life's a pitch issuu

creative presence (or not)

Presentation slideshow

Bit of self-assessment

An attempt to iron my mind

What am I about?

I'm about stories, thoughts and feelings. People, places, and pictures. Human connection is everything and more. Have some fun, do some good, and never ever stop questioning, and marveling at, the world. Be passionate and be compassionate. Have a questioning mind, and a humane spirit.
Work hard. Make mistakes, make more mistakes, and just keep waiting and working to make good.

What is my practice about?

My practice is driven forward by emotion. I want to make people feel real feelings, evoke real emotions. My practice is a celebration of analogue process, and I want to make real, tangible things that exist in the physical world. Make stuff to fall in love with, make stuff to pause at. Feel big feelings and have even bigger ideas. Be sensitive, but not sentimental. Craft is key. Have integrity. Prioritize trying to make beautiful art above trying to make money. My practice is still a seedling.

What are my practical skills?

- I can draw, and I can paint
- I have a developing understanding of how to use colour and tone
- I'm getting braver with shape and space
- Adequate understanding of print processes
- Adequate abilities with Photoshop

What are my personal skills?

- I can connect with people
- I can manage my workload (sort of)
- I'm inquisitive, and curious about the world
 - I care about things, and people and ideas. Apathy is the enemy of creativity.

Where am I now?

At a stage where I'm just about starting to figure all of this out. Making peace with what my work is, and what it is I want to make work about. Finally starting to feel secure. Excited to keep going.
- Very interested in specialist publishing
- Very interested in theory and contextual thought, what shapes the way we decode the world
- Not yet interested in the really commercial side of illustration
- Starting to understand what defines my practice, and what makes my pictures mine.
-Getting better at stepping over pre-defined notions of success

Where do I want to be/what do I want to be doing?

- Learning, all of the time
- Making beautiful work
- Starting to put the visual language that I'm developing through different processes. Seeing how far I can carry my work
- Acting on the confidence boost the last couple of days has given me

presentation 'script' (notes/pointers)

Presentation script

1)

-At the end of level 4 I stood up here and delivered a very honest presentation about all the difficulties I’d wrestled with throughout the year and how I was still unsure of where I was headed.

-Now, a whole year on, I’m going to do exactly the same thing.

- But now with a bit more confidence and lot more optimism

2)

- One of the main successes of my year has been that my practical work has developed a lot and I feel I am starting to channel a new found energy and confidence into my work. I’ve put a lot of effort into practical process this year, and feel that my ideas and abilities are finally starting to synchronise.

-The way I approach work has changed too, and 504 played an important role here. It was a very ambitious project, and even though I was pleased with my outcomes, I approached the entire process in a pretty relentless and reckless way, and stretched both my abilities and nerves to breaking point.

-Realised that my satisfaction with these four months of solid work had been dampened by how exhausted it left me.  

-Resolved to revise the way I approach my work. I knew I needed to find a way of working that was sustainable.

3)

-In the second half of the year I really tried to act on this realisation which led to what’s been the real breakthrough for me.

-For both 505 and the Cop practical element, I made the conscious decision to make less work, and this in turn has given me the time to make all my work joyfully, which in itself wields good results.

- I have also felt I now have time to make more carefully considered design decisions, and to push myself to use shape, space and colour in braver ways than I have before. Through this new approach I feel I have begun to establish a tone of voice within my work, and can now identify what it is that marks my practice as mine. This is something that I haven’t experienced until now.

4.)

- And the more I make work that I enjoy making, the more I’m starting to realise what the fundamentals of my practice are: emotional charge, human connection. I want to make work to fall in love with, to pause at.

-I think this newfound confidence in my own abilities to make concept and design decisions is in part due to another conscious choice I made this year, which was to actively avoid using contemporary illustration as a frame of reference.

5.)

-Compared with the wealth of visual culture in the world, illustration as we now know it is narrow discipline, and I think that such disciplines can tend toward navel gazing, or being too inward looking. Instead I have found other sources of inspiration.

-Maybe writing about the Artworld for CoP has made me more aware of visual culture as an expanse.

6)

-I have developed real interests in other things, such as the outsider art movement of Iran, textile artists, and graphic artists of the 40s 50s and 60s. Stuff that I personally find far more interesting and enriching than 99% of the stuff to be found on It’s Nice That or ELCAF. I’m also increasingly sceptical of how ‘trendy’ illustration can appear – as with being fashionable comes the inevitability of becoming unfashionable. Right now I’m very happy with finding other ways to feed my mind and eyes and practice, rather than falling into the hole of using what’s hot now as a means to measure myself and my work against the world.

-          This year I’ve done a lot of thinking about what illustration is, and I still haven’t reached an answer that I’m at peace with. But maybe this is a good thing? Just as it’s important to shape an individual definition of success, surely it should be equally important to shape an individual definition of what it is you do.

7.)

-The world is full of amazing, amazing stuff. Bother to look or it.

8)

Now I’m going to talk about the overarching struggle that I’ve had this year, which is with the professionalization of practice. I’m not ready to start thinking of myself, or marketing myself as a professional yet. I certainly think I take a professional approach to the practice I’m developing – I show up every day, I put the work in and I wrestle with my problems until I find solutions -, but I don’t want to present to the world as a professional yet. The feelings of positivity that I’m having right now toward my work have taken such a long time to arrive, and still feel so fresh and new, that I want to savour that for a while, I want to keep it as mine. Mine to develop, mine to expand, and mine to build a real relationship with. I’ve felt that a one-size-fits-all approach has been taken to professionalization that this year, and I’ve been very unhappy about it. It was made clear to us from the beginning that Level 5 would be shaped and driven forward by autonomy, and that we would have to be in control of our own work. But to me, commitment to practical autonomy, earns you the ability to be critically autonomous

Being actively involved with the development of your practice, working at it and thinking a lot about it, what it means, and where it sits in relation to the world allows you to be better spirited than to take a tutor at their word for everything.

- I’m not naïve, and I completely understand the importance of professionalization to, but that’s not where I’m at yet. When I’ve spent a bit longer getting to know the work I’m making, I’ll consider how to present that work to the world.

-          If you’re not going to do it with conviction and honesty then don’t do it. Don’t be passive.

9)

-          This isn’t to say that I’m not ready to start giving some thought to my future – I’m already seriously considering whether a Master’s programme would be a good route for me to follow after my degree, as I can identify that education works as a very good structural framework for me. 505 and Life’s a pitch have also helped me to identify publishing as an area of interested. 

-          I’m also really excited about CoP 3 – I do well with long timeframes, and being able to get utterly engrossed.

10)

 – The main thing I’m trying to carry forward into next year is this new sense of calm and perspective that I’ve found. Time will keep passing, if you keep working you will keep improving, and however overwhelming or all-consuming pressure can feel, compared to infinity all of this means less than nothing.

-          Keep having big feelings, and bigger ideas. Keep wondering at the world.

11)

-Thank you for listening. Does anyone have any questions?

keep going

Grew the balls to speak to Fred today, and voice all the issues I'm having with PPP. Came away from it feeling much better, soothed by the bit of reassurance that just because my ideas and feelings about practice are developing in a different way to a lot of the people around me, doesn't mean that I'm doing anything wrong. Determined to keep asking questions, and wrestling with ideas. 

WHAT TO REMEMBER:

-There is no direct path from A to B

- Just as no two practices should be the same, no two journeys to the realization of those practices should be the same.

- Concentrate on what's important to you

- Keep asking questions. Eventually you'll find answers. It will be these answers that make carrying on worthwhile.

Olivier Kugler

Really inspiring and interesting lecture from Mr Kugler. Drawing is potent.

I find it interesting how his practice balances such involved, documentary-esque projects, with commercial work. What's the driving force? Is there genuine conviction and commitment behind what he does, in either practice? It is propelled by the need to tell people's stories, any kind of moral position, or does he just do it because he can? It's fascinating to think about. What a life.

I only wish he'd spoken more about the emotional/psychological factor of what he does. It's such a strange place he occupies, somewhere between journalist, draughtsman, visual reporter… Surely it's impossible to retain complete emotional detachment from his subjects, so how can anyone process seeing the horror of refugee camps? Wow wow wow. 

                                                                   

My 'business cards'

I think a business card should be like putting a little piece of your practice in someone's pocket - just a portable extension of your creative brain. With this in mind, as an accompaniment to everything I've said about my reluctance to present as a professional, I've knocked up these. 

Are these business cards? I think so. They're memorable, a distinctive format, and definitely carry my visual stamp. They serve as an example of my regular colour palette, and convey my interest in hand rendered type. They also make clear where my practice is right now.

Looking to the future...

Had a really interesting conversation with Matt and Jamie, today. I wanted to talk to them about their experiences with MA programmes, as I'm almost 100% certain that I want to move onto an MA programme after I graduate. They asked me what it was that made me think that I wanted to do a Master's programme, and talking through my reasoning really helped clarify plenty of things in my mind:

• I'm in a good place right now, and just beginning to make peace with the way that I approach practice, and the kind of work I do and can make. But I'm only at the very, very beginning, and don't feel anywhere near ready yet to launch off into the world. 
• I just need time, and the chance to immerse myself completely. 
• For me, personally, education is a very effective framework. I definitely need real structure in my life, even if this structure based on only occasional, but vigorous and engaging interaction with tutors.
• I'm not ready to leave education yet. This course should be about learning and growing and evolving and getting things wrong and then getting things right. I have absolutely no intentions of emerging at the end of these three years as a fully formed 'illustrator'. Want to keep pushing. 

Over the summer I'm going to start seriously looking at MA courses, maybe arranging some visits? Also I shall make the most of having to spend making work for the love of making it, as I will need to start putting together a portfolio.

Matt gave me some contact details for people he knows that have gone through MA programmes in Edinburgh and Stockholm, respectively. I'm going to try and compose some thoughtful and useful questions to send them, in the hope of gaining some more specific insight about just what a Master's programme could offer me.

I'm not ready for this yet, and the reasons why.

I had a conversation with John Watters today, and it was one of the most meaningful conversations about my practice that I've had for a long time. This last stretch of PPP this year has had me very mixed up and troubled. Make a business card. Make a website. Write your CV. Get an Instagram. Think of yourself as a professional. All these things we've been told to do, and all these things I'm not yet ready to do.

I love making pictures. I love learning, both being educated and educating myself. It has taken me this long to reach a place where I'm really at peace with how I'm starting to make work and approach work and have ideas, and right now I'm feeling so joyfully new to this. Right now I'm only ready to keep learning, and keep evolving, and keep playing and keep creating, and keep getting lost in making things  only for the sake of making them - and I'm definitely not ready to think of myself as a professional. I don't want to, either.  

As I said to John, my skills as a practitioner have come so far from where they were this time last year, and I hope they're still so far off from where they'll be this time next year, and the year after next.  I can better understand why building a CV would be of such importance were I actively trying to 'make it' as a professional and attract work, but I'm not. I have zero intentions of trying to attract professional, paid work yet. This time is for immersion, for learning. So why go through the motions? For some people this is great - they're ready to start thinking of themselves as professionals. But I'm not, and I refuse to be told that I have to. I fundamentally disagree with this one-size-fits-all approach to development - this is an art school. Maybe I'm being an idealist, but surely the emphasis should be on the joy of development, not on the professionalization of a second year practice? The work I make now, and the relationship I have with that work, is mine, and I want to keep it like that, at least for now. I'm so happy to be still figuring all of this out, but it's still so new. 

Last year I did an internship with Owen Gildersleeve, and got to go with him to the launch of Secret 7" 2015. While there I had a conversation with Ciara Phelan, a collage artist. She was asking me about my experiences so far on my degree and talked to me about her experiences on a Graphic Design degree. She told me that her biggest regret about the formative years of her practise was putting things 'out there' before she was ready too. So I'm heeding her advice. 

When I have a body of work to share, I will. When I have a more wholly formed creative identity, all of this will follow. I'm not naive, and I understand the importance of self-promotion and practicalities in today's  industry, but the time isn't right just yet.

With John's support, I feel justified in putting the brakes on this aspect of PPP for now. That isn't to say I'm putting the brakes on my personal and practical development. That will keep evolving and growing and changing as I continue figuring out my place in all this, and keep falling in love with pictures and creativity and ideas. 

These are some very honest thoughts and feelings. I hope they are understood.

Thinking about CoP3

I thought that the Cop3 proposal I submitted was just too vast, and have already done a lot of thinking about how to narrow it down - getting very excited about next year now.

Although I was originally thinking about representations of sex as sin or salvation and other religious iconography in medieval art (or something), I'm thinking more about iconography in general.
Thinking about trying to build my project around the Codex Seraphinianus, and possibly the Voynich manuscript. Maybe William Blake as well, with his completely refashioned perimeters of reality.

A project about the meaning of meaning?

OUIL505 end of module evaluation

Good good pictures: Anna Zemankova

So beautiful and strange. These are very obviously botanical drawings, but they don't exist in our world. A dreamy re imagining of reality.