Buggy

It’s been rather quiet round here, I know.  I’m busy in my final year of a BA in Visual Art, and also doing some arts administration work for a gallery and a studio group. 

I’m working through some artistic dilemmas right now.  As part of my degree, we look at professional development, which forces us to think about what we are going to do with our art.  Are we going to exhibit it?  If so, where?  Do we want to sell it?  To whom?  All of these questions have a nasty habit of getting right in the way of my creative process.  I sit down in my studio and get an idea for a piece of work.  Then a nasty little voice pipes up ‘ yeah, but who’ll be interested in that?  who will buy it? ‘  This is not helpful.  I think the only way to make authentic artwork is to shut all that out, and make what you truly want to make.  Then you can face the work of trying to find a market for it. 

Another dilemma is knowing how other people will view your work.  What do they see?  With my work, I try to literally ‘say what I see’ in an attempt to second-guess what a viewer will see in the work.   Despite these attempts, though, I’m nearly always surprised by other people’s reactions to my work.