On being "edgy"

I’ve had my work described as “edgy” twice in the past week or so. By other artists, too.

It did surprise me. I hadn’t thought I was that edgy. I thought I was just doing art.

Maybe they meant edgy for the rural backwater I live in. Maybe the real edgy stuff happens elsewhere. Maybe its all relative. Or not.

There is for sure a mainstream art here, a very safe, don’t-scare-the-horses art. I definitely feel I don’t belong. But I always felt like that. Didn’t belong in the bank. Didn’t belong in the quango. Didn’t belong in the working class neighbourhood I grew up in. Don’t belong in the middle class one I live in now. I’ve lived my life on the edges, so edgy I guess is just normalcy for me. It’s just my human condition, isn’t it?

And I can’t resist the temptation to poke the status quo. So I added the picture above from a dozen years back when I was in a corporate world. OK. I’m edgy.

I’m also in the happy position that I don’t need to chase an income any more. So I don’t have to heed the siren calls of customers’ dollars. “Do it like this,” they say, “And we’ll buy you.” So I can say what I need to say, Put all the soul I want into it and adopt a totally take-it-or-leave-it attitude. And some people like it, and are willing to give my stuff house room. That’s all the encouragement I need. One or two people hunt me out or stumble upon me by accident, and by some miracle kinda get what I’m saying.

As irritating as it is to be out on the edge of everything, in my heart of hearts I know that I don’t want to be mainstream. I don’t want the baggage that comes with it. I don’t want the compromise and I don’t want to be on the committee. For in the mainstream, there’s always a committee.