books!
yesterday i had a lovely time out with some friends. we went to rochester - a historic town close by to where i live - we had a snoop around all of the quirky antique shops, and decided to go into the bookstore at the end of the highstreet. place is called baggins book bazaar. haven’t ever been there before previous to this visit, but is really cool. fun fact, baggins is englands largest second-hand bookshop, which looks deceivingly small from the outside.
aisles and aisles of books, much of which i have no interest in. but one thing i really wanted to do more throughout this MA is read. i used to love reading when i was a kid, and feel like i can benefit a great deal from it.
looking through the art section, there really wasn’t anything of interest to me, just a lot of books about watercolour and candle designs. but i came upon this book titled ‘the art of being’ by erich fromm.
reading through the blurb, i noticed some key-words that are featured throughout the book, self-awareness, and psychoanalysis. i briefly touched on psychoanalysis throughout my practice in my BA, and feel like i could benefit from exploring this topic in my MA. this book seemed like the best book to get started with.
‘The Art of Being’ Erich Fromm, 1989
i’ve started the book already, and there were some interesting points that i wanted to dive deeper on, one of which is brought up in chapter two, called “the great sham”.
pg, 13. ‘The Art of Being’ Erich Fromm, 1989
there’s a lot that i took from this. it was hard to gather anything at the beginning. to be completely honest my reading skills are not what they used to be, and sometimes the concentration isn’t there (this will change in time), there’s the other perspective or not necessarily aligning with all the views that fromm voices.
when i spoke to jonathan in our 1-2-1, i was voicing concerns that my practice was too synthetic, in the respect that i fear that it sometime’s lacks what my practice is about, psychic automatism, ‘the absence of control’. and that, to be very honest. can be misleading.
this year i really wanted my practice to just be an insight to me just letting go. one of my tutors in my BA, hester reeve, would always tell me to just “let go” when making art. and i’ve always felt like i struggled with that. there’s fear that’s attached to the aesthetic to my work, but also a fear of just “letting go”.
i understand that this development is important for my practice, and that from reflecting on these thoughts and feelings with peers around me. it’s in my best interest to dive in the deep end with this.
1-2-1 with Jonathan
initially i was pretty nervous for this, It’s my first conversation directly with jonathan since my interview for the course and knew that I wanted to discuss quite a lot.
the things I wanted to primarily discuss with him was the position that my practice is currently in, and that i was confused on what direction my practice will take.
the other things I wanted to bring up were;
- my automatic writing exercises - as well as the development of writing on my paintings.
- unit 1 - my study statement, what might that be?
- my practice in general? is my practice in a good spot?
- collaborative making/work with other university’s especially in the psychology field.
the conversation started by me telling jonathan about the experimentation i’ve been doing with automatic writing and the combination of this with my paintings. this was an extremely enjoyable conversation. i initially expressed to jonathan about how much i loved this idea, and how much joy it brought me seeing the end results of these experiments, i even went to express how it somewhat made me fall in love with my practice again. for some time now i haven’t really painted that much, or experimented with my paintings. we sat on that thought for a moment and then the conversation shifted to how jonathan understood how much this meant for me due to how excited i seemed talking about it. we went on to discuss how i perceive my work in this stance, and we moved to how for my practice cradles me, like a mother cradles her son. jonathan suggested some ways to think about the term of cradling, like what do you see when you think of the word cradling, my first response was imagining a crescent moon on it’s back, rocking back and forth. i’ll be honest the thought kinda stopped there and i personally felt it had no real relevance to my practice, but it was good to think so openly about my work like this again.
something that i felt is really important for my practice is for it to contain as much reflection and perspective as possible from other academics, to help contribute to this goal of my work to contribute in a meaningful way for us to gain more awareness and information on the links that contemporary art has with human behavior linked with psychotic disorders. but when i was discussing this with jonathan, i mentioned how i’m unsure how to approach this. i feel very selfish with my practice at the moment. the feeling that i got with my practice when i was experimenting of automatic writing is weird sense of euphoria, i just feel so complete, and in a selfish way, i want to sit with that for a moment.
jonathan really helped me work through this. we discussed how “this is the time that i can just allow my practice to just exist - that doesn’t mean that i’m not pushing the academic field in relation to psychosis and contemporary art”. i felt extremely respected and validated with this view. it was nice to feel like i could contribute a lot just by being myself and making art. i really felt like i was putting a lot of pressure on my self by attempting to uphold my practice to this objective morality i’ve made up in my head. jonathan also mentioned how from his experience, collaboration works really well when there’s a great amount of synergy in the group that’s working together. we both felt to some degree that i would be totally fine just exploring my practice through experimentation more.
“just make art - that will build the foundation for what comes”
with this as well i for a moment discussed how i was concerned that my practice was slightly shifting from what i expected it to be at the beginning. from the get go with this ma i really wanted to work on image representation and my practice, e.g. recording film of my work, taking film images of my work to represent itself in different way. we both agreed that is is totally fine and that, if i wanted to. i could always visit these ideas in the future if they still hold relevance in my practice. on the topic of things changing, i brought up unit 1, and how i was thinking about the study statement i might propose.
“I aim to allow my work to contribute further to the context and link contemporary has in the communication of psychosis and psychotic disorders.”
i was slightly concerned combined with previous conversations how my practice might take on this political approach, and that through this provoking practice, it might contain an agenda that i feel will need to be expressed to the world, but that I am also extremely nervous on confrontation. jonathan really help me through this but reemphasizing a previous point that he made, this is a josh practice, and that it’s completely fine for my practice to not contain this confrontation that comes with thought provoking ideas. maybe my practice takes this cradle-approach to everything whilst still delivering important messages to the viewer.
it’s slightly difficult for me to remember everything that was brought up, though i do feel like i’ve covered the majority of it. this conversation with jonathan was extremely important, and that i really do appreciate the time he gave to help me navigate through this step in my MA.
automatic writing
this past week or two has been kind of rough. i’ve had an incredibly busy week or two which included me allowing certain things to become prioritized over my MA. last week i made it clear in my accountable 3’s session that i wasn’t able to complete what goals i set myself, and that i wanted to do better with myself. i took some time to reflect on what goals i’ve set myself over the past 2 weeks, and one of the first things mentioned was automatic writing. i’ve dabbled with this technique in the past, and previously have used techniques surrounding automatic writing, but i feel like i haven’t explored it’s full potential in a sense of brainstorming new ideas and allowing it to develop my practice and paintings.
this was the first exercise i did with automatic drawing, i had a lot of issues with this personally. i felt like i was allowing myself to care about what was happening aesthetically. and that it felt biased in some way. i really wanted and want to avoid this, as i do believe to an extent that my practice is not 100% organic, especially when it comes to my paintings.
i started looking up very basic exercises on how others automatic write, and their uses for this technique, i used this article to help me work out how i can do this best.
https://www.meldstudios.com.au/thoughts/automatic-writing-exercise-help-efficient-writer
from what i got from this post. i should close my eyes, as this can help remove that ability to control and see what i am doing, and what it looks like. as well as trying to write quicker than what i can, and that if i think of another word or thing, i should move to the next word or thought. this worked great.
second automatic drawing - 27/10/24
for this i first of all wanted to accept and understand this is my first time doing this, and that i cannot expect it to be amazing, and voice my exact intentions. but all things aside, this is really good results for my first exercise.
i really like this because from how the article suggests, they don’t pull away from the fact of writing words, for me the idea of automatic writing there was almost an expectation in my head that words would come out of me practically scribbling, and that this would be my subconscious. but there’s an almost fairy-tale expectation in assuming that this will 100% happen for me. instead, this exercise was understanding that words would appear in a similar way to how words do in word association exercises? the first thing i think of is the rorschach test, and how subject’s perceptions of inkblots are recorded and analyzed using psychological interpretation. to me this is very similar in ways to word association.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test
anywho. i see a lot of ‘the’ and ‘you’, which i don’t believe is significant enough or important to reflect on. i actually feel really good today, especially with me getting part of a project complete which was in the wood works for a longtime. so i’m not expecting any magical or extravagant words to appear in this exercise.
psychosis; studies
i’ve had a lot of time to think about how i want to approach this ma, especially in regards to how i want to approach the research into the communication of psychosis through art, but i always feel like i hit a bit of a dead end. it’s funny because i have all of these ideas, but they seem to form into each other to the point where i have no idea where to start. i understand how cliche this is, and how most artists have probably experienced this feeling in one way or another.
i feel like maybe taking a step back and going through the initial research that got me inspired to take this approach would be best.
a few months ago i came across a post from kings college london that showcased a current artist, izzy parker, who’s currently in residence at kcl and working closely with kcl’s department of psychosis studies to explore ways ‘in which the experience of psychosis can be communicated through art.’
i find her work really interesting, partly because her approach to this is something i didn’t really think about.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/cultural/artists-in-residence/artists-in-psychiatry-psychology-neuroscience/izzyparker
this is something i really want to dive into, but again, i feel a slight sense of confusion on how to approach it. i feel like what might be best for me is to get in contact with some of the programme administrators on how they might be able to assist me in sense of networking and a point of contact, as well as maybe getting in touch with some of the disability advisors for ual who might be able to assist me in getting some form of support when it comes to structuring how to approach my practice. anything that helps me give this feeling of accountability with my practice. which to be completely transparent i’ve lacked. for many many years.
film cameras
i really want to get into shooting film.
i want to experiment on how my work is documented, maybe film could bring out a different context in my paintings? i feel like film has a more physical sense of belonging than photos that are captured on a digital camera. looking through ebay as we speak.