Friday 30th November - Questions for Open Discussion.

Things are changing, my thoughts are rapid, getting quicker and picking up pace, which sounds great but is actually a nuisance as my physical practice doesn't keep up.

Things I'm discussing mentally:

How can I change my practice; to move away from the design based thinking and be more 'art'? Does that sound weird? The processes are different as the end points have various requirements, how do I 'forget/park/ignore' the old habits?

How easily influenced am I? Does that matter? Is it influence or guidance? Am I simply being enabled by people with the tools and insight to guide?

I am drawing again and I'm loving it.

I discovered a talk by Amy Sillman which I have linked below:

https://youtu.be/BLOgc466nRk

Like Richard Serra she lists verbs to describe what drawing is/can be.

I took from the talk and my tutorials with both Catherine Baker and Kimberley Foster that drawing is so much more than pencil on paper....leading me to reevaluate my previous work. Dr Baker changed the word 'chaos', which I had been clinging on to with urgency as I really felt it was important, to the term 'collision'. It's was a moment. The moment. You know the ones....where you hit your self in the heard for not seeing to and celebrate the release at the same time. Where everything flashes before your eyes in a new light, a new frame, glistening and invigorated.

This leads me to the question, can it really be that simple? To change a couple of terms, give new frames and different angles and give a body of work more agency? I say simple although it doesn't feel like it. It feels like I've been banging my head for the past 6months hoping to shake something loose. Is it okay for these things to come from outside sources? Is that still organic? Is it still mine? Can I still say the work belongs to me?

How does a material led practice work? I'm confused as I have worked hard over the past 5years to create a practice with a conceptual context. Diving head first in to research, how do I balance the two?