Pilgrims on the Road to Meaning: Rob Lyon
In his Reith lectures Grayson Perry called artists “Pilgrims on the Road to Meaning”. At New Blood Art we wanted to gain insight into our artists personal roads to meaning so we asked them 3 questions:
The moment when you are at a party (for example) and someone asks: ‘What do you do?’ You say, ‘I’m an artist.’ Can you remember when that moment first happened for you and tell us about it?
The private view of the group show — my first exhibition in late summer 2015. The paintings were commissioned for the show and exhibited alongside some brilliant, established artists. Prior to this, I was reluctant to declare myself ‘an artist’ for fear of being questioned on what I had done to justify such an exalted and loaded title – despite having sold work for a number of years. At the private view, which saw me confirmed as one of the contributing artists, those anxieties evaporated.. I happily confirmed to guests that I was an artist. At the gallery’s next exhibition, where my paintings had been displayed there was an Ivon Hitchens painting, which just about sealed it and I continue to call myself an artist, although I still prefer to describe myself as a painter!
Do you have any rituals or routines to help the creative process?
I’m wary of formulae in the making of art, so ritual or routine is never consciously followed (no doubt I’ve a list of habitual processes to which I’m blind – you would have to ask my wife!). That said, music has been and remains an integral part of my life (I also compose music), and my studio rarely falls quiet for music. I tend to listen to minimal (modern classical, ambient, drone etc.) which lends itself to introspection, meditation, and all those other words suggesting a concentration and/or dislocation of mind. Music has that ability to surround its listener in a cocoon – a studio within a studio, perhaps. This is important to me, before I start painting. Once inside that cocoon, it’s Liberty Hall.
What was the best piece of advice you were given?
It came from outside fine art (I generally find wisdom an outsider): from Brian Eno, who I believe offered the wise words ‘honour your mistake as a hidden intention’. It’s spot-on. It seems to me that an artist who develops is the artist who recognises the ostensible mistake, whether consciously or unconsciously made, for the inventive step. My own experience is that in the making of every piece of art there arrives a critical moment when you are compelled to take a risk, perhaps even make a true mistake from which the work cannot recover – from my own experience, however, taking it tends to produce the best results.