"Am I still an artist even when I am not producing work?"
At the start of this project I knew I wanted to explore the place of text in art, and specifically the poems I write. For a while now, though not deliberately, my self-expression has come more readily through poetry than through visual art. Perhaps this is because poetry doesn’t require you to expend as much energy. You don’t need to buy any particular materials or set yourself up in a studio environment. You can simply lie in bed and type on your phone. I wished to get back into visual art as I had previously enjoyed painting and sculpting.
My initial idea was to find a way to combine text and imagery so that one would feel like a part of the other. I wanted to do something involving feminism to expose the double standards and expectations society imposes upon men and women, in correlation with the belief in a binary gender system. I planned to take inspiration from artists Betty Tompkins and Fiona Banner in order to produce something that could have an impact.
However, I did not get off to a great start and had many pitfalls. Due to inefficiently dealing with personal issues I was having, I spent long periods of time not making any work. As a result there is very little to show in the way of a visible process of art making. This has turned out to be more of a journey of intellect rather than practice. I have grappled with thoughts and ideas more than I have gotten my hands dirty.
One thing I’ve always done is do things in my head. For example, when I was a kid I accidentally bumped into someone, and when asked by my parents if I had apologised, I saw nothing wrong with saying that I had said “sorry!” in my head. I sometimes find it difficult to summon the energy it takes to translate something from the world in my head to “the real world”. I do this to such an extent that it affects my art. It is expected of students to be able to show several experimentation pieces they have made whilst on the journey to creating their final work. I almost never have these little process pieces to show because I’ve made them in my head, gleaned what I need to learn from them and then moved on to the final piece which I then create in real life. This means that the volume of work I have by the end is always lower than that of my peers. When I am asked to produce something for the sake of having something to show, it’s like I am just redoing something I have already done. It never feels legitimate and usually I am never happy with it.
I began to think about why it is that, although I call myself an artist, I struggle to actually make art. Putting my own personal issues aside, I discovered I have so many questions about the art world which often get in my way. These are just a few of the questions I have come up with:
- Is an artist only admirable when they have a large volume of work to show?
- Is unfinished art unworthy of appreciation?
- Is the idea of the work I make in my head valueless because it has not been made physical?
- Should the production of art ever be forced?
- Is it beneficial to make the production of art compulsory and have it be conducted by an external party?
- Is art really art if the artist didn’t want to make it?
These are questions that I can roughly answer if I try, but, as with a lot of issues in art, I don’t think giving them a hard and fast answer is the way to go. Taking inspiration from work I have previously made, I did manage to produce something which I could call a “final piece”, but it is a far cry from what I originally intended to produce. Rather than developing my art practice, I have learned more about what I personally believe about art and I would say that is just as well.
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