Reflections on 2022
I know I started my Reflections on 2021 blog post saying that I’m glad the year is over… and I think, now, almost at the end of 2022, I feel the same way again.
(Maybe it’s just an end-of-year thing?)
This time last year I had just finished the CUSP group exhibition, and was beginning to gather ideas for my Honours project, full of enthusiastic optimism.
That all feels like it happened last month.
But now, I’ve finished said Honours project, and have just graduated! I received my marks after what felt like an eternity, and I can safely tell you that I officially now have an Honours qualification through a Bachelor of Visual Communication Design degree!
(Still mourning the loss of the Creative Industries degree, just a little bit.)
This Honours year was…
Intense.
All-consuming.
But also extremely enjoyable and enlightening.
I started the year with grand (and terribly underdeveloped) plans of creating a web-based choose-your-own-adventure story based on universal human experiences. I puttered along with that for a few weeks, even creating an unfinished mock-up story called the journey, I but knew deep down that it wasn’t going anywhere. There was no meat on the bones of the idea.
But there was something about that concept I couldn’t let go. Even though the ticking time-limit of the year had just started, I was conscious of the fact that I was wasting precious time. This is where the handy-dandy visual art diary came in.
After some self-reflection, I figured out what it was about that idea that wouldn’t let me move on.
The concept of universal human experiences.
There are many of them out there, and I had created a list during the early stages of brainstorming. I started with the big life experiences, like getting married, undergoing surgery, or finding out about the death of a loved one. Even if you haven’t experienced it, you know someone who has. Then I moved on to the small experiences, like getting a haircut, going on a date, reading a book, getting unburnt, getting blood taken, putting up a poster… the list goes on and on.
When I make art, I always want to make the viewer feel something. It doesn’t have to be something profound, it can just be a passing, oh, that looks nice. What better way to make someone feel something, than to make them remember an event in their life?
So I muddled along with that idea for a while, filling more pages of my visual art diary (the first of many).
I decided to focus on the home as a space. The home has always been a very important place to me. The feeling of safety, the opportunity to connect with the people you live with. It might sound a bit too idealised to say that nothing can go wrong while you’re at home. The more I researched, the better I could articulate the intangible feeling I got.
A little (rephrased) snippet from my exegesis:
“Home is a multidimensional concept – more than just a physical dwelling; it can be the social and familial relationships that are created and performed within the physical dwelling; and it can also reflect the occupant’s sense of self through use and decoration of interior spaces.”
From that point, it was natural to settle on an artists’ book as the form through which my creative work would take place. The perfect vehicle to encapsulate everything, building up rich and meaningful layers of experiences, while still keeping everything in some semblance of chronological order.
I think I’ve written about this before, but this year really hammered it home for me. If you’re going to take on a long-term project, and not have it fall apart halfway, planning is important.
Essential, one might say.
Crucial.
Vital.
Need I go on?
Long-term projects aren’t my strength, as I’ve said before (but I’m getting better!). I love the flash of inspiration, the rush of creative energy, and the gratification of finishing a project. Breaking this past year up into manageable stages, and coming up with a timeline (even if it wasn’t followed), was an important step.
I did a lot of information-gathering, in the early stages. Because personal memories played a huge role in the drawings I was creating (I was drawing from memory, not using reference photos at all!), I had to research how human memory functioned, and read studies that researched the link between artmaking and memory recall.
I started to draw, experimenting with the style in which I wanted to portray the homes I was remembering (I decided to focus on the homes I’d lived in throughout my life as the subject of this project). It was a frustrating process, I will admit. Nothing is worse than being unhappy with what you’re producing and having no idea how to fix it.
My drawings started out like this:
Then transitioned into this:
And finally settled on this:
Instead of trying to cram in every detail of a space that I can remember (which led to more frustrations, because I couldn’t remember everything!), I decided to focus on certain snapshots of a place, making the home feel like an inhabited space.
And with that, the real drawing process began.
I was creating up to five or six drawings a day, actively trying to remember the homes as best I could, and portray them with a sense of character and almost tangibility.
(Let it be known that I also experienced major creative fatigue during this time. I believe transparency is important. While the viewer might only see the end result, the journey to get there isn’t always Instagram-worthy. Not every drawing has to look perfect – there are many, many drawings that I did that didn’t make the cut – that’s the point of creative experimentation.)
After the hard-core drawing came more hard-core planning. The thing about creating a sixty-page book is that you can’t jump right in (I mean, you could, but it wouldn’t have worked out very well in this case). Planning the page layouts first on paper, then on the computer, was a long and arduous (but necessary) process.
It was only after that, that the painting could begin!
This was the fun part, adding the colour and breathing life into these drawings, making them really represent the places that lived in my mind. Some of these homes, I hadn’t seen in over ten years, but this process really took me back.
I remembering being a child again, sleeping on bunk beds and playing with toy trucks in the backyard. Being a teenager and decorating my bedroom with pages ripped from National Geographic magazines. Moving out, and the feeling of joy (and also mild anxiety) that I now have a whole house to decorate as I please. And seeing my current home through new eyes, all the quirks that make my home what it is to me.
(After all that, writing the text and binding the book was practically a breeze.)
Even though I knew I was capable of it, this year has really showed me that I can take on a big, in-depth project, and have it come out the other end as a complete success that I’m proud of (plus actually exhibiting it for other people to flip through and see!)
As for next year, I’m taking a break from study (I was contemplating a PhD, but I think my brain needs a rest), and focusing on creating more meaningful art. I have lots of ideas… potential exhibitions, an online shop, and of course more blog posts.
Just have to wait and see what 2023 brings.
Keep up with my art journey!
