Sometimes there are just places you NEVER want to go back to as an artist, and those are the bridges I want you to burn. Think long and hard about them - don't just burn for the sake of burning. You need to do this right, and for the right reasons. This one's for YOU...
My artistic practice and enquiry intentionally focusses on relationships and resources. I've often wondered about what it would be like if we were all the same sized fish in one giant pond. Changing our perspective on the size of the pond we are in, or changing our pond can really change how we treat each other and how we perceive our art and ourselves. Here's a story about a artist... um....."Little Red Fish".....that was in a pond..yes!...that's it....a POND....
Take things that belong in special places, and make them in their special places. Fit the art to the sacred space it should belong to. (Fancy curator talk will call it "site specific".) I think it's important to make the art where the Creator guides us to make it. De-institutionalize art and you make it more human.
Everyone has it - that annoying voice of The Little Man inside your head that wants to take you away from what you are doing, comment (usually negatively), judge, doubt your actions, keep you in a state of fear and paralyze you from getting things done that you know you should.....the things that you love, the things that move you forward and the things that inspire confidence in your work and the world around you. It's a battle but I've found some tools and strategies to get him gone when I need to.
Tanya Davis has written one of the most poignant and relevant songs on creating art, that I have ever encountered. If you don't know already of this fabulous east coast Canadian and her film making partner Andrea Dorfman...let me introduce you!
It may sound arrogant, but in fact - I started thinking about WHY I was going to start out by saying I was sorry that I didn't write anything, and it's not arrogant at all in this case. Find out why and comment on the blog about why YOU shouldn't apologize!
This is the way that I feel when my own children leave and go off at school in the morning. I miss them. When they went back to school after the Christmas break, I cried when they boarded the bus. I imagine it as only a very small and bitter taste of what it might have been like for so many aboriginal parents when their children were taken away to residential school. I'm so grateful that at the end of the day, my children come home to me.
Bad things happen to good (and bad) people all the time. Things they don't ask for....things they don't deserve. Sometimes they are horrible, unspeakable and unthinkable things.
My top goal for 2012 isn't about painting or sales or being a better person. It's about conquering my physical fear, getting on the horse and treating myself to that once in a lifetime human/animal bond - a guilty thirst for an intimate soul-to-soul relationship like no other. Artists understand this. I'm really scared....but maybe the biggest thing is that I'm more scared of not ever feeling that feeling again in my life. Motivation is a wondrous thing.
