This is the last week before the Bargehouse exhibition. I set up my piece in my studio last Friday so that I could set back and contemplate it, consider what might not work and really to help me answer a question screaming at me constantly…Is this any good? And more importantly is it interesting? I have become so involved, so consumed by it, spending most of my time building, nurturing and bringing it in to being, that judging it is like judging my whole worth as an artist, and extremely melodramatically, my life.
However, amongst all this worry and anxiety I am actually hugely excited. It's a welling up inside of me that have built up since I have been working towards this piece. It's an unexplainable buzz- what a selfish act it is to be an artist, it feels so self indulgent. I pay out constantly for everything, materials, transport, time etc but somehow the financial side of it worries me the least of all at the moment. I sometimes stop and think, should I be worrying more about practical things in life? Pensions, mortgages, savings etc, but nothing has a point to it unless you create one. I see a point in me doing this, any other way and I would be unhappy and I believe exploring this way is a valid process. It is so unpredictable and allows continual amazement. It keeps me unsteady in my thoughts and my views and this is where I feel most comfortable.
I enjoy looking at my work and thinking what it makes me feel/think. It has made me think about how we represent something. How an environment can be drawn, and why it should be? How complex the experience of looking and response is, how it is so reliant on us being us, our experiences being similar to the others. It's this personal, yet not, that is intriguing. We seem isolated by our personal backgrounds yet linked by them. Recognising something seems so programmed, so scientific, so categorised, so beyond our own ability to be truly aware of the reality of the experience. It's like being blinded by our own humanness. The image can never be separated from the person.
