In order to find something, you need to know what you’re looking for. As I follow the golden string towards finding my artist self, I can’t help but wondering what my artist self might look like, (so that I might recognise her when I see her). This begs the question, what is an artist? Others might have explored this if they have a fine art background and it may be that I am simply disadvantaged by that but it feels pretty important a question.
I am still grappling with an answer, but this grappling has led me to read more about Dada, Fluxus and Automatism.
I am intrigued by the fluxus notion that anyone can be an artist and anything can be art. This idea resonates with the Still Life work I was producing for the first MA module, where beauty and meaning can be found in everyday objects, even the contents of our rucksacks.
Fluxus, it seems to me, is an invitation to view the world differently, to find creativity and significance in ordinary moments, and to blur the lines between the artist, the audience, and the artwork itself. In doing so, Fluxus redefined the role of the artist – not as a maker of perfect artworks, but as a facilitator of experience and reflection. This feels significant to where I am personally on this journey but also to this module for the MA. We are supposed to be considering the connections between our making and the meaning behind them. When I captured videos of the golden string swept along in the gentle current of receding waves, I was playing. I was playing with mediums, with risk taking and also with the meaning. Taking that risk in that moment, when I was worried that my idea would not evolve into something others would find meaningful or aesthetically pleasing, was a moment of me challenging what art looks like and who I am as an artist. It doesn’t matter what meaning others bring to it, it matters what meaning I bring to it. The meaning I brought to that moment of making was capturing that experience, of a place but also of my journey.
I am also inspired by automatism and its challenge to traditional ideas of art. The idea that true creative acts come from the inner self, speaks to me and the Jungian journey that I find myself on. I suppose my art is becoming less and less about technique and more about artistic liberation and self-exploration.
I need to find time to explore fluxus, automatism and other ideas such as frottage alongside my poetry, printing and photography as a way of connecting my inner and outer landscapes but also my making and meaning. Time is a barrier to achieving this exploration and risk taking but also fear – fear of the outcomes not being good enough.
We recently had an opportunity to listen to the 3rd year MA students talk about their research projects so far and I was struck by a conversation about feeling inadequate, apologetic even, when the idea we fall in love with and feel most inspired by seems simple or not enough. I experience this feeling regularly so it was empowering to hear that others do too and that they too have had to go on a profound journey of acceptance that what they produce, if it is expressing something within their soul, is always enough.
