Warps and Wefts

I’ve decided to start writing a blog on a-n because I want to connect with a wider community of artists, thinkers and critical friends and maybe this is one way I can do that.

At the moment I am navigating a path, making a transition from a 20-year career as a producer to that of practitioner – in other words, shifting my focus from realising the vision of others to putting my head above the parapet and declaring a vision of my own.

It feels a lot braver than I think it ought to. I find myself obsessed with the idea that the world sees me as one thing when in fact I am another. It is as though I have to publicly come-out as an artist. Probably sounds daft, but that’s how it is.

The questions that preoccupy me and which drive my current work are personal and social narrative in relation to objects and places. This is a very broad area of work which I am trying to distill into a set of discrete and meaningful projects. I may or may not succeed. Obviously I hope that I will.

My work is underpinned by an academic background in continental philosophy and I think of my work as a sort of philosophy as art and art as philosophy.

“Art” is a very broad term in my interpretation encompassing performance, installation, drawing, writing and music.

I reached the end of a philosophy MA in 1992 with a strong sense of having run out of words, those kind of words anyway. I am beguiled by the painterliness of language and of music and by the metaphorical power of image, performance and installation.

Enough of the preamble.

I am going to blog about two main things – my research threads and experiments and a reflection upon my progress in ‘coming-out’ as an artist and navigating a career and life transformation as a mature female artist (50 this year).

I hope dear reader that you find something of interest here.

– Fi Mason