The problem with the last few years is distractions. Everything has become a distraction. For example there is some street art hype or graffiti hype and then you invest your time into other peoples business forgetting your own. It is an easy trap with so many tools built around distraction. We can see someones elses sweat and tears in a moment and think where is my piece of the action? It doesn’t work like that. You need to look and remember your own space. You don’t suddenly crossover even though the world is at your fingertips. If you have a niggling doubt it suddenly grows as though the other people are a lens.

 

For one you can only do what you do. It is probably healthier to simply admire the other peoples work solely on merit. If you start analyzing it and comparing you can get distracted from what you are supposed to be doing. There are no limits in terms of what you can see. It is an endless stream that soon becomes meaningless. It becomes a habit to be distracted. I know this only too well.

 

The only reason I am having a rant is that I feel that everything that happens around me is rounded out with a lot of excess information about nearly everything. For example if I am talking about graffiti it brings in nearly every other thing that everyone has done or is doing in only the last few weeks or days. We are all so well versed in everybody else. This isn’t a bad thing per se but when my own work seems to be more and more obscure to even me I wonder where I went wrong.

 

If I were to summarise my own work I feel it isn’t really worrying about the visual part of visual art. I like to reference and include lines that are disorganised or fragmented as to give the impression of letting go. I want my graffiti to be disorganised, to confuse and confound only hanging onto a structure by a thread.

 

————

—–

 

If you look at high art there is an attention to detail, time and concept. A work is a series of ruminations that are made complete. They follow the logic of conception, creation and perfection. Even if it is a perfect set of colours that are the best choice of a myriad of trial pieces. There is an attention to detail, a deep knowledge of materials and manufacturing techniques to create a piece that is sound.

 

—————

—–

 

On the other hand with my graffiti there is spontaneity, temporality and disorganisation. It is fast and imprecise. It lacks thought or process and simply is lost in its own obscurity and lack of form. It is simply a record of an event that only lasted a short time.

—————–

———-

—

 

Then again the time enacted in the graffiti work is actually a long process of thought and deliberation spanning decades. Each work is simply a moment to accept the next work that comes inevitably. It is a journey of recordings and documents that have survived. It is not meant to be understood but simply seen in context of the world around it. It is the moment that never lasts.