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. 

Good good pictures: Joseph Lambert

Recently stumbled across this artist. These are all huge mixed media pieces on cardboard. They're all so vibrant, so alive. 

Tales at Sea logo

I've joined forces with a Leeds-based folk band, and they asked me to design their logo! Their front woman saw my print in the show at CMV. Was surprised and quite flattered to be asked - I've always maintained that taking on commissioned work isn't something I'm looking to do yet (and I stand by this), but after getting to know all the people involved and what they and their music are about I feel it's a good fit. There is also the chance of some flyers for shows and maybe the artwork for an EP in the pipeline, so watch this space ...

fuck fashion

My CoP project this year was kick started by my listening to Grayson Perry's 2013 Reith Lectures. The entire series makes for good listening, but there's something in Democracy Has Bad Taste that really resonates with me.

"With being fashionable comes the inevitability of becoming unfashionable"

This summarizes a lot of of the mixed emotions and struggles that I have with illustration as a discipline. So much of, certainly, the contemporary work that I see out there is trendy. Trend-driven. And boring. And vacuous. It has nothing to say about the human condition, or any of the most interesting and difficult questions that hang over us. Fashion is, by nature, cyclical. So does anything that is fashionable spend at least 50% of its time being irrelevant?

I'm becoming increasingly aware of how emotionally charged my practice is, and can't help but wonder if it's going to hinder my progress on this course. It's weird - the happier and more invested I'm becoming in my practice, the less happy and invested I'm becoming in the mechanics of this course. There is still so much 'figuring out' I have to do about the world.

 I don't want to make fashionable work.