Artistically, I have been having problems lately. Really for the entire school year I've been having problems with the work I'm making. I just hate some of what I'm making. I literally look at it, and dread having to touch it. I feel that everything I'm making now is so far from what I want it to be. It feels heavy and just opposite of the way that I work. I haven't been able to just draw in a long time. Everything I do has that connotation that it needs to be a finished product, rather than sketches or quick pieces. I have problems with composition, and that's very apparent when I'm trying to set a up a painting. The work that I make feels like executing out a plan. I have blueprints and I work to make that blueprint a reality. I much rather prefer making that blueprint. When I start projects on sketch paper, I love it. I make it so that it works with graphite or charcoal, and I find it difficult to transfer those pieces to larger paintings. The spontaneity of painting that I was so accustomed to feels like it's gone. I wish I could take everything I know now, and put that into my mind two years ago. I could do so much more with that time. And by having a larger body of work and more experience, what I have to go through now would feel a lot less intense.
I feel like I'm putting off making the art I want until after college application are due because I feel that what I want to do isn't what colleges want to see. It's depressing, and I shouldn't think that way, but it's hard to think any other way sometimes. After applications I'm going to dive into technique again. I need practice with basics and get away from my goal being finished pieces. I want to paint and draw more of the things that give me difficulty, rather than try and avoid those things like how I do it in my current pieces.
I feel that I'm forcing myself into a block, but it'll only last another month, so that's not unbearable. I want to get back to focusing on myself next year. My apps are due January 1st, so a lot of what I'm thinking about, fits right into the idea of a new years resolution. I want to start to get myself happy again next year so that I can accomplish more. I feel that technically, I haven't grow in a while, and that bothers me because I know that I could be doing much more.
In addition, I wanted to reflect a little on my first paid job. I feel sometimes that it takes over my life, even though it doesn't take over most of my time. Like for example, I don't like to change before I get to work because it takes too long and I don't want to have to carry around more clothes in my already heavy bag, so most of my style is variations on my work uniform. Also, sometimes I feel like I'm on call. At least once a week, someone from the bakery will call me and ask me to cover for someone or work an extra day. I say no and then all of a sudden I'm unreliable. The truth is that I don't care very much about that bakery or what happens to it, but I am expected to care. I don't want my job in the future to do that to me. If I truly care about what I'm doing then that'd be great, but this automatic expectation that my boss has for her employees is that everyone is willing to do anything for the bakery. I don't want to invest in this. I do the job I'm paid to do. I don't want to do any extra because I don't care enough. I'm a fucking artist and I'm getting pressured to dip cookies in chocolate like it's the end of the world. That's not worth my stress. The only thing that keeps me wanting to come back is that I know that by saving all my money, I can have enough to travel. I plan to go to Europe this summer and explore. I don't know exactly where I'm going, but that's part of the adventure. I surrender a part of my freedom so that I can experience a better different freedom later down the road. It's poetic and works like a mantra on those days when everything feels like shit. It's Thanksgiving this week, and there goes what ever vacation I might have had. I've never had to work on a serious holiday before like Thanksgiving, so the feeling is weird. I wish that I could be able to juggle the job like a hobby, but lately it feels like a defining factor of who I am.
Your inner world is heavy this week, like the cold sitting heavy on us as winter roils in.
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard to make work when you battle that sense of... that false sense of destiny and importance that somehow gets attached to work - as if every thing you do must play some critical role in your artistic life. This is of course nonsense - work is work, good or bad, and it comes down to just making it. All those Schiele sketches that we see in a museum were once things to rip out of a sketchbook - those are artifacts of the guy practicing. The museum aspect wasn't his doing - that was added later.
What you need to do, especially once the applications are done but maybe sooner just to get some internal peace, is come up with a strategy to de-museum your work and let it return to the fun exploration it originally was. One trick I use all the time is to start the work and add to it rather than change its state. So, if you have an idea, start off with a big sketch, and then glue it to a canvas, and then if you want to paint just add paint to it. Don't take a sketch and then transfer it to paint it - this is getting you in the habit of editing too critically, and breaking the work into phases rather than running along with it across a continuum. So just work on the work - add stuff. You must be brave, because if you work this way there's a chance you'll destroy something. You have to carry both creation and destruction lightly.
Another trick I use is to set very specific non artistic goals for the work - I'm going to make 5 small sketches using only charcoal and gouache, based on these pictures I found in a magazine. I'm going to use only red. I'm going to draw only round things. I'm going to draw for 45 minutes everything I see on my desk. When you do this you subvert the definition of success from something impossible like, "Make a great painting," to something easy like do 5 sketches 5 minutes a piece. If you change success, in essence making it easier, you'll achieve it easier and you'll feel better. Plus, I'd bet you the work is plain old better as well.
Luke