On Art, Post Graduation

While I was in school, almost everything I made was created to fulfill an assignment by a due date. Frequently what this meant was that I selected one of the first in a handful of ideas, because I needed to begin right away and didn't have time to mull over the project for another week or two. In part, this was a good thing, because it forced me to focus on a single piece and see it through to completion. These days, my workspace is littered with half finished pieces. There are a number of chased images that haven't found their way into any presentable format, rough edged and waiting for me to find the right framework for them to exist in.

I haven't been compelled to talk about things with my art since before I graduated, until just recently. Occasionally I feel guilty about this. I have, in the past seven months, been making things that are, in essence, studies. Studies of subjects and exercises in technique. And it's been wonderful, cathartic. I feel like I've emptied a great weight. There's a lot of pressure in art school for your work to be about something, and for you to be able to talk about it. Form or function or both. Commentaries on the social order, or the way we relate to each other. And that was intriguing, and exhausting. Sometimes I wanted to simply create something for the sake of creating it, without it having to be terribly meaningful. Not, perhaps, art. To explore the forms of animals without needing them to address any issue other than realism.  And sometimes I get that nagging feeling in the back of my head that looks at what I'm doing and goes, "That's nice.  But is it art?  You do want to make art, don't you?"

But the time hasn't been wasted, whatever my inner art critic might like to suggest. I've produced work that I'm technically proud of, that has really pushed my skills further, like the minute scales on a tiny silver fish, or the dramatic undercut of a fin on a copper lionfish. I can point to them and say, "Until I did it, I didn't know I could."

Well and good. But now I know I can, and what shall I do with it?

Speak again.

(I've been doing some research and sketches for a new body of work, and I'm tremendously excited about it.  Too excited to give details, or I'll lose some of the magic.  So, hold tight and wait for the first piece or two to get made, and then I'll be excited with details.)