Now we’re nearing the end of the degree, the issue of “ticking all the boxes” seems to be arising more and more. I’m not going to go into detail about how our course goes about marking, but there seem to be countless different opinions on the importance of the degree show, how our support work should be presented, and how much weight we should place on different aspects of our practice.
It makes you wonder how Fine Art courses ever came about- how do you impose a system of grading on something so subjective? As I’m sure you already know, this is the question that always gets asked by people who have no experience of art education. It is a hard one to answer though, especially given the diversity of approaches to making work that there are within my course alone.
Number 1 on the list of ‘How to be Miserable as an Artist’ (I don’t know who wrote this originally so can’t credit them!) is ‘Constantly compare yourself to other artists’. I agree that this can make you miserable, especially when you feel you have to alter the way you naturally work in order to fit in in some way. But I also think it’s an interesting thing to think about, as well as being something we are required to do for contextual studies.
For instance, my course- and housemate Laura has recently been feeling a bit lost with her work, and asked for my advice. Last night I sat and looked through all her recent sketchbooks, journals, and artist research, and presented her with a page of notes and sketches on what I would do if it were my work. She seems to have approved, though it’s too early to draw any conclusions yet!
However, it was an interesting exercise to do. Stepping into someone else’s shoes in terms of art practice is something I haven’t done before- obviously I’ve researched and written about other artists’ work a lot, but to do it with someone you know well is very different. I found myself thinking of what her strengths were, and how I could encourage her to play to them. It makes me wonder what would happen if the process were reversed and the spotlight turned on me!
I suppose the conclusion of this slightly rambling post is that sometimes it IS a good thing to compare yourself to other artists, to step outside your own practice and experience what it might be like to do things outside the limitations we all tend to impose on ourselves. While it’s inevitable that the end of the degree is going to involve a lot of box-ticking, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no room for us to approach this in our own unique ways.
