Words

As an artist I struggle between words and visuals yet I see that art cannot function without words. This doesn’t mean that the visual has to include words in the piece yet explanations are required to make a viewer understand where the artist is coming from. Without them a work of art could be so abstract that it is unreadable to a viewer.

The problem with contemporary art is most people just view it rather than experiencing it. By viewing the painting, photograph, drawing or whatever the piece may be there is a sort of disconnect between the artwork and viewer. I question myself on how could I make work that engages a person to understand what I experienced to create it? How can I make them feel what I felt? Think the thoughts I thought?

There has to be a different and unique way of creating an experience where the viewer has to interact to receive an emotion, or perhaps the interaction would evoke a thought. A thought one has never had before.

This is just my thought of the day…

After Every Low...

The art world is just like waves of energy and inspiration going up and down. Sometimes you can feel unstoppable, full of creativity and energy. At other times you can feel like someone punched you in the stomach and you just want to crawl under the covers and not come out. After every low is a high even if it doesn’t seem like that.

I’ve been through a major artist block where I got to the limit to where I was rethinking my role as an artist, thinking… do I really want this for my life? What will it change? Sometimes I feel selfish for creating art, when in the world there are such tragedies. I feel so insignificant… always thinking about how can art help better humanity and change the way we view life. Does it make someone happy? Sad? Is it political? Is it classical? Does it say something or not?

What I came up with for this moment in time is, if we want to make things in this world better we have to correct our lives first. Start small and go from there. If we are “messed up in our heads how can we help others”. I started working on artworks which release anxieties within. For the first time I painted myself, it was a liberating yet scary experience. The paintings were huge and overwhelming, the colors are used would hit the viewer at first glance, although they show pain it is not clear what the pain is. I myself know what I am referring to yet the people who come to view the work don’t know. I still don’t know if I want to reveal where the pain comes from. For now I will just call it”a build up of traumatic experiences”

I needed to go through that experience, it was as if I took out the feelings from my heart and put them right in front of me, it was the way I dealt with them. It felt liberating, yet in the beginning it was sad and frightening.

Music I played in the studio while working helped me with the energy and the brushstrokes! I kept moving from one canvas to another and then back again. From time to time you hit a plateau and that’s when you have to challenge yourself to do more, to think in ways you never thought. The plateau is a scary place, when it comes it brings the block with it. Now I know that when I come to that place in my work I have to experiment and talk about what I am doing with people so I can move forward.

Hopefully I will push myself more and more this summer; I want to explore area’s I have not explored. Think in way I have never thought. Interact with new and interesting people who come from completely different worlds with different ideology, perhaps this will push me to a new direction in my work and might make me see people and the world from another perspective.

Artist Block

Artist Block is the worst thing that could happen to an art student at a time when deadlines have to be met. I find myself unmotivated.. uninspired by anything in this world. I remember a time when things use to move me.. in a way i find myself lost and disconnected with people.. and sadest of all.. i feel no love for what i do anymore. I am like a machine.. produce produce produce... dont get me wrong.. the work does not look bad (if i say so myself) the people who view it are in awe.. when i am asked what it means.. I have nothing to say.

Who to please?

When working in the arts there is usually an audience to consider, or if the art is for university or school there is the professor to consider. Will he/she appreciate what I create? Is it even important that he/she likes it? If art is merely an opinion, that means there is no right or wrong or rules set in stone to go by, well of course that is all a dream. People say art is about self expression, but is it truly about the self?

Generally when I work there are always outside influences, whether they are subconscious or conscious. They exist. The color of the room, the sounds heard, life experiences that i have bought to the work. Even a passing by a colleague saying “oh I love the red” or “there is something about her that makes me uneasy”. Occurrences, actions and Words affect the way I work whether I like it or not I cannot be separated from it. Therefore I have to embrace the experiences and apply them within the outcomes which in the beginning I found hard but now I am living with it.

Should I please the audience? I don’t think that it is possible to please everyone, so there is no point in trying. I don’t like doing work for a particular audience. That is probably why I moved away from being a graphic designer into visual art, although my graphics background has to come into what I produce (that is the subconscious influence the computer has on me) What I tend to do is create work I can relate to which is visually pleasing yet with strong substance.

Another problem I have ran into is I was using very high impact visuals using Arabian women, then when I did some research on photographing the Arabian female, I found a young famous artist (around my age) using almost the exact same technique. I did not even know she even existed! And I’m very sure she had no idea I existed as well, so how did the both of us produce similar imagery without even knowing about the other. What was it about the life we led (perhaps similar) that swayed us onto the same path. It was unreal to see her work it was as if I was viewing my own.

(notice I have not posted images of the work, something is stopping me yet I don’t know what it is)

Thought of the day:- “life is a surreal experience”

Art & self Experimentation..

I chose to do a project dealing with the self and identity, its one of the hardest projects I have ever attempted. It is the first time that i have ever done work for univercity using myself, and probably the first time i paint myself. There is something about confronting one's self in a painting that i find scary, that is probably why most of my imagery in the paintings is distorted, so i am not that "exposed" on the canvas, still leaving that edge of mystery. I am working in a new way which i hope will help me discover a new way of working and within that i am sure i will discover things about myslef which have not known befor.

I usually create work related to cultural background for example "Africa" I have researched it for many years and have created work to go with it. Of course it was hard work but I could go step by step through everything and the outcomes would link to the research i have done, yet i am usualy never satisfied with the outcome. I always think.. i could do better.. I don't know if that is a good thing or not? it probably is since it makes me want to create something better each time.

Now that I have looked inward or should I say trying to look into myself to create some interesting visuals, everything was dark. Everything was blank; there are so many levels to explore to talk about. This could be a lifelong project, but do I really want to do this forever?

I have always questioned the reason I got into art in the first place, but the more I explore the more I am sure that I am made for this. For example, everywhere I go I have to have my camera with me or if I forget it, it’s always in the back of my mind. I observe everything from nature to people to human behaviors and try my best to implement the emotions into the work. That usually comes natural for me. If I don’t have my camera from time to time I have to sketch or paint something, it’s somewhat cathartic.

Right now I am thinking of creating a triptych of paintings merging text and imagery together to show the inner workings of my mind, not only showing the surface. In fact, even though I am photographing my exterior I am exposing my interior through the images. I am finding it a strange experience which gets frustrating from time to time, this exploration of the self had to come sometime. The imagery is of a person "enclosed" within themselves perhaps reflecting the trauma that has occurred in their life, using vibrant red in the background with drips of extremely dark brown almost black on top creating a barrier between the viewer and the person in the painting. This reflects the character of the person in the piece, reflecting that she has a shield between people always having her guards up so as not to be hurt again.

Thought of the day: - Some people truly know themselves and some don't, yet they both always can discover something new and interesting about them self that they never knew before.

New to the world of blogging...

Im new to the world of blogging and bloggers but i have always appreciated alot of what i have read or seen on bloggs. I am going to use this space as a window to my mental brainstorming especialy in the world of "art" however one defines it. I find that whenever an issue is articulated by the person who is contemplating it becomes clear to them, whether they talk to people about it or write the information down. It is seperated from the inner workings of one's mind and put right in front of them confronting them, just like this particular moment, everything happened spontaineously. i thought for a while about this, and today i just dived into this dimension that i have not explored much but am willing to learn.

I will be posting some artworks i have done and simply articulating them or i will be brainstorming work i am creating at the moment or wanting to create.

words help me develop..

1st thought of today is to me "art is an opinion" some agree that one thing is art and some completely disagree! So could an idea without even being created be an art piece? or the idea of the idea?... its a dilema.. i know..