Being a year since I last published on this site, a quick recap I feel is in order. Currently I am on the waiting list for a studio at Spike Island, but am happy to work from home, so I guess where I live has become my making space. This is cheaper and very convenient, and thanks to my lovely girlfriend not minding the mess!
The art I've been making has largely oriented around my training as an art psychotherapist.
It is encouraged on my course to develop a reflexive approach to everything. Now I'm less caught up on trendy art school attitudes, such as painting being uncool, which is a refreshing and liberating revaluation.
Now I'm skipping along with Melanie Klein, we hit a fork in the road and I feel split. One road takes me to a clinical practice and the other to a gallery and a studio. I wonder how on earth I will ever be able to put professional efforts into both of these paths in front of me, but according to the Standards of Profficiency, personal art practice must be kept up in order to support others, and quite right! I agree, but how do I make what seems like two paths into one?
The collages and other things I have been making have been straight off the nervous system, embodied pieces. There is no agenda, parts of what they hold, I am blind to, they reveal themselves to me in stages.
The continuous therapy, psychoanalytic reading and art making makes me acutley aware of my woman child ways and the repeated psychosexual swirl which keeps coming through in my art practice.
I've titled this series 'How To Trace A Thought', seems this is much easier to do for others, not so easy for yourself. This isnt a simple exercise is reading an image, that semiotic approach that tells us what it means when something is placed in a certain way, nor is it a reading of Jungian architypes. This is an exercise in loosing the ego. When making and analysing ones own work, one must loose a sense of self and identity for the blind spots to be revealed. Fear must be put to one side as the unconscious is unlocked showing us what lies in the depths and the mess of our own minds.
Right now I am preparing for an exhibition with my art psychotherapist cohort (See exhibition dates for details).
Come along and celebrate the end of year two (nearly), it has'nt been easy.