Madness ensues.
Life is more hectic than ever before – Work with Liverpool Biennial is hotting up and the pace is getting fast now, been working with David Bade, a Dutch artist based in Curacao and Holland who is documenting life in Seaforth via sketches and paintings. It's been a fab experience seeing how a professional artist works, his 'portraits' are not realsitic by any stretch of the imagination but he talks to people in a community, hears their stories and then paints them after they have walked away – an impression, a memory of their conversation. Fascinating.
College is obviously getting hectic – half term (or reading week as it's officially termed) I read! A LOT!
Researching for my thesis, so much reading is involved but I know what angle I want to take, where I'd like to take it and basically what format to process the research at least. Now I have to conduct interviews and set up a questionnaire probably online but first I have to decide which questions I want to know the answers to.
I know one question I want answered. 'When will I get my life back?' or 'When I can I get on with the joy of being an artist?' Ok, so that's two questions but one answer for both undoubtedly.
I have almost finished a site specific elective maquette, based on a map of Sefton Park – it's looking ok so far I think. It was quite difficult cutting the shapes out of plywood but its done! Have to take it down to the park and photograph it in situ too.
je suis retourné de Paris.
Five days in Paris with college, it was exhausting – miles of walking around galleries- what an amazing way to spend a week.If I had only had time to visit the Pompidou Centre it would have been worth it for that alone – what an amazing place. It gave me so much inspiration seeing the work of artists that I have admired for so long, Anish Kapoor, Damian Ortega, Ron Arad and so so so many more. One day was seriously not long enough to go there.
Then there was the Louvre, the Musee D'Orsay, Montmarte oh and then the Latin Quarter and Le Marais with it's array of galleries.Ah but it's back to reality and back to the grindstone.
I am so busy at work and haven't even had time to think about college. This is so wrong,I went back to college to enhance my life, to take time to find myself and find out what type of artist I am now.
I love my job with the Biennial though, it is exciting and fun and a fantastic experience but so hectic right now and I really want to concentrate on college – just until June – if only I was wealthy enough to take a work sabattical but as it is, I will continue working on college stuff til all hours of the night and all weekend to get me through he next few months.
Do all artists have to have a 'day' job too, will my life always consist of having to wait for the paycheck before I can experiment and produce my own work …whatever happened to being a starving artist in a garret – the idea still appeals to me. Maybe not so much to my kids though. Maybe the answer will be for me to work full time for an arts organisation, I enjoy it so much most of the time – maybe that is where my career lies?
I will spend the latter half of this week doing only my own work – inspired by Paris
