DIY Art Education
One of the questions I raised with Danielle Arnaud in my mentoring meeting was her thoughts on my absence of art education. My background educaton is actually in psychology – I obtained a PhD in social psychology at Southampton Univeristy about 15 years ago.
We concluded that I may well benefit from doing an MA at some stage but that it would probably be preferably to wait a few years till family commitments would enable it to be easier to study at a major institution in London.
In the meantime I will continue with my self education. I really enjoy researching and learning so this is something I have felt quite capable of doing over the last 5 years working as an artist. I thought I would share some of the things I currently do alongside some of the things that Danielle recommended in the hope it may be useful to others currently following a similar path.
1. Read/study LOTS. This has been my main form of educating myself in the arts. I read a lot of books! This is no hardship as it has become my favourite pastime. I will always have an artbook in my bag wherever I go (as well as my notebook/sketchbook!) as well as by my bed and will tend to spend my evenings readings rather than watching a film. I have a self imposed rule to always have two books on the go at once – a fiction book that is (or maybe in the future will) inspiring my practice, and an art book on either a particular artist, or an aspect of art history. I also subscribe to an art magazine such as Art Review or Frieze that I vary each year however I would say I find these less uesful.
2. Attend Shows. An essential one but one that I dont do as much as I would like. What I have done to try and enable more visits to shows in London is to arrange after school childcare every Tuesday so I have one day a week I am free to travel to London.
3. Attend Talks. This was one of Danielles top recommendations. Athough I will always take the opportunity of attending talks nearby I think I need to make more effort to travel for relevant talks.
4. Blogs/apps for reviews and info. Along with an artbook and my notebook, the other thing I would rarely be seen without is some form of device with internet connectivity! I’m lost without it. I really feel the internet is one of the easiest ways of feeling you are staying in touch with your art peer groups and current artworld activites especially if you are feeling detached geography wise. I follow many blogs in my Feedly reader – some from individual artists but the ones most useful in terms of keeping abreast of current art exhibitions I find are sites like: Contemporary Art Daily and this is tomorrow. There are also some great free apps on the ipad to self educate yourself with such as AGNSW Contemporary which lets you explore artists and artworks from their collection with high quality images, video interviews and audio commentaries from curators.
I definitely spend as much time studying art history / keeping abreast of current art as I do making my own. I believe the one is essential to improving the quality of the other whether that is done in a traditional institution setting or in your own living room.
