#smith studio

This piece was available at the gallery throughout the show at SMITH Studio from April-May 2016. Commissioned by the artist himself, the essay aimed to explore the premise of his show. Lawrence’s work, the lion’s share of which is a combination of linocuts and acrylic paintings but also includes a monotype, a screen print, two wax-print dyed fabric pieces and a hand-woven wool tapestry, explores the nature and often-questionable necessity of work. Look Busy refers to the need for us all – arguably artists in particular – to fill our time with activity, whether or not that activity has any utility or purpose. Does art need to be time-consuming, or indeed painstaking, to justify itself? Interrogating idleness and what might be called an “occupation obsession”.

look busy

I am tasked with writing an accompanying essay to a show entitled look busy. This is the show you are currently at, no doubt. In a way, you are reading this essay while I am writing it.

I have the suspicion that Mr. Lawrence has used italics in the title of this show to convey movement or impetus, perhaps humorously implying urgency without there actually being any. Is he using the writer’s device of not just saying something but saying something? Do the words, imbued with this energy, appear to be busy themselves?

I am sitting at my computer, writing, but am I busy? When I am not actually typing words am I still “writing”? Is writing even work? What defines work? Is it only work if there is money involved? Must it necessarily be difficult, or at least require effort to be considered work? Perhaps at the very least it needs to make something work. It is work if the result of that work is something that works. If so, writing is not work and I am not working.

work /wəːk/ noun activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.

If experienced lawyers are paid more than inexperienced lawyers and the same applies to any other member of the established workforce, then what is it that artists are meant to be gaining experience in? What is an artist’s job?

Yesterday I drove around. It counted as a workday. I attempted nothing more ambitious than call a hairdresser and book an appointment. Not long after that I called back to cancel. I am getting married in a week. It makes me feel as though I have a lot to do and can’t possibly fit anything else in, but the truth is, yesterday I drove around. I must have looked busy.

I have the idea to write a diary of my process in writing this essay. I could title it ‘Work in Progress’, which is a phrase I’ve always found somehow amusing. It would also be clever and appropriate. Am I excited by this idea because, ironically, it contains less work? Am I looking for ways to swap the least effort the most output? Don’t work hard, work smart, say the all-knowing THEY.

THEY also say that less is more. Is it? Lawrence is an interesting case study in this regard. His current show exhibits two very different styles of work. On the one had there is painstaking, methodical, arduous and deliberate work that, as a result, takes a very long time to produce. On the other, Lawrence’s unserious, minimalist paintings seem to betray this intensive approach. Seen together, we have restraint and control beside gay abandon. Lawrence himself, in hand-scrawled notes he photographed and sent to me, has asked whether work that takes him longer should be seen as more valuable.

(Matthew can’t get to the essay right now because he is very busy not getting to the essay. He will return to it at his earliest convenience, which will coincide with the completion of his round of online golf at St. Andrews links. For all intents and purposes, he is working on the essay. He has the volume turned down on his laptop in order to mute the damning clink of virtual golf club on virtual golf ball or the swirling of virtual wind across virtual Scottish beachscape.)

BACK TO A GOOD QUESTION FROM D. LAWRENCE: DOES IT MATTER HOW LONG ONE TAKES TO MAKE AN ARTWORK? IT FOLLOWS TO WONDER WHETHER SOME ARTISTS FILL TIME DOING THINGS TO THEIR ART THAT SABOTAGES ANYTHING PURE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, POSSIBLY AS AN INSECURE REFLEX TO LOOKING AT SOMETHING SIMPLE AND SEEING IT AS INSUFFICIENT. “LESS” BEING IN THIS ESTIMATION NOT ONLY “NOT MORE” BUT ALSO “NOT ENOUGH”. THERE ARE CERTAINLY ALSO THOSE WHO UNDERCOOK THEIR WORK AND HIDE IN THE RELATIVE SAFETY OF HAVING NOT REALLY SAID OR DONE ANYTHING.

This bit is hard to read.

A gentleman named Tim Krieder wrote a popular article for the New York Times in 2012 in which he argued that “busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.” I believe he is quite right, and found the quote to be apt in this context. It is worth asking, however, whether my cutting and pasting of this paragraph can be considered work I have done.

busy /ˈbɪzi/ adjective having a great deal to doBusy as a verb is arguably more pertinent here, meaning in this form to “keep oneself occupied”.  For example: “Dale Lawrence busied himself with the preparation for his show”.  He busied himself. It is clear here that the busyness is coming from him; he is choosing to be busy.

Where are those lines going in Lawrence’s paintings? Does he know? Or has he set out to find out, to draw out, an answer from the line itself? Who is in control? If a line has a purpose or a destination, is it a better line?

Sitting in a busy café. It is busy. This busyness is an orchestration of movement, a manufactured dance conducted by the hiss and grunt of a coffee machine, some light trip hop and a murmur of mumbling.

Have I done enough, or too much?