kate finn's stream of art consciousness

I was in heaven. Hog heaven…with cheese on top. He was away for 5 weeks in South America snowboarding, which meant that technically, I was on holiday from him.

It was a few days into my respite when I began to appreciate what feeling good felt like; I wasn’t tired all the time, being talked at, reminded of my many faults or told how amazing and clever he was. I felt relaxed and at peace for the first time in over a decade. The fact that I felt so much better without him suggested that I was tethered to someone that I couldn’t actually stand.
Two and a half weeks had passed when my peaceful holiday at home was interrupted by a 3am phone call -from him. There had been an armed robbery at the hostel where he was staying and although he had escaped injury he was understandably shaken up by the whole course of events.
I listened to the story, made soothing reassuring responses and empathised as I was expected too, while the whole time the sentence, DAMN they missed! was like a litany on loop, playing inside my head. I then spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince him that he should stay and carry on with his vacation…without success…bitch.

This work was created during a very long conversation on speakerphone, with my friend Tracey. We were discussing the ins and outs of, How to spot the narcissist in your life?

Tracey is one of the most intelligent women I know. She really gets life and has fought against the constraints of family, culture and social expectations in order to thrive. For Tracey, unpicking the past has meant systematically expelling all the narcissists from her life. Family or friend no one has escaped this cull. It’s purpose was to enable her to leave behind, ‘a negative culture of mental health fuckery’ that has held her back.
Love bombing is an expression that is used to describe behaviour where someone attempts to influence another person or a group of people with an excessive amount of attention and affection. It is a commonly used method of grooming by cults, gangs and pimps to gain trust and control their victims. Narcissists also use it to gain control of their interpersonal relationships with partners, family and friends and once trust is assured, this control will turn abusive and debasing in nature.
I have no memory of the mechanics of making this work, but when I ended the call I definitely remember staring at the piece before I photographed it, in a state of mild confusion with the scissors still in my hand and a lot of glue on my trackie-bot-bots.

Of course it’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

-Charles Bukowski

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My 6ft by 4ft art space had gotten a little out of hand and insidiously spread into the bedroom side of my room. This in turn was drowning in clothes to iron, fold and put away, paperwork and coffee cups. I needed to tidy up, but at that moment I really couldn’t be bothered. So I let my creative mood take over and made this piece on my bedside table, while sitting in bed listening to ‘a book at bedtime’, on radio 4.

Tank appeals to all the Artists that I know because according to them this work balances all the elements that you find in art, i.e. line, colour, shape, space, value, form and texture. What intrigues me is if the consensus about Tank is true, then how was something so balanced created in all that domestic chaos.

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I really love this piece. I think it’s good. But my muse hates it because she’s in it.
Should I apologise? Nah…I’m too old and selfish to care what anyone else thinks. I mean who has time for that! And anyway it’s too late to change it now cos the glue is already dry.

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She likened me to a fool, not once but twice. And maybe I was. I had more debt than I had money, I shut up more than I spoke out and I was easily distracted and lazy by nature.

I remember staring at her, my critic, trying to feel shame, anger or maybe guilt but none came. Instead, I felt my fool smile to itself. It had no regrets because it was a creature of no apology. So I mentally digested her words and shrugged, grateful that my fool was the reason why I was an artist and why over the years I had developed a very thick skin.

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Who would think it was normal to put a pile of American sweets, a Japanese ceramic cat, a tin foil covered box and an orange habitat pebble lamp together, let alone to represent the Nativity? Well I did!…at 9:30pm, mid winter and after consuming half a bottle of burgundy.

This was the first work that I ever made and the creative vision in my head was nothing like the end result. Yes, I was a little drunk but all that an excess of alcohol did was to throw into sharp focus, my slap-dash, half-arsed approach to life. It showcases a personality that has loads of imagination but avoids doing the bits that they find boring, or time consuming (i.e. detail). Not surprisingly my pragmatic mother hates it.
I’m amazed that I had the balls to print this piece so large even though that in itself was immensely satisfying. The truth about this work is that going big felt good.
Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.-Charles Bukowski.

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As a child I spent many hours exploring the nooks and crannies of theatres, art centres and sports centres. I often used the ruse of needing the toilet or water in order to lose the accompanying adult or older child.
This work captures those moments, where the freedom of finding the unexpected and unusual around the next corner or through the next door is not questioned, and accepted as normal by the child.
When I look back at these experiences as the adult me, I realise I saw many things that were not what they seemed.

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I have always been able to visualise myself living on the set of the 1976 film, Logan’s Run. I’m not a fan of the films plot because everyone over the age of 30 is culled and that is a monstrous dystopian idea. However, my dislike of the storyline bypasses any genocide outrage and actually stems from knowing that I simply wouldn’t cope very well being surrounded by all those unbearably full of themselves, idealistic twenty-somethings. I was such a pain in my own ass at that age, that the thought of reliving it or watching others live it, makes me nauseous.

My utopia would be me, alone, with maybe some pets, on the set of Logan’s run, sat drinking my favourite gin ( monkey 47) and tonic with lots of ice and a slice of grapefruit in the glass. Cheers!

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