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.