Getting paid blog:
This is in reply to Christina and Andrew in the previous post.. firstly thanks very much for the rant encouragment! There shall be more to come. However, recent frustrations I mentioned here are more to do with personal.. shall we say.. issues, with one of the other artists here (and money), and the blog is not the place! This is one of my areas for improvement – knowing where the line is and not stepping over it!
Regarding writing about my practice, I did want to try it again with the Linz blog, but I have learned that when I am very involved in something and start analysing it too much, it gets complicated. I then tend to paralyze myself with too much thought and stop making. I find it is better to have a little distance on things and although I know what I want and am trying to do, the consideration of success and progress should be done retrospectively. Of course this is entirely personal and just what works best for me. No rules etc..
Not sure I agree entirely with your thoughts on the importance of money in the equasion.. It is difficult when you are so absorbed in what you’re doing to consider money, but I think it IS important where the money comes from. By supporting your art with another job, doesn’t that say something about not valuing your own work? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s possible to get paid for just making work everyday – so I realise the idea that an artist has a studio and works in it all the time is pretty difficult to acheive. But there are ways of getting people to invest in you, to find support for periods of time, perhaps people will buy your work too (not really with mine). What I mean is, it’s very challenging and it takes hard work (and often miserable rejections and self-doubts), but aren’t the hours of boring admin the same as having a part time job somewhere? We don’t want to do it – but it is what brings money.
My dad had an electrical engineering firm when I was small and when he did tenders for jobs (that took days), I remember thinking ‘what the hell’s that about? They might not even get the job and they’re doing all that work for nothing..’. He always said that they budgeted to get one out of eight jobs. It’s exactly the same with applications for me and if I get one out of 4/5 residencies/exhibitions, I count myself successful. (It is also a basic psychological trick to make myself feel okay about the knock backs!)
cont…
