My work, reasons behind it and what happens to it.

I think I’ll try to concentrate on what’s actually happening with my own work today rather than everything else in my life. I need to stay focussed.

This year has seen massive changes in how I’m working.   Its hard to pinpoint when it actually started…. maybe last year sometime..?  I started to think how much time and effort I was putting into my own work, but not actually getting anywhere with it. It felt like I was on a treadmill.

So I withdrew for a while…and just thought….and thought.

Then I threw things out.

Boxes and boxes of paper installations – slowly gathering dust in my studio and at home. That’s the problem with installations, once they are shown, its hard to show them again.

Its horrible throwing out your own work. You cling on to each piece remembering how much time it took, the hard work planning and designing, the blisters and cuts on your fingers …… You wish everyone appreciated it as much as you did.

I reached the last few boxes and found I couldn’t do it. They couldn’t go, but couldn’t stay either.

I did a callout… does anyone want them? Desperately hoping they would.

Yes, they will be recycled for a children’s workshop at the Williamson Art Gallery. They will live on.

While dropping them off at the gallery, I looked around the degree show . Its a good one –  check out the Instagram  images on https://www.instagram.com/anartistsinfo/ 

I wonder how many of these artists will reach the same crisis point so many years from now?

After almost a two year gap from blogging, I was hoping to start back into it with a much more interesting topic than I am, but to be honest, this thing has taken over my life.

My son gets married in two weeks, and as I’m ‘an artist’ I’ve been asked to design and make the chair decorations. What the ….? In all of my artistic career, I have never made anything decorative, and to be honest, I don’t know where to start.

I’ll hasten to add that my son didn’t ask me, he knows better, but as I’ve been asked I will have to do it.

So even though I’ve shown my work on many occasions and never felt particularly fearful of doing so, why am I so stressed about this? Why don’t I even know where to start?

For anyone who saw my frantic Facebook post today and thought I was asking for an item for some exciting new project …  well no.  I’m making bows and tying them to chairs. That’s the extent of my design skills.    Rose Gold. Yep,  I thought I knew about colour, but apparently not. This is a whole new ball game.

So, yes, although a million things have happened since I last wrote on here, I can’t bring myself to talk about them just yet. My brain won’t function. I’m stressed. I don’t know what to do, I feel that my work will be judged  and I feel a failure .