putterings 437 < 438 > 439 index
a kind of running in place, doing my lengths; petty distractions
The contemporary artist Michael Smith talks of his tendency for puttering ‘a kind of running in place’ as he describes it. ‘I embrace distraction’, he comments. Smith moves about the studio space touching things, walking, postponing starting the work in hand. This act of putting things off by using petty distractions may be a form of limbering up, mentally, creatively, and through seeing and touching, in readiness for conscious focus in the work (Jacob and Grabner 2010 : 28).
As proposed by Oppezzo, the notion of moving while thinking creatively is not bound to a specific environment. The British painter Katy Moran provides this example where thinking and moving while swimming has provided a creative solution for a problematic painting”
“I had made a painting, and there were interesting parts of it, but it wasn’t working as a whole. I was doing my lengths [swimming] and I thought, I could take the painting off the canvas and cut it up, cut it in half, and then start playing around with those two half bits of canvas . . . that just came to me when I was swimming. I don’t know if I would have thought of it if I’d been in the studio looking at the work.” (Amiersadeghi 2012 : 158)
—
ex Pip [Philippa Anne] Dickens, “A Choreography of the Senses — The Painter’s Studio,” in Ian Heywood, ed., Sensory Arts and Design (2017) : 239-253
google books preview (pp249-250) : link
direct to publisher page (and abstract) : link
—
Pip Dickens, artist’s website : link