Sarah Rowles’ choice of Emily Speed’s and Jennifer Brooks’ blog got me thinking …
For the last few months I’ve been trying to allow my practice to find me.
It’s been a rewarding if somewhat frightening time.
I know that I can think too much, that I can spend time and energy trying to second guess what other people want from me (in both professional and personal relationships).
Perhaps it is because of the intensity of the period when I was caring for John, and because of its very real threat to my practice, that now I’m the other side of it I have been better to myself. What do I mean by ‘better’? And what has this got to do with the question of whether I have ‘found my practice’?
Thinking back over the last few years (and even further back) I realise how frustrated and angry I used to get about many aspects of the art world. I was unhappy about my position in it. I was unhappy about other people’s positions in it. I was desperate to find and identify my practice by other people’s criteria. I tried to twist myself into the kind of artist that I thought would get grants, exhibitions and funding – I was unsuccessful. Not only was I unsuccessful at getting those external validations, I was unsuccessful at achieving any internal (personal) validation. My practice was completely out of balance and satisfying no one.
Now I do my best to satisfy myself (primarily). I allow my practice to be what it needs to be. The more allow myself just to ‘make’ the more I enjoy it, and the happier I am with what my practice is becoming. When people ask me what I’m doing and how things are going I find myself talking with excitement and passion.
It could just be that I’ve reached the age (41) when many of the external pressures to define oneself fall away. I know I’ll never be the ‘hot young thing’ now and I’m okay with that. The ‘lack of time to find oneself’ is the lack of time we give ourselves. There is a sense of panic that we (artists) absorb from the frenetic pace of the market. I often recall something a young German art historian said “… no artist makes serious work before they are 40.” Perhaps it is a little blunt but it’s pertinent. How many artists leave art school each year and expect immediate success? How many expect to find their practice by the ages of 22? How many are able to sustain their practice to the age of 30 let alone 40?
‘True practice’ comes from knowing oneself and that takes time, and time is the one commodity cities like London rob you of …
Recently I’ve begun to consider the attractions of by-passing those restrictive criteria of funding applications and instead spending time finding one or two people who simply like me and what I do …
