Sundays, am I right?

 Very low .  Dug too deep into myself and now... well, the floodgates aren't open, but a steady trickle of bad feelings and memories now provide a background noise to my life, all the worse when I am on my own like this.

The constant pressure of 'You should be doing something more productive' when the less productive things are music and reading, relaxing and just trying to switch off.  No, I should be working, producing, during all my awake hours.  How can a mind keep going like this?  It's not healthy, but even knowing it, I can't stop it.

Since finishing the last torso, I've produced nothing for university, I simply cannot work at home, and the pods are too isolating.  I'm not allowed to book workshop time yet, and my peers are not in regularly.  Even before the new lockdown, which means I suspect those students commuting from further afield will just not bother, three hours a week, spread across twenty students, means your chances of crossing paths with someone, much less being able to spend time with them, is small.  This is not what I signed up for.  

Memories.  Of a brief period when I was at least...  I don't even know if I was happy. Content?  Or was I as unhappy as now, but memory lies to make me feel it was a slightly better time? I can't trust my mind.  My work heads into using symbols of suicide more overtly.  Sex and drugs and rock n roll and the incumbent death associated with it.  Death and suicide that has touched my life this year, and I have not been allowed to close that door, and I do not resent the people responsible.  They hurt me so much, what more was one more gut punch?

A lot, it seems.  The selfishness and fear of others, and of what?  Of me?  What the hell can I do?  What the hell did I do? Enough to justify all this?

And here and now I am lost and alone and afraid of the people who reach out.  Because I am a terrible person who will do something so bad that I deserve all this.

And still I am not working.  How does one channel all this hopelessness into art? With but a short divorce of time from my work earlier this year, it is all but meaningless to me, a collection of stuff that just means I passed time. Nothing has meaning.

Fuck.

I still miss her.  I still love her, in that stupidly hurtful way. An instant connection, a feeling that this person gets me and makes me feel so right, even when as friends and having that severed is worse than any cold turkey and has lasted so much longer.  Years of turmoil and pain and I can't let go of that one time someone got me.  Or at least, enough to make me feel something other than loathing for myself. 

The vulnerability of the spoken word

I have had many thoughts about the spoken word/video piece I created. (preliminary title: Hidden In Plain Sight)

(https://www.instagram.com/p/CGyQWVqJTeI/)

 It does not seem to have gained much traction amongst my peers, I wonder if I should have specified that it was a spoken word work, and not relied on natural curiosity? That at least is a lesson to be taken on board for next time. The piece itself was actually very taxing for me to make and post.  I am not comfortably putting my own self out into the world.  My voice, my feelings, in such a brazen manner. So it was a huge positive that I was able to do that.  Whether that is repeatable. I am unsure. Certainly the source for the piece is somewhat exhausted now, as I shall attempt to explain shortly.

The words I spoke.  They had no preplanned emotional expression, I just wanted to read them and see how they fell.  Thinking on this, I then wondered how they would have come out had I expressed them in a different environment.  My original plan was to recite them while walking at night, recording my steps through a rainy city, the lights reflecting off of wet surfaces, but that proved to be too difficult, logistically at this point in time.  But would those words have had different cadence, different subtle intonations, had that been the situation?  They certainly sounded different, more broken, in the environment they were expressed in. 

I could, one supposes, take those same words and repeat them in different places, if just to see how different they can sound, but I am unsure of repeating myself.  It’s not something I feel comfortable with.  Familiarity could potentially dull the impact, even if new facets could emerge from new locations.  It’s something I need to think about.  After all, the songs themselves would have been performed in multiple locations, to multiple reactions, across the course of their existences.

The words themselves relate to my emergent theme of love, loss and obsession.  An ex friend made a mix CD for me, many moons ago, when that was still the done thing.  I took a line from each song in

order, in an attempt to see if a narrative could be crafted from it.  That there was one, and that it emerged so strongly was a pleasant surprise. 

The way that even the German language line seemed to fit perfectly into the ‘right’ place in the narrative… it makes me wonder about the person who made the CD even more now.  The work was fed on obsession, and feeds my obsession in turn, an ouroboros of feeling and emotion and art. Rather nice, really.

So, I am recontextualizing words, lines from songs.  Strip them from their original context almost completely.  No music, no cadence, no rhythm, not even the context of the verses and choruses they were originally part of. But keep them as a whole, like the CD they came from, and try and find an emotional newness.  Fueled by the person who made the CD, her touch, thoughts, intent still present, but stripped and changed.  These are deep concepts for me, at least.

I have never considered myself a performer or actor.  That might have to change.  If I am still not comfortable seeing myself on camera, maybe I can learn to live with my voice.

Heart beats faster from inside.  Thought it was a big charade.... truth of the matter is I'm complicated. You're as straight as they come. Take it away, I never had it anyway.  You think it's all for show? But this is the only way I know.  When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy inside you dies?  You can feel his disease! So, are we lost or do we know which direction we should go? Now you've disappeared, I hear you breathe so far from here, and now it's starting to rain.  We'll tell lies about each other. I love you.  I hate you. I can't get around you. We'll never be the same again, never feel this way again.  Speak the truth about me.  It's taken so long to come true, it's just a kiss away. Whatever tomorrow brings... tut mir nicht leid. Pick me up now, I need you so bad.

But see how deep the bullet lies.

Spotify link to CD playlist

To Reflect

 All right, lets reflect.

Time to sit and think about my work for a bit, what's working, what's not, and why.  And maybe work out why I'm struggling to get going again.

Broadly speaking, my art can be split into two groups.  The work I make to derive an emotional response from myself, and the work I make to derive an emotional response from others.

Within those groups: From the first; I make art based on a person I am incapable of getting over, and cities at night, from the second; more conceptual, larger ideas form.  Installations, lights and sounds.

What links them?  Lights in the darkness.  Vibrant colour in the night.

The outlier? The work based on a person.  A part of the work, yet seperate from it.

Is there a reconciliation?  Or must one strand remain seperate to the rest, as much as that person is seperate to me now?

Where do they connect?  Where does the person fit in the city, is she light or is she dark?  Is she both, the unifying filament?

And an idea presents itself.

So anyway, what do I 'like' about my work thus far? What works about the work? 

In terms of the clay pieces, the hand crafted look to them is working for me.  Ties into my summer work of touch and memory of touch.  My fingerprints on the clay, moulded from memories of her skin.  There's something to enjoy there. I've done a lot of erotic drawings this summer, but the clay pieces are almost erotic to make.  

So, next stage.  I want to make bigger, and extend further down the body.  Bring more of the curve of the hip in.  And then we shall see where that takes us.   I'm not keen on just making a sculpture of the female form, that's a bit passé, but something that evokes the feeling of a Goldin photograph?  Dirty and grimy and sexy and real?  I can get behind that.

A negative however is the scale.  The scale works for me and where I'm working.  But without the advantage of being a more true to life scale the piece edges more towards abstraction.  Not in itself a hundred percent bad, but enough to lose some of the essence of the pieces I'm working on.

Soon I'll start another, with the same general shape as now, but more integrated to another idea, when the things I need arrive in the post.  Further thoughts on that when it happens.

I am no sculptor, and I think that helps.  I'm having to make my own mistakes and find my own solutions, and that's fine, that's fun.  This is better than being given rules, I think.  If I do work bigger and need to use an armature, that's where more expert advice will need to be sought but for now, on my small scale, I think I'm good.

I have stumbled across the Tokyo works of Cody Ellingham.  Work I like.  Lines and shapes and neon and darkness and cities.  I need to get to Tokyo.

Brave New World

 Quick check in, it's a while, hasn't it?

Like most people, the ongoing Covid on again/off again lockdown measures have taken a toll.  I have only seen two people socially since March, and one of those was a meeting to compare notes on dealing with a part time return to University.  Much needed and a good time, but hardly the drink and drug fueled bacchanalia I am (allegedly) used to.

Still.  Here we are now, with the dawning of a new year of Official Art Practice ahead of me.  I am, as ever uncertain of my practice or how I'm going to make it with effectively no studio and no peers on a day to day basis. I suppose, I just need to start and see what transpires.  

That start will happen on Friday, my first three hours in a studio, and assuming it is remembered I am there, my first work based conversation with the tutors. Hopefully the first step on a path will present itself.

More interestingly, the possibility of doing the weekly critical reflection as something other than a written piece has been floated.  I am considering options, and at some point want to try and vlog the reflection.  I've been tying with the idea of getting some video work done, and this seems like a fine chance to experiment there.  I just need to deal with my self esteem and body dysmorphic issues and it's plain sailing. 

That'll do for now.  I'll try and check in again on Friday or Saturday, and really get into a routine with this.  

Salut.

What is Good Art, anyway?

 Good art is subculture

Good art is counterculture

It should shock, confuse and upset

Deal with transgressions and push the viewpoints of those more comfortable

Art is not safe

I feel that we, as a culture, have stagnated over the last twenty years.  I'm not sure why, but people (plural,masses) have become lazy, and with that laziness, seeking a desire for safeness.  Nostalgia wraps us in a warm comforting blanket and tells us shh, it's safe here.  And we have built a society that has engendered that in us all.

In previous decades, politicians would not have gotten away with the things they do now, where failure and incompetence is rewarded by failing upwards.  A man like Boris Johnson, a man so incapable of anything approaching common morals that he cannot even tell us how many children he has and so incompetent that the ability to use a zipline is beyond him, a buffoon of the highest order, a racist flag wrapped around an shell of blubber and noise, whose soul, should he have one, is merely an echo chamber where the word 'me' endlessly bounces off the walls, a man whose career has been built on telling lies and stoking intolerance against anyone Not Like Us for no other reason than it was easier than doing real work, can continually be fired from every job he has held and yet somehow become Prime Minister of The United Kingdom because of his sole ability to parrot a three word slogan.

How did we get here?  A society so comfortable that merely marching in the street against, well, anything*, is seen as dangerously violent and to be stamped out.  And we let them.  there is no voice of dissent anymore.  There is nothing on a national level to counteract the narrative.  How did we get here?

Baby Boomers got comfortable and via the process of the older generation dying out moved into positions of power. They saw the welfare state and saw not that it was Good, but that it was Theirs and tried to remove it, so that no-one else could have it.  The lure of the twenty year nostalgia cycle kicked in, and everything was better, wasn't it back then?  Music was real music, there weren't so many blacks or gays around, and they didn't demand days and months and flags and what do you mean Churchill was a racist?  The man was a hero! Not educated enough to have a nuanced view and too lazy to try.  Education breeds communism.  The status quo (white,straight, comfortable, male, us) is quite good enough, thank you.

Good art is violent

The protests that this summer has seen in support of Black Lives Matter have been a good thing.  From slavery to Stonewall and beyond the whist cishet has been nothing but damaging.  we, as white people, close our eyes to the damage done by our forefathers and their colonial warmongering and racist genocides.  Churchill may have lead this country against the Nazi's but he was as bad as Hitler to the Indians and an incompetent field commander who got thousands of Australian and New Zealanders killed at Gallipoli.  The bad must be taken into account and paid for.  We, as people who live in Great Britain, and especially if you're proud of that fact, must be accountable for the crimes our forefathers committed, even if only in trying to make this world a better, safer place for those we oppressed to live in.  And we do that, maybe, by starting to take down the statues of people whose only contribution to history was to be a slaver and to exploit people of colour.  We need to look at ourselves and recognise the good fortune we've had to not be born black, gay, trans, autist, not because those people are lesser, but because it has made our path easier.  And everyone deserves the same chances you've had through simple accident of birth. We need to hold our leaders to account for selling bombs and guns to countries that use them in the name of religious and poltical intolerance, and we need to stop blaming the refugees that result for simply wanting to leave a place where a wedding, or a school bus or a hospital could be the next target.  we need to hold our leaders to account for pushing violence in countries far away from us, for destabilising countries and whole global regions simply because they do not agree with us.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.  The dossier was a lie. Tony Blair should be tried at the Hague as a war criminal, but instead he's lauded as a centrist voice of reason. This is wrong and we should not be afraid to say it.
We should not be afraid to say it.  We should not be afraid to make our voices heard.  Black Lives Matter is not an arguable phrase unless you're a racist.  Through ignorance, laziness, or comfort, but still a racist.  Trans Rights is not an arguable phrase unless you're a transphobe.  LGBTQ+ Rights are not up for debate.  Until all are equal, none are equal.  Until Black lives matter, no lives matter.

I'm just an artist.  I create art that funnels my world view through my art.  I'm bisexual, autistic, polyamorous, aromantic.  A hedonist, socialist, and anti authoritarian. A survivor of abuse and neglect.  I don't think I'm a very good writer.  I'm just an artist.

As an artist my work reflects me.  My hopes and desires, my way of thinking.  I can't do much  to change the world.  Art has become ever more codifed, become a thing that is only for Those That Understand. And that's not something that's going to change unless we can get postmodernism taught in schools, the same as social studies, and not taking the Daily Mail headlines for face value is taught to our children.  All I can do is be true to myself, and keep fighting my corner.  For you.  For myself.  For us all.

Good art is good.

*Well, anything that even vaguely sniffs of being left wing.  Want to protect some statues or Get Brexit Done?  That is, apparently, fine.

I'm not here to paint pretty pictures

So yeah, art philosophy problems creeping up on me again. Allow me a ramble, as I get thoughts out of my head and onto light.

I fervently believe that art should have a message, a point beyond 'look at the pretty picture' and tend to be very dismissive of any art that does not fit into that.

And yet, and yet, I feel that I am as guilty of falling into the trap of making pretty art. Or at least art that might just 'look' that way, unless you understand the reasons behind it. And I am not good at letting the reasons behind my work out into the world. Should art require homework? Homework that the artist may not have made available?

Art is interpretation, and each person interprets art differently. I am not content with that, I am trying to impart a feeling, an emotion, a disquiet or disconnect. Impose an interpretation without forcing it?

Compromise my vision? No, as egotistical as that may sound. Art as a way of showing myself to the world, begging for understanding, but never giving the viewer the clues they need to unlock the meaning, the message the feeling? Sounds about right.

And now I take an extra level in obfuscation. Titles, where given, are now being written in a sort of.. techspeak? A mixture of letters numbers and symbols. It's all very Reanimation. Not a place I thought I'd take inspiration...

Paintings a grungy industrial ethics and shiny cyberpunk titling. Drawings of missing memories and emotions and feelings, a stolen kiss you can still feel in the darkest hour. Sounds and music, noises and samples and abusive figures. Spinning circles coiled tighter than an ouroboros, dancing in the gaps between time. Where are we all, in the end? Anyway. Art as message, as meaning. Am I wrong to think this? And why is my message so overwhelmingly "Someone please understand me"

One of the reasons, I think, that I've liked the red works of Rothko. Works of such infinite depth and complexity, when I first saw it it was like being engulfed, smothered in warmth and sensual suppression. A pleasure almost physical that I have tried to find in the rest of my life and experience with the people around me.

I came close to finding this peace once. And I don't even know if I trust that memory. Memories are fickle, they fade, they change. Hence the place my drawings have gone.

While thinking of Rothko, I found this. In it, the actor Alfred Molina plays Rothko and says so much better than I what I am trying to create.

Pithy Title

The art grows difficult.  It swings from feeling like I'm exposing myself too much, to not being personal, to being just a step away from pornography.

I mean, I'm dealing with a theme that justifies this, and as art these drawings are fine.  I worry about what other people will think when they see them, that they'll judge me badly and not want to have anything to do with me.

Example 1: How much room for interpretation is there?

And yet.

Still, I'm considering selling prints.  Get me an Etsy store set up, maybe?

I'm running out of images from my muse, and when I just use random images from the internet, it doesn't feel right.  Given I am not in contact with one person and the other is not comfortable with this, I'm not sure where to go next.

I have found a couple of online models who are aesthetically in the right ballpark but I don't have the money to actually work with them, and it feels wrong to use their likenesses for anything other than these sketches.  Even for them, if I'm honest, but needs must.

Meanwhile, moving back into photography...

It's pretty, but not sure where it goes.  Another path to follow, so I've bought another pinwheel to try and progress things.  

The Ace Of Pentacles and The Four Of Swords

This is gonna be a disjointed one.

Lets get the hands thoughts out of the way first.  A  potential problem occurs to me, in that on some of these, the hands don't seem to indicate a complete image. Example: 

This is one distinct image.  I know it is, I drew as such.  And yet, I'm still seeing it as two seperate drawings on one page.  If even my eye is fooled, then what of someone coming at this cold?  

The obvious solution of course, is to connect them somehow.  Maybe add more lines from the body?  

Quick sketch of a solution.

Does this make things too obvious?  The more elements I introduce the less room for interpretation there is.  Is that important?
 Is taking away visual freedom in order to guide the viewer down a path worth it? How far can you take it before it becomes too obvious?  Before the viewer has no paths but the prescribed one?  And yet....

I want to enforce a feeling. But a feeling isn't obvious, at least, not to me.  I don't want to be obvious.  I've never been able to be obvious, or is honest the right term? The risk of overthinking is strong.

Feelings are strange things.  As I may have mentioned previously, I was in London just prior to the Lockdown and looking through the national gallery.  Room after room of famous Important artworks.  And I felt nothing.  Nothing stirred me.  They were just... pictures. I used to feel things from art, and indeed, I remember doing so with a work at the Tate last year, but since then?  

So how do I present these physical feelings in a way that communicates best to a viewer?

So the other thing I need to try and work through.  Matters of consent.  I created art from images taken with a friend.  I had full consent for that, and for the creation of the work.  But she did not like the finished artworks, so I've pulled them.  No worries, no hassle.  That's what consent means.  I'm disappointed that I don't get to show the art, but I'm not disappointed that she wasn't comfortable with it.  

Models Addenum:

"I don’t think non-consent is an issue, photos were taken by him with my consent and therefore owned by him. It wasn’t a case of not liking the finished artworks but not liking the visual representation of myself within them. I’m disabled through chronic illness, a collagen defect means that my joints aren’t held in place properly and so I feel “broken”. The artwork took that further into visual representation, parts of my body not connected to others and very much reinforcing how I feel about myself…”broken”. Being confronted with your inner thoughts in visual form is difficult to content with and so when asked my opinion, the only words I could form were “I don’t like it”.

I don’t think this would be a problem for other models or photos being used as inspiration in this way. I think it’s a very personal issue that most wouldn’t be aware of or consider when creating art like this. I think continuing with this theme is a good idea as it raises awareness of issues like disability and visual representation, and how an individual’s perceptions can be wholly different to intent." 

The problem is, the work I'm creating is based on images I created with someone else.  Who was with me when the source images were taken (obviously) and who also said yes to my creating art from them.  But who doesn't now have the opportunity to give consent to the final outcomes.  Who might not be happy to have themselves exposed in this way.  There isn't any facial recognition involved yet, but the marks are there for those who know what they're looking for.  

I worry about the fallout from this.  Is non-consensual art a thing?  And how will affect things if we were to start talking again?  Part of my reasons for working from these sources is to try and deal with the overwhelming feelings of loss and rejection that I've been left with, but is this right?  To use the images of someones body without them able to give consent to the finalised image?

I don't know.

Further Thoughts

One of the interesting things about this is the use of negative space.  The absence of shapes and forms, the absence of the people.  All that remains is the memory of touch.

One of the things I have to bear in mind on a case by case basis is just how far do the arms extend?  In an ideal world, I'd only be drawing the fingertips, but then you lose visual language.  The story, the message is lost. So it's a compromise from the start, in a way.  

I like the fact that the actions are not obvious.  But there has to be enough shape there for the hint of a story to unfold.  To see that these are hands.  But is it just one person?  Two?  More?  How close are these people, is there intimacy or distance? What stories are being told in peoples heads?

The next week or so I am moving on from hands, to lips and mouths, possibly feet.  Feet I am less sure of, as that may be too unrelated.  I simply like drawing feet.  But they are still a part of some of my cherished physical memories, albeit as a passive actor so... lets see how that works going forwards.

The ultimate form of this, as my uncomplicated animal brain understands it, to make people understand the feeling of this would be to literally strip them down, blindfold them and then touch them in the ways that touch has been or is being deployed in these works, in my memories.  Then there would be an understanding, and the participants would  then have memories of their own to take home and live with.  Obviously and understandably there are issues of trust and consent here, that cannot be overcome, so in a way I am working from a place of initial compromise, to an ideal that can only ever be compromised.  It kind of fits.

In a way what I am thinking of is the opposite of artists such as Milo Moire or Marina Abramovic, whose works invite audience participation in the opposite direction.  Here is the artist, they said.  Here is your invitation.  What will you do with it? Abramovic's The Artist Is Present was the unquestionably braver and most groundbreaking of the two and involved the possibilty of actual harm, even death, to herself, while Moire's Mirror Box (NSFW) was less obviously dangerous, but more intimate and sexual.  Moire blurs a line between art and pornography, and yet still draws from from Abramovic, as I draw a line on a further tangent.

Thoughts for the future, anyway.  For now, until I can move again (currently under Governmental shielding orders and having a busted knee) I shall continue to draw the feeling of the touch of my memories.  

It's Time To Get Sexy, No If's, And's or But's

Okay so it's been a productive day.  Taking an idea and thanks to my new toy actually being able to rattle out a fair few ideas.  I approve.  Biggest operational problem is that it's so hot in here and leaving sweaty smears on the paper.  This can be fixed in Photoshop but it's still something I'm going to have to sort in real life.  For these sketches and playing about, no worries though.  

New toy: lightbox!

More adult, but in a non-explicit way.  Sex and sexuality, sensuality and memory.  Interesting starting point.  

Crazy minimalist.  Don't know how well this is going to play with everything else.  

Anyway. so I do not forget: What the hell am I thinking?

I guess, this all starts with the pandemic.  Being kept on my own since March has given me a lot of time to think and, well, remember.  The things I miss the most are the people I miss the most.  I miss the feeling of being around people.  Online communication is no substitute, for the most part it's a lot harder for me. 

Thoughts contract.

I miss people.  Persons.  I miss the feel of being with people.  I miss the feeling of people.  I miss feeling people. 

People touch you, in different ways.  Emotionally, intellectually, sadistically, abusively.  but the one I miss most, the one I focused on: physically. 

This is where it gets a bit more personal. I am an 'always switched on' person.  I cannot relax, or stop thinking about things.  I worry, I stress, and nothing can stop this.  Nearly nothing.

I'm also a very sexual person.  And not just in a hurr hurr horny way. The act of sex, the ways people express themselves, the various ways sex has developed as a cultural force.  The why's and what's of sex.  I am an intellectually sexual person. (note to self, this still sounds off, rewrite later) I am fascinated by sex and sexuality, sensuality and why people do what they do, why I do what I do.  I am curious about everything to do with sex.

So sexuality is one of my driving urges.  I am closest to those I am intimate with.  It makes life complicated, and I am still hurting from that going wrong.  But here's the thing:

Fingertips trace memories on my skin.

These works are memories.  If you close your eyes and remember how a person touches you, then these are a pictorial representation of that.  Tenderness, caressing, forcefulness, intimacy.  Yes, that dreaded, terrifying, wonderful intimacy that I avoid at all costs now.

As before when my clay work was more creating my memories into shape, so this is in a similar vein.  

There is an ambiguity to these pieces, they are just hands.  What are they doing?  To my eyes, it is obvious, but to those unfamiliar?  It's hard to find images that fit my memories that are still clear enough to isolate the handiwork. 

Where does it go from here?  Well, I need some more varied source images to play with.  These are good, but will get to be too hetronormative for my tastes soon.  Then it might turn into a case of upscaling them?  Selling prints?  Oh, so Capitalist of me.  

For now, I'll just build up a stockpile of images.  These might even be able to be used in the screenprint workshop in some way.  Just keep pushing forwards and see where the steps take me.

Self hate for fun and profit

Okay, personal post.  I haven't slept,and I'm waiting for some meds to kick in so I can eat.  Bit of time with nothing to do but think and write.

I am struggling right now.  Overwhelmed and angry.  Lonely and sad. The days stretch away filled with emptiness, and that doesn't even make sense.  I feel so very lost, and uncertain of my place in it all.  I hate myself and everything about me, and the fact that nothing ever changes me. I can't go out.  I have no outside to go to.  My neighbour checked in on me and told me I look like a caveman and that's the only real human contact I've had in months.  I'm not good at talking to people, and online interaction doesn't feel real.  I miss having another soul around me.  A specific soul?  I talk to people in my head, a memory made manifest, except it's not a memory because it never happened.  A longing made memory, fantasies of a life that even before this pandemic I had been forced to lose.  And maybe would have remained that way but for a chance encounter.

I'm losing myself in all this.  I don't even drink to stave off the loneliness and boredom anymore.  I'm too poor, or at least, I'm afraid of being too poor.  The threat of being cut off from the government safety net looms large and I am rationing out what is an 'acceptable' spend, yet I find myself comfort eating and spending more than I should, or what I feel I should.  And so, I hate myself some more.

I hate my neediness, my constant need for validation, to be told that not just I matter, but that what I do is good.  And even then, top tier good.  I have to be the best.  And told it.  Such a fragile ego.  

Honestly, I don't even feel like I'm a very good person with all this. How can I?

I don't know myself very well.  I feel like... you know when you meet someone for the first time and they just give that vaguely unsettling feeling?  You don't like them, don't trust them, but you don't know why?  That's how I feel about myself all the time.  Constantly second guessing myself and trying to be all things for all people because I don't have a sense of self to anchor to.

I don't know how long I'll post this for, or even if I will.

Update 07.06.2020

So, who wants to know what I think of whats going on right now?

#BlackLivesMatter (2020, Procreate, digital)

And if you disagree, get the fuck away from me and my art.

Moving onto personal stuff, I've found it increasingly hard to create these last few weeks or so.  The heat and lonliness that online only contact cannot compensate for have thrown me for a bit of six.  I have ideas that I want to work on, but I just cannot.  It's a pain.

The best I can do is make dumb little digital art pieces like this:

Abstract #1 (2020, F12019, Playstation4)

Which have been created on a Playstation in the photo mode of a racing game.  At some point I think I should get it into photohop and try and remove the game stamp, but is that honest? Which again makes me wonder: What the fuck is art anyway?  Crippled by doubt and my own lack of self esteem, I need validation and that is the one thing I do not seem to get.  Or at least keep.  My narcissistic ego is going to be the death of me.

The last thing I created.  A TF comic round robin affair.  A group of different comic creatives all take turns in continuing a story.  No-one knows where the story will go after they have finished their page.  My pencils, layouts, inks and script, and two friends letters and colours

.https://twitter.com/tfroundrobin

for the rest of it.  It's ongoing over the summer and for as long as we can maintain interest.

Post Assessment Musing

Well, it's a pass.  The first half of the first year of my Fine Art degree has been cleared, no problems.  Biggest takeaway is that I need to find a theme.  

Which I have, but it's a fairly nebulous one, an idea of a feeling.  You cannot tell people how you're feeling and expect them to truly understand.  Your experiences are yours alone and no matter how hard or how well you explain them they remain a private experience that others may only guess at.  Similarly, you can never truly know what another is experiencing.  It is the way of things.

So, I need to bring theme to a form, that I can push and explore.  I think that is the angle I'm expected to push.  Which I can do.  That would be easy, but it would be boring.  It's there already, I form I have explored in paint, clay and an abortive attempt at solarprint.  (Thanks Covid, for curtailing that).  I have already made plans to integrate the clay and a separate wire sculpture.  I need to make more of the clay pieces, but they have taken so long to be fired (the first one was fun to make but so badly done that THREE MONTHS drying time wasn't enough for it to be fired safely) that it's make me wary of going back.  That and the sensual experience I had being something I'm very self conscious about...

    

I think that's a theme.

But can I commit to it?  That's the question.  I do tend to feel stifled when restricting to one thing, I kinda need to explode in all directions.  Well, I have a few weeks now to ponder my next step, and then a year to find a theme.

Mid Pandemic Flailings

Artistically, I'm flailing.  Not sure how to create what I want to create or even if I should.

Art, to me, now, should be a reflection of one's self, one's existence.  Hold a mirror to life, reflect it and shine it out anew, distorted and abstracted as though through a prism.  And that is what I strive for.

To me an artist isn't someone who just makes pretty pictures.  An artist is a creative, a thinker, a philosopher.  Driven and pushed by urges and instincts that they cannot explain.  This is my life, this is what I leave behind, this is my statement.

Big words, big ideas.  In an academic sense, something to be crept up on, snuck up and approached over three years with an eye to creating a shown work at the end of the year and a culmination at the end of the third years of Work.  

I haven't created for a few weeks now.  I want to but something stops me.  There is fear.  Fear of going too far, of being told I am wrong.  There are...  valid grounds for feeling this.  It has happened before, before I endured so many lost years and now...?  My mind is bubbling, spilling over with ideas to persue, frustrated at being denied access to studios and materials due to this pandemic.

i am encouraged to not do photography

My work is moving towards a darker impulse.  I feel that to create the work that makes me feel like I am creating validly I must push in a direction that will not be embraced by the safe world of university.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.  Hedonism and self destruction. Blood and sweat and art that is dangerous to the touch.  

But it's a big psychological push.  Breaking the hymen of social acceptance in my own mind before I even try and do it in other people, when I need, almost pathologically, acceptance.  I don't want to find myself ploughing a lonely furrough any more.  I don't think I can take rejection right now.

needlework

bloodywood

So where to now?  The summer stretches ahead, and I am confined to quarters for at least the next month of it. I hate not working, but I can't shake the paralysis.  Maybe after the results for the first uni year come in this week...  if they're good, maybe that will be validation enough?  Time will tell...

Pandemic Musings 1

So, here we are.  Several weeks into the midst of a global pandemic and labouring under an inept government, the end of my first year of university has gone to shit.

I'll freely confess, I'm struggling to make sense of it.  The plan was to turn around at the end of the year with studio full of work, and say "ta-da, module one complete".  Unfortunately, I;m now quarantined at home (I'm in a severely vulnerable group due to my asthma) and cannot access most of my work.  I have photo's of a lot, but none of my sketchbooks.  Which is where a lot of the development work for this module actually is.

I'm worried.  I'm not the greatest with computers, before this year I'd never made a powerpont presentation.  And now my academic future relies on my making two of them proving that I have satisfactorily completed a module that even the staff haven't thought about since January.  They've moved on. And until this, that wouldn't be a problem.

Agoraphobia

Please end this please end this before it ends us, ends us, ends us

I want to stay inside

I want to stay inside for good

It’s been a struggle to get into a working headspace at home.  I don’t really have a dedicated studio area (city centre flats are not renowned for being spacious) and what little I’ve scrounged is still full of distractions.  Nevertheless, on Tuesday night I attempted a start. My process, to begin with, is almost action painting, I put blobs of colour on the surface, and then attempt to blend and smear them out.  I don’t actually know what this first layer is going to look like until I’ve finished.  This is a new practice for me, as before I started University, I always started with a shape, or a full image to work towards.  This is looser and is a much more seat of the pants approach.  I have no idea what this work is going to look like until it’s finished.  There’s always been an element of that to my work, but never from the get-go.
I wonder if these are too over produced and cluttered, though.  That seems to be a part of it, reflecting the mental state of a person in this position, and maybe as I hopefully achieve a clearer view of where I’m going, the works will too?  I’d like a cleaner, purer approach, but for now, the mess seems better.  Like, I like the clean, flatness of the work now, but I know it must be covered, messed up, made imperfect and damaged.  Psychic self portraits.

Ultimately, I don’t feel I’m happy, with myself, or as an artist.  This isn’t fulfilling, and I don’t know what is.  I feel like I’m just scabbing a wound, and occasionally scratching it a little deeper.  My trips to the British Museum and National Gallery stirred nothing in me, I could see the pretty pictures, appreciate the thought and explain why they were the way they were, but it was just a cold analytical experience, and I feel that about my own work at the moment.

It’s not enough.  And I don’t know what is.  

So feeling a little lost, I return to my sketchbook and work on something, that seems to call a little closer to me.  I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but it is a little more representational, and I feel that is something that I might need to bring back into my work, the illustrative side.  It’s not good, but it’s a start.