In my first few writings I talked about honestly rather than performative. And later in my statement about not creating work for academic approval but to make art that Is fiercely my own.
Even to this day, I don't know if I put enough of the hurt, anger, and love in the art I make. I still don't know if I'm too much of a good girl in the pieces that I do. I don't know, but I think I would like to be a lot tougher and more raw. Also, over time, I'm hoping that my want and my will have not been undermined in some way.
Ursula Von Rydingsvard speaking in The contour of feeling p35
It’s hard. I’m not surprised. I’ve come to a sticky place and I know to work through it.
I’m researching for my Paper, and not really coming up with much, my studio practice feels dry and infantile. I look through art books at contemporary artists and I don’t envy their work neither am I excited about my own right now.
I worry about being an object maker, generating endless objects of little or no significance. And then drawing …there are a million drawings floating around this world and the next, imbued with some significant thought or feeling I’m sure but I just don’t care. Does the world really need me to make another average assembly of wood, metal and plastic? Or another pensive little scribble endearly rendered in some familiar style?
I’m in the studio making objects and draughting semi abstract drawings, but the relationship of everything seems too disparate. I have grand plans of large scale drawings but the content seems to elude me. I can see the drawings in my minds eye, ink bleeding across stark white paper moments of black, suggested yet elusive in form. But all I seem to do is take photographs. I look back over my blog and it’s filling with images of banal decomposing machinery.
I do like photography and want to stage some specific compositions, similar to Gregory Crudeson, very specific lighting, carefully composed and staged. (Also aware that he uses a Phase One digital medium format camera - that I don’t have) But then this is another random avenue to go down!
I’m finding it hard to pull focus - what is my central practice? What am I really interested in? What is worth investing time in? I can’t keep on just making little bits and pieces, and random drawings…
I hope this mess is the ingredients all coming together in one bowl, ready to transform in the baking.