Tag: work

Emergence

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Since moving from South Africa to the Netherlands, I have felt a strong need to express what it feels like when major changes happen. Every time I try to grasp at it it eludes me. Memories and thoughts and identity seem to be vague and are like vapour.  Especially when you find yourself in a strange uncanny valley of experience. Reality seems suspended. The mind keeps trying to make analogies and patterns based on what it has experienced before. And that is starting to feel like a useless exercise. Still that is what the mind does.

This new reality is paralel and doesn’t quite fit the mold. Like a bad print. And yet the mind is making stories and analogies and trying to make sense of everything like you are stuck in a dream. Somewhat out of focus. Discordant, clashing worlds. There seems to be a constant very faint current of misunderstanding. Just unease. And, I suppose, that is what change feels like.

What emerges from the cacophony is something new. The echoes inform a new system, a new pattern, new memories, thoughts, identities.

Mistakes are Life

 

 

Movement

Movement

        Movement   

                                   Movement

 

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Underlying mistakes

We need mistake inducing situations and materials for things to change and evolve and be interesting. That is the only way to be creative. Change is inevitable. 

Perfection is entropy.

Mistakes are what make things cluster they are what makes patterns form.

Tiny, tiny, tiny changes in movement and tiny incremental mistakes. And things are revealed. Something changed direction. 

Maybe I didn’t notice until you hooked onto it and made it grow beyond itself. The Origen hidden.the origin is lost. 

This is the only way to step outside the frame and bleed into the other possibilities.

The echoes matter. But only if there is interference at some point. Then something new can grow. Careful of sanitising too much. Some  dirt has to remain for new life to grab onto. 

The stumble might be the catalyst for the dance to change. 

We keep looking for what makes sense. For what is flawless. We need to find the flaws to understand the origins. If that is what we seek.

Life is mistakes that work.

Friction implies some kind of resistance. But that is what vibrates the strings. That is what makes marks. That is how we can sense. 

We are here because something is out of balance. Somewhere there is a mistake and thus the universe has not neutralised itself. Maybe it is just a moment. Maybe a fluctuation that has sent things teetering for the moment like a coin spinning on a table after being tossed. 

But here we are. 

Trying to categorise to simplify and all that happens is things become more complex the more we do this. At some point we will have to categorise at such a fine resolution that it will be so simple and everything will be accounted for and that is chaos. entropy. Drawing lines is what we do. But it is a haphazard process

All that is of consequence is where the focus is. But we might need to keep the borders perforated so that it is not a closed system. Closed systems die.

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Figments of Memory

Figments of Memory

Patreon page

I have just started a Patreon page! And I thought I would share my first post with you. I am still trying to figure out how everything works but it can’t hurt to start spreading the news. Please feel free to go and take a look! I am very pleased with the new direction I am taking my work. I am  incorporating many of the styles I have already built on for many years. So: this is from my new post:

Figments of Memory

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I have just started a new series of works and this is the first completed painting.   It is a mixed media piece that incorporated charcoal, acrylics and soft pastels. It is made on board. The piece has a very interesting texture which is something I would love to explore further in upcoming works.
This new painting is about the remnants that are left in our minds. People we vaguely remember. These moments are often heavily laden with emotion and certain details. Yet the rest is left partial or missing. `And often memories are completely fictitious.

Observing Existence

Observation is inherently existential. It is communication about our experience of our existence. I find it impossible to separate the two no matter how mundane an object I choose to paint. The human form is not mundane – especially not to humans- yet it is ordinary. It is something we all possess. And everything about this fact is interesting. This is existing and this is experiencing.

 

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Lightheaded by Jodi Hugo

3 ways to be a more productive artist

3 ways to be a more productive artist
"This work is about reaching out. Being vulnerable. It is about a connection and letting someone in."
“This work is about reaching out. Being vulnerable. It is about a connection and letting someone in.”
I have been very productive lately. This also means that I haven’t been blogging. I haven’t been doing much besides painting.
Productivity has always been quite a challenge for me. It has taken many years to figure out all the barriers. First I needed to understand what was holding me back from doing the one thing I have always felt was my calling. Why couldn’t I paint when that was all I was thinking about?
I seem to have come across 3 key productivity boosters for myself and hopefully some other people.
1. Be your own best boss. 
This may seem obvious but it took me a really long time to understand that when you are self-employed you are your own boss. You are not bossless. What helped me was understanding what kind of boss I would like to work for. I read an article on how to manage my personality type at work. At first I thought: “so glad I am not a manager or an employee! Whew!” Suddenly it all made sense. I was a manager and an employee. And I was being the worst boss possible to and for my personality type (INFP).  I was critically breaking down every single thought or attempt I made to create. This was a bad boss – especially for someone like me! This obviously creates a spiral where I would become a worse employee and in turn be a meaner boss. If I had to be anybody else’s boss I would never dream of treating them this way- it is quite unnatural for me to be mean. So I changed my style of managing myself. And voila! I have become a really good employee. I would really recommend finding out how your personality type might influence how you would be best managed.
2. Block off work time without interruptions. 
I have managed to put aside a few hours every day where I can work without being interrupted. I need to be completely isolated to be affective.
Even if I feel uninspired I will, at least, sit in my studio. Just being there often gets me working.
3. Have other people handle the the things that you are not good at. 
I realised a while back that one of the biggest stumble points for me was trying to do all the different tasks of running my own business. All I really want to do is create things. All the other aspects like selling art, marketing, admin and dealing with people were strangling me so much that I couldn’t make art. They were big stressors that left me paralysed. And then I joined a gallery – Which in itself was a challenge for me – and it changed everything. Now, except for the occasional commission, I only make art.
And that is all I ever wanted.
Back to the studio 😉
This work was inspired by a line from a Tori Amos song 'Take to the sky'. Sometimes we need to do things without apology and live without fear.
This work was inspired by a line from a Tori Amos song ‘Take to the sky’. Sometimes we need to do things without apology and live without fear.
you can see more of my work at State of the Art Gallery