What are the boundaries of isolation?
I feel myself in a funny place; mentally, I’m engaged and could be even more so, physically, I’m still in rural France working and learning alone.
Straddling engagement and isolation brings up questions of self determination because it seems, now, more than ever I must bring to bear all my experience, knowledge and talent to propel myself forward. I must find the right measure and order of each of these things. The emphasis here is I must do this; the I which has been determined by social influences but yet acts alone. Not only must I use what I have gained and all that I am, but I must also add to and perhaps redefine the gain and myself. I must continue to fund my experience and knowledge and perhaps find undiscovered talents.
When I started this blog my goal was to engage with other artists and all my thanks to the Artists Talking community for helping me to do this. I have found new artist friends and colleagues and new opportunities are opening up to me, it is wonderful. I’m moving from a position of total self containment to one where I bump into others.
In that contained environment I thought as I liked, explored as I liked and did what I liked all in relation to a very nebulous ‘out there’ idea of art world conditions. Bumping into others is in many ways far more stimulating but more unnerving. The comfort of knowing what I mean and how I mean within the confines of my thoughts is not translatable to others. I am left with knowing my mind and all the world is outside of that. Perhaps it isn’t possible to move from the straddling position of engagement and isolation – we all straddle the same gap. Maybe the trick is to keep both in view and in balance neither fearing the isolation nor the engagement.
