Fight the Good Fight

I have been studying Visual Communications for five years through a distance learning college. I started studying photography in 2010 and I realized I wasn’t a photographer after a year of study. I realized very quickly there was this large demographic of technically minded males who dominated the industry. I was far more interested in Man Ray and dark room techniques. I also had the rumblings of some internal discomfort with photography and the digital age. Everyone has the ability to take a fairly rubbish photo and make it look better. For example; I could take a very dull picture of a fried egg and use the Photoshop to alter the exposure, contrast and highlights and then I add a filter, I suddenly turn my fried egg, into a misty hazy retro fried egg that every body loves and I get a million ‘likes’ and then I decide to call myself a professional photographer. Don’t get me wrong, I love photography but there was a part of me that didn’t want to follow the path so I stopped.

I moved onto illustration and I thought I’d found myself. I love narrative and I love drawing so Illustration was the one for me. I did enjoy the course but there was a fight going on inside myself, I could hear the distant shouts of me, myself and I having a good old scrap.  I did get a good mark in my assessment but it wasn’t enough. I then tried graphic design. I got a bit confused and focused more on illustration than layout and by the end of it I was tired. I handed my work in for assessment and while I was waiting I stated my own work.

I have a lovely friend who has been doing the same course as me and we meet up and talk about our work. We generally come away feeling motivated. One particular time we were looking through our private sketchbooks and we said ‘Why are we spending all our time crunching through this college stuff when what we love to do is our own stuff in our sketchbooks’.  We left each other with much to think about.

I now acknowledge that within myself, I have the need for validation. I’m not the only human to feel this way and a University degree would have indeed armed me with the tools to call myself an artist. I have been looking after my large family for years and I really had a deep urge to claim something for myself. The fruits of my education would have been mine and mine alone and I really wanted to prove myself. However, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it and it hurt.

Inside myself was the recognition that I had missed my boat and no matter how hard I tried I would never get it back. I would hate going back to University full time. I would hate being with hundreds of eighteen year old students experimenting with their creative freedom, while I would be sitting in the corner stressing about missing a call from school saying one of my kids was ill or how the dog was feeling or thinking about my enormous ironing pile. I would also really struggle with some student who thought they were the next ‘big thing’, as they displayed their diamanté-encrusted sausage on a white mdf plinth. I would also resist any form of tuition from someone whose work was unsubstantial. You see, if you tell me your name I will Google you and look at your work and if its shite I wont listen to you!

I couldn’t do distance learning and it took me five years of total slog to realize the format was just not right for my head. I have reading difficulties and the whole damn course is based around bloody reading. It was a total fight and I thought the fight was my artistic journey and that ‘every artist has this battle’. But it wasn’t that, it was that I wasn’t reading the coursework properly and I was basically doing what I wanted to do, but when it came down to it, I was missing the point of the assignments.

For six weeks I really pondered why I had the need to formalize my learning. I had to look long and hard at my life and see what was right for me instead of this formalized pathway to my education.

I just started making images of the things that interested me. I started to teach myself how to oil paint. I also started drawing again like I hadn’t done since my A levels. I am watching so many YouTube videos to help me understand and I am watching documentaries about art history and techniques. I am processing lots of information and it’s going into my head too. The more I do, the more confident I am that I don’t need a degree to learn, I don’t need letters after my name to be an artist.

It is still hard work, its still a struggle but the fight is a good fight. It’s one that I get joy from. Its one I don’t mind loosing every now and again because I know I’m learning and improving.

I was watching an interview with Grayson Perry and he was talking about how art schools are really important places because of all the support around you, to help you with your work and direct your learning. It’s a huge support network or specialists and fellow students that will help you improve. (Maybe that is a little bit idealized but I get his point.)

I realized when I watched this that I won’t have this support network on my self-taught journey. I do worry about my work not going in the right direction because of my isolation. I may spend years on one project only to discover that it made no sense to anyone but me. That’s not what I want. I realize I may have to create some kind of core system that will help me evaluate my direction objectively. I have also created a time sheet to document my hours spent working. Not to quantify my time in monetary terms, but to measure progress and learning and how many hours it takes me to nail painting in glacises or how long it takes me to complete a drawing. It helps me measure my progression. I am also doing short classes in life drawing; this is because not many people I know want to get their kit off for me to draw.

My friend and I were once pretending we went to a ‘Fantasy Art College’ (Like Fantasy football but with art) We were laughing about how she was a punk in her room bunking lessons and I was having relations with Picasso who was our teacher. It was funny as we sent emails to each other about what was happening to us in this Fantasy art college. To be honest… I’m kind of their now. I’m being taught by Picasso, Monet and Di Vinci and the mighty Caravaggio. I watch documentaries and learn about their work and history, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. In closing I would like to share something Leonardo Di Vinci said: ‘I know I’m not a man of letters. Experience is my one-true mistress and I will sight her in all cases. Only through experimentation can we truly know anything’.

I notice that he doesn’t lay honor at the feet of those who taught him from being a small boy, he pays tribute to experience and say’s he will ‘site her in all cases’. He understood that our knowledge only really comes from doing the work.