Drawing residency in rural Finland

I’ve had time to get distance from the work created Arteles Residency, but am currently too wrapped up in commercial work to give it due attention. What’s exciting is that a group of artists who run a shop window project space have invited me to show the work in some form, having seen images I shared on Instagram. I really like the space – it is not big, and an odd cuboid box shape; but these limitations mean it’s a less daunting prospect for exhibiting solo and presents an interesting spatial puzzle. The potential to use projection and/or blow the drawings up into 3dimensional objects really excites me.
The work I made in Arteles was pretty strictly observational, direct research stuff. Slice of life, reportage documentation, whatever to call it. Having not looked at it much for 6 months, the opportunity to revisit it and reconfigure it with the endpoint of a small exhibition is appealing.
At the end of this blog (and, appropriately, the end of a year) I need to work on bringing projects to fruition and curb my bad habit of not getting things done for fear of it not being ‘amazing’.
Also, The ’Timin Manty’ tree portrait I made while in Finland kick-started a new long term drawing project about Trees since returning to the UK. I’ve learned here that I work well with some kind of underlying structure to a project, but one whose boundaries also have room to evolve and mutate. I still have difficulty about launching work to public scrutiny though, so haven’t quite figured out how to present the project. I need to overcome fears of making work public and letting it have a life, not fearing that moment and thinking there’s ever anything to lose.