Nottingham Trent University

It is with a heavy heart and a sore head that I approach the last day that our degree show is running.

Paying adequately for the night before, the final celebration, I sit here in the air conned computer room and reflect on the last three years.

It is bizzarre how a time period can seem so long but also so short. Annoyingly, I find myself only very recently getting truely excited about Art. I once again feel like I did at school when I would spend days at a time working on something, not because I had too, but because I wanted too.

The last three years have seen high points, and some low point. The constant battle against my own neurosises and ego, the realisations and challenges. I joked with my tutor the other day that 'when' I recieve that third (gulp) I will be breaking the noose out. He replied snappily that this was obsurd, and that if people enjoy my work it means more than any fucking instutional thumbs up in the forms of grading.

This is true, the comments and phrase mean more to me than any grade. And having just finished reading my first review on this site, I am continueing to allow a feeling of elation to overcome me, or maybe thats the dehydration talking. But yeah, I am going to sign on soon, and take that shoddy first step into reality. But for the moment, I'm just going to nurse this sore mind that feels like its been covered in soggy bread.

It seems every Art peer I have is now on AN, trying in their own way to be profound and fresh. Maybe to feel that validation as an Artist and as a human being when they are quoted in the latest issue. I wonder how that feels…

I fear my ego might get too large. As someone whos practice relies on negativity; it might destroy the last thread of creativity I have left!

We are running into the final week of our public degree show, and as I pace the floors invidulating my allocated area I can't help but crack a smile upon hearing the same people who enter my piece, anxiously breaking away from their friends, emerge 5 minutes later only to splutter…. 'Wow'.

I don't think the feeling of happiness will last forever, I'm alittle too real for that. I carry an umbrella, not sunglasses. But for the mean time its nice to see a flicker of sunlight through the pouring rain. Hurrah!

Being moments away from crashing due to servere exhaustion brought on by the degree show up's and down, I thought i was take a second to relay some thoughts I have been having of late.

Degree show private and business view done and dusted, already becoming distant memory I am allowing myself some mental breathing space, wallowing in a small glimpse of pride and accomplishment.

My work, challenging to create and manage, required constant invidulation to control the flow of people in and out. This meant that myself or one of my very helpful first year chums were never out of ear shot from people leaving the ominus room I had created. Possitivity just courses through convosation to my absolute suprise. Sometimes I forget that I am (was) at university, on an Arts Course that I can do, I have made achievements and tackled goals. It is validation of the last three years which have become such a big part of who I am. It is just fantastic to know that what you do has worth. Of course I did hear one girl remark 'I don't like this' upon leaving but you cannot win them all!

Dispite crippling problems with our catalogue not being made in time, the show went down so smoothly, pleasantly ending a truely amazing three years. I can only hope the future holds such good fortune, pride and success. I strongly advise viewing the Nottingham Trent Degree show 2009, the best we have ever had.

I love my course, in theory anyway. A huge studio, all the time in the world; if only I could stop standing in my own way I’d be one of the most fulfilled people in the world. Unfortunately time and time again I find myself battling with the man in the mirror over matters of confidence. Its such a struggle to convince myself an idea is worth pursuing that I always end up convincing myself that the idea is unsuccessful before it's even been given any kind of existence.

Having talked myself out of a potentially winning idea, I am left feeling useless, unmotivated and unproductive. It's like I have some variety of blockage against the creation process, a confusion concerning the value and worth the idea may or may not possess. Instead it exists only as a sad cadence, lying untapped in a state of limbo between reality and my subconscious. It makes me wonder how exactly you find the courage to produce; to create and take that step towards to the unobtainable, nonexistent perfect concept, a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Then I have the inevitable disappointment to look forward too, with those few concepts that escape this mental vetting; but as they open their eyes nervously blinking into the light of reality only to be met with loathing and criticism – the majority of which comes from myself. I have to tell myself constantly that it is just my lack of confidence, the work that I produce if it were made by someone else is the same work I would probably be envious of, this is the state of my self believe. Just because I have made it I assume it lacks value, sense or quality. This kind of self depredation is something that I have come to terms with, and I know that most people just don’t experience doubt on this neurotic level. Suffering for you art has never been such a real expression.