This brief was really helpful, over the Christmas break I really ruminated on all that is forming the hill I have to climb at the moment and it really helped my thinking process to examine everything through a creative process. I’m not only pleased with the outcome of my painting but also all it led me to confront and work through. I’m just gonna post the written part of the brief here too as I think it helps document the meaning behind the components of the art work but also how I am approaching the stumbling blocks in front of me.
I have some upcoming interventions planned and want to focus on the preparation for them for now also, more on that later. For now, applying what I learnt about the project and it’s future, via The Golden Bough, is paramount.
The Golden Bough
For this brief I wanted to create an artwork that could use both the process and the end result as a means of reflection, developing over time, a continuation of experimentation with a visual language that has unpinned elements of my MAAI work so far. The piece needed to examine this process through a new lens to keep progressing forward, working with new materials and reimagining familiar working practices into a new context.
The overall multi-layered mixed media approach encompasses my inability at times to separate everything I know into manageable chunks. As my expertise expands alongside it grows the web of ideas and potential avenues to explore. In order to better focus I need to get more comfortable with the idea of letting go of what either doesn’t serve the project directly or perhaps needs returning to later. Seeing the potential of each idea means I find myself too eager to give everything a try even when that aim is unrealistic or too diffuse. At times it is hard to extract the core threads from the entanglement of research, facts and ideas.
Having just relocated my family to a new town I have left behind my existing network of participants, clients and other parents. The challenge of rebuilding this strong foundation in the same way in a new setting requires resources and time that aren’t possible at the moment. The use of yarn and weaving reflects this literal and metaphorical web, the new approach of weaving directly onto the wooden panel and into the painting is a re-contextualisation of familiar methods onto a new surface. Just as the integration of woven form into the painting gives it’s composition different paths to follow so too must my older network building experience be adapted to fit the present.
Better evaluation skills, strengthened by MAAI, mean whilst it’s hard to let go of unresolved ideas my eye for what works and what can wait is getting keener. Regular reflection on not just concepts but practicalities also means improvement at structuring my limited time to be most useful and productive, being realistic with intentions about what I can achieve and setting myself regular opportunities to address my priorities. The knowledge that I can return to some of my initial ideas that are perhaps tangential to the project currently or are lacking in time/resources for proper implementation, means I can allow myself the grace to let go of them for now.
Visual arts and artistic process are the key to unlocking some of the difficult topics that are dealt with in the project so far and there is a deliberate connection between the literal form of my Golden Bough and it’s representative meaning. Visual imagery, whether critiquing or making, has been the most successful catalyst to open discourse in all the workshop interventions. Adapting my own creative practice to what I am learning is evolving the way I approach and execute not just my art but fosters the development of a better personal and professional working methodology as well.
The piece’s direct visual form also raises another challenge that needs assessment at this juncture. So far in this process the project and research have been documented through the blog format provided by UAL. It has 124 posts, documenting my thoughts, feelings and findings so far and the development of the aesthetic language of the project (which originated from the Mirror Mirror project brief.) The blog served as a very useful form of documentational brain dumping but it is now time to rethink the way the project’s evolution is depicted and discussed. Although I was hesitant to openly publish this process initially I think the increased visibility, bringing hopefully increased opportunity for collaboration, of a broader online medium, probably Instagram (unoriginal but unavoidable?!) is the next step. As the project gains focus it is important to improve the way I can succinctly describe what I am doing and fine tuning my own language around this will be positive.
The opportunity for evaluation this brief has offered has been really valuable and confirms some of my deeper hunches about the questions being raised are proving correct as well as showing me how to think creatively about approaching them when they have seemed insurmountable before. I am also starting to reframe in my mind some of the aspects of my research findings that felt negative and at times frustrating and examining ways to approach them more proactively.