m writing this, I have actually searched for it on Google and it doesn’t come up so that makes me feel better!).

I then told Jonathan about a proof-reading distance learning course I signed up for many years ago, as I thought it could be something I could do whilst my daughter was young. I received the first couple of modules in the post and did the first assignment. The feedback was good but finished with a reminder that the marks from all subsequent assignments would count towards the final mark. That was it for me, I couldn’t carry on. We discussed why this might have been the case. I think it was because I hadn’t done perfectly on my first assignment and that I might not even do as well in future assignments. When I was young I would come home from school eager to tell my mother how I had done in a test – then she would ask me how everyone else had done – I didn’t understand at the time, why she couldn’t just be pleased with my result, like I was. I grew up to be a perfectionist, with a view that if you are going to do something, you should do it to the best of your abilities – I have since realised that what is your best can be influenced by the circumstances at the time. Jonathan reassured me that that is why the course is the way it is – there is no assessment of a final work or comparative approach for the very reason that it would cause students to freeze up.

Jonathan commented that my perceived weaknesses are actually also strengths in that the tendency to rush in, would deal with this issue. He observed that I had mentioned the word ‘fear’ quite a lot and asked me to describe the fear. It’s like a barrier in front of me but it’s not insurmountable and it’s transparent in that I can see beyond it, to where I need to get to. Having said that it clearly wasn’t insurmountable in terms of the proof-reading episode, but that was a long time ago! To get past it I need to act, and in this respect, Jonathan said that’s where I need to draw on my strength of jumping right in without thinking about it.

We concluded that there were many paradoxes in what we had discussed and that perhaps the solution is to try and combine the two sides of me in terms of moving forward in my art practice. I commented that perhaps the paradoxes are caused by me thinking that I’m one version of me when actually the real me is someone else, which is what I want to explore. Is the real me the baby who was born, or the person I now am with all the baggage I’ve collected along the way? I recognise that my strength of getting things done is probably as a result of my career. Jonathan commented that it is the question of nature and nurture and who they are is something artists ask themselves, so it’s far from being a cliché, it is actually what art is all about.

I then asked Jonathan about something which has been niggling at me: I draw inspiration from various sources to help me see ways to express my thoughts in work. I gave the example of the Two Fridas and the passage I had come across in a book I had seen in Waterstones about siblings and the primal connection through umbilical cords. In drawing on these sources, am I creating anything new, unique, or will someone just look at it and think ‘that reminds me of the Two Fridas’? Is it enough that it is coming from me and about how I feel? Jonathan assured me that it is ok to draw inspiration from others – the Two Fridas was personal to Kahlo and painted 80 years ago – I would be making it now, in 2024, and it would be personal to me.

What will I do for the next hour? Go away and write up my note of the tutorial before I forget it, which will be a useful process to consider what we discussed. Jonathan pointed out that at the beginning I had said that I had wanted to make art a bigger part of my life and that during our chat I had said that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I’m on my way and I should just keep doing what I’m doing.

I’m still feeling positive, and I would venture to say, even more so. I need to cogitate on what we discussed to move forward, but for the moment, everything is all ok.