This journey has been an emotional and creative roller coaster for me. Many artists have articulated the patches of insecurity we all go through but Andrew Bryant has touched on a particular one of mine.
‘Have I found my practice?’ he dropped into a recent email. Are we pressured to define our practice in order to make a win on the slot machine of grant funding, gallery exhibitions etc?
Mmm – the very questions that have been niggling uncomfortably away at me since returning to exhibiting in 2007. Can artists work authentically while ticking the boxes of the funding providers?
For me, returning to the system after a decade of raising family, I had to learn fast. I wanted to work, I needed to work, I had a cast iron background behind me of projects fulfilled and funding utilised effectively and I was confident I could make good use of this money. And so I set about getting the proposal right.
There’s no question about it, I honed and shaped and fashioned that proposal to fit the required criteria which in many cases I’m sure stifles and curtails the creative process. In all honesty though, for me, at that time, in that circumstance, it focused and informed my work in a way I could never have managed alone in my studio. Time and time again I relooked at the aims, the timings, the proposed outcomes etc of what I planned to do and reshaped and refocused them. I really feel this gave a structure to work to which has envigourated my practice and encouraged an even more deeply reflective attitude to what I do.
The danger is, however, that one approach cannot suit all. Narrowing the range of what’s acceptable and demanding that artists articulate their practice in such a way must mean many artists just fall off the radar. And I think that is a great loss.
The visual arts of today is a scary place to the one I left in the nineties. If you can’t fulfill the growing range of attributes that are asked of you, creatively, intellectually, socially, then you may be asked to step aside. If this had been the criteria in the past, how many of the great artists would be there. If we are not more flexible in our understanding of how and if an artist can ever ultimately define their practice in such a way, I think we’re in grave danger of the visual arts being the poorer because of it.
Prior to writing this I’ve been watching TV – a lot of it. Yesterday I had my first diabetic hypo, alone with my children – not something I ever wish to experience again, and today? Today I’m not going to lift a pencil to draw as planned, in fact art feels quite far away. I’m going to do nothing, and just concentrate on feeling safe, with my family around me.
