You never know how your skill set will come in handy in your art practice. I discovered this when creating a virtual response to a contested site during my artist residency in Cornwall. The site was a disused quarry which is under threat of development. My residency proposal was to create an imaginary guide to trespass. How best to do this?

In 2019 I started life as an online entrepreneur. It was a completely new field for me and one which I spent every hour of the day trying to learn. I took several online courses on how to create online courses!!! I spent thousands of dollars on being mentored with online coaches about how to be an online entrepreneur.

Who knew that only a year later, everyone would be on zoom and all those hours of learning were able to be put to good use when I started running my online creative courses. Now I’ve found that the same set of skills could be put to use in my own art practice.

Having an open studio exhibition is tricky. Mostly people want to talk to you, they don’t necessarily want to spend a long time reading artist statements or other information. When I thought about how people could access photos of the site, read more about trespassing and interact with my poetry at their own pace, I thought of directing them to my website.

Enter the QR code! One that everyone is now familiar with after spending so long during 2020 and 2021 using it for checking into places to comply with governmental rulings. It is really easy to generate QR codes as long as you have a URL website to take people to.

That’s when I realised I needed to update my website and make it easier to navigate. So I now have a QR code that takes you to a video, a guide that takes you to the three poems I wrote and a way to download everything as well as listen to the poems being read as audio files. It was actually really easy to do because I had done it for the past couple of years for my arts mentoring business. I never really thought I could use it to take people to my art.

There are so many skills that people have garnered during their life that they perhaps overlook or undervalue as they think it has nothing to do with their own art practice. When you find things easy to do, it is often because you have done them many times before and you can confidently navigate your way around. To someone else they might seem daunting.

It is a real opportunity to pat yourself on the back for ALL the things you do know already. All the tasks you can do easily, all the subjects you are interested in, the techniques for creating that you find joyful, interesting and captivating. Follow those threads as they can lead you into new ways to apply your skill set and play to your strengths.

I’ve rediscovered my original love of black and white photography, of poetry and making films; all things I loved doing back in high school but gave them away as I didn’t think they were ‘art’. I was also co-editor of the school’s journal and did cut and paste layouts of community newspapers. So long in the past and yet resurfacing now to use in my art.

Often, we find ourselves returning to the things that we loved doing, but now can do in a new and different way as an artist. It’s about valuing ourselves and our skillsets. Gold stars all around!!