Jack Vettriano & The Body Of Work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend I was in Glasgow as part of a 50^th birthday celebration with family when as part of our weekend itinerary we went to an exhibition of paintings by Jack Vettriano at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow.

I must admit his name was not familiar to me and I was simply going with the flow. But when I walked into the gallery and caught sight of the first set of paintings I instantly realised I was familiar with his paintings and somehow they had made their way into my psyche whether through a news clip or visual memory the image of the butler and maid standing on the beach holding an umbrella over a couple dancing was not new but already embedded. In fact the painting buried somewhere deep in my psyche was Jack Vettriano famous painting the Singing Butler that sold at Sotheby’s for £750,000.

I had arrived early to the exhibition before my family opting to take a taxi and therefore go at a more leisurely pace so I wandered around the exhibition for a few moments not sure where to start. There was lots of text accompanying many of the paintings and plenty of video clips and short films. It was not long before Vetttriano’s voice bellowing through the television screen of one video drew me in and I sat for ten minutes captivated by this stranger’s story and journey as a painter.

His story is fascinating.

• He left school at 16 to become an engineer but a girlfriend gave him a set of colour paints for his 21st, which saw the beginning of his life as a painter and artist.
• He didn’t go to university saying on camera that he felt had he gone on to do a fine Arts degree he would have been hemmed in and told what and how to draw and paint from someone else’s perspective. Instead he set about and over a number of years taught himself to paint. I could really identify with this as having completed a Masters in Creative Writing and Personal Development I left that course unsure and lacking confidence in my ability to ever publish a book again.
• He changed his surname so not to be confused with his earlier career. Now that got me thinking!
• He struck lucky (note not without having drawn and painted for many years prior) when his first two painting submitted to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1989 sold and that marked the beginning of his career as an artist.
• What became clear as I absorbed his many paintings in this exhibit is that Vettriano is a prolific painter. Here was a live example of what Pam Slim writes about in her latest book, Body Of Work: Finding The Thread That Ties Your Story Together of concrete evidence of what it means to generate a body of work.
• His body of work included video clips and short films; there was plenty of text also documenting the history and the story of both the paintings and the painter. The gift shop was a shrine to high quality products and merchandise all branded with Vettriano’s work including what appeared to be a silk-screen print design umbrella with the choice of images of two of Vettriano’s most famous paintings.

What I admired about Vettriano was his ability to create and generate on different platforms. Not only did he think and speak in images his body of work also includes the spoken word and the written word. There are so many different platforms and mediums for us to communicate and share the body of our work with.

Only this week I came across an Installation at the South Bank Centre in London entitled Coat Tails by Bernadette Russell:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“An installation of donated coats with a twist: each donor write a letter to the person who is to receive the coat and leaves it in the pocket.” This is both art, creativity, writing ………

Writers are no longer confined to just the space on the blank page. Our platforms have grown, have multiplied and are growing more and more by the day.

Technology when interacted with creatively can be the friend of the artist, the entrepreneur, the academic, the person in business and the person on the shop floor. It has potential for everyone, which is about creation rather than deadening. Alas many of us have chosen to be become slaves to technology with little connection to how it can and does breathe life into our worlds and our work. Okay I may be going a bit off point here so back to Vettriano.

His body of work inspired me last weekend. I’ve always been keen to collect quotes and information from other genre’s outside of the areas I tend to work in which is coaching, leadership, management and personal development. Now I can see how slowly every thing is becoming so connected. Science with spirituality, neuroscience with everyday thinking etc.

Just today as I was putting the finishing touches to an e-book I realized that there are so many possible ways I can take this to print that makes what I have written an interactive message rather than one that is static on the page. People want connection and writers want to connect so when we extend beyond our preferred mode of communicating we widen that possibility.

So no longer am I primarily the writer on the page, I am the face on the video, the voice on the interview, the creator of spaces for inspired learning, the weaver of rituals and ceremony on workshops and retreats. These are some of the ways that your own body of work comes to life or has life breathed into it.

I hope you will take time to consider what your body of work will be in 2014. Perhaps Pam Slim’s new book will do the trick for you or someone you know. I’ve worked with Pam in the past and I know that whatever Pam is behind is the real deal. Click here to pre-order Pam’s new book:

Make time over the Xmas period to plan and vision what your body of work will consist of for the New Year.

Don’t worry about whether it’s been done before, no one will do it the way you do it.

Each of us have our own story to tell and by generating a body of work you tell your story.

I’ll have some goodies to support you with the year ahead in the next week or so.