Anxiety can stop you from being excited at starting a new art project, big or small. This can threaten to overwhelm your self-confidence. What to do? It’s like pulling weeds. There are two choices: strategic retreat or tackling the problem sideways.
Glacial Narratives
Art as activism sends a powerful message which can speak to the emotions of people. It is one way to bear witness to the events going on around me. I realised that the new work I am making in the studio is a direct result of watching a program, Glacial Narratives presented by Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in the Outer Hebrides.
Permission Piece
How much do you value yourself? Do you give yourself permission to go on really wild and scary adventures? I have given myself permission to take a helicopter ride to view the active volcano in Iceland, if it is still erupting in April 2022. It is something even a year ago I wouldn’t have contemplated.
Connecting Art to Stories
How do you promote your art? Tell a story. When the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was reopening after 10 years of renovations, a flashmob were hired to stage a recreation of the museum’s famous painting, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Connect stories to your art and you will never be lost for what to say or how to explain what you do and why you do it.
Stories as Art
How do you express your stories, and how do you document your daily life, the personal and social times in which you live? If you look at the great writers and artists, their work was a product of the times. Documenting an I Was Here moment is in the patchwork squares of Victorian artist Nicole Kemp’s Covid Quilt, a visual story of 2020.
Material Thinking
Thinking with your materials means you allow the unique quality of that material to lead you into experimentation. “What if” becomes the starting point for my experiments with abstract painting using bright coloured paper pulp.
It’s about time (exhibitions)
How do you make time work for you? This might mean synchronising with your body clock to create extra time so that particular tasks are done when you are most focused and alert. When there is a big job to do, like getting ready for an exhibition, you need to create time in abundance.
Peace in our Time
The search for peace and love is ongoing, especially in the midst of worldwide chaos and upheaval. The annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower gives a focus to that impulse, if only for one hour on one day of the year.
The Business of Art
The business of art is overlooked at your own peril. What if the “business” of art bores you and you would rather be creating than talking about your work? Having a business strategy is like having a plan, you fail to plan means you plan to fail. First you need to create a body of work. Then you need to know your How, What & Why and explain it.
Repurposed
Repurposing your old artworks releases the energy stored in your materials. When you are deep in your creative flow, the impulse that brought you to create at that time is captured in the materials. Like stones, they hold energetic vibrations of your thoughts and emotions which can be tapped into to tell a new story.
Counting birds
Lately I’ve taken to counting birds, in the sky, in the garden. Listening to the sound of them in the trees, hidden yet present. They symbolise the freedom of flight, the raucous antidote to silence and the great Apausalypse.
The future is now…
What interests us as a child circles back as our future comes forward to meet us. We can have many lives in one lifetime. I was a writer before I was a photographer. I made films before I wrote plays, made paper before I started screen printing.
Why artist residencies?
Why go on artist residencies? While you need a proposal to submit with your residency application, the work you make might completely go off on a tangent. I’ve learnt the best thing is to stay flexile and adapt to your new surroundings.
Why Create?
Creativity is a blessing. It takes you outside of yourself to a place that is “out of time”. It is akin to connection with something greater, the divine, the universal life force.
Artists as Activists
The history of art is full of artist activists. Art can “spur thinking, engagement, and even action”. It can not only bear witness to events, but can move us to hope in the midst of despair. Hope for freedom, hope for action, hope for equality and justice in the midst of the ensuing world chaos that can threaten to overwhelm us.
A little bit wonky
A little bit wonky is a good thing in art, it frees you from perfectionism. When it comes to repurposing old artworks, the courage it takes to tear up or paint over the old, is worth it. Old and boring transforms into wild, wonky and unique.
Marking the Days
When you are at home is self-isolation, how do you mark time? In the Middle Ages the marking of time was both cosmological and seasonal. Can we turn crisis into opportunity and document our days with creative activity?
The Future You Imagine
There have been scary moments in my life when I came close to catastrophe. Like when we were travelling in our horse and wagon and disaster nearly struck. That was when I learned a very hard won truth. I had to surrender and hand over the reins.
Failing on purpose
Rebellious daughters. We did everything we could to avoid the “domestic arts” and all they represented. Transforming a legacy of domestic skills into unapologetic art.
Occupy ~ bearing witness to history
Occupy is a powerful word. Ten years ago it was a rallying call for people in over 900 cities worldwide to protest against wealth inequality. Occupy is also the title of my forthcoming joint art exhibition and art workshops in Murwillumbah in August. Both are narratives of human habitation and occupation.