Creativity in a Collapsing World Economy (1)
Few are escaping the effects of the recession right now. How would you expect the economic downturn to affect the creative practice of visual artists in particular?
There are constant reports of how people are feeling the pinch. Extravagance and excess in spending is out. Frugality, mending and making do is in. People are definitely more stressed and keen to save money. This is the background to contemporary visual art. You would expect the visual arts to be deeply affected by the recession, for spending on visual arts to drop or to stop altogether.
For visual artists this translates as a drop in sales of their work and a big drop in income. Most of the visual artists I know struggle on a limited income which in the current crisis is now worth less. Opportunities like running art workshops have dried up. Many paid activities require a mass of form-filling and report writing to secure funding. Result: many artists are put off from applying for such funding such their skills lie in creating art work and not form filling or wordplay.
The overall result that you would expect from a recession, is for artists to be financially stricken, perhaps to the point where they cease their practice.
Even in a recession my brain still contain ideas for projects, painting, images. I went through a phase a few years back of gathering materials so that I have the materials. ((Need to get some purified linseed oil) I still get emails with offers and opportunities to take part in creative projects. But I am aware that the crunch is affecting my practice in other ways. There is anxiety, unpredictability, lack of funds. I am careful about how I use materials…
