Thursday 6 December 2012

Nancy Spero


Interview with the artist Nancy Spero at her home in New York, 

by Jennifer Burke


Artist - Nancy Spero - 1926 - 2009
I did the below interview with Nancy Spero in 1992 while completing my last year at School of Visual Arts in New York City. When I first contacted Nancy she never hesitated to have me come by and interview her. When I arrived at her home/studio, I was taken aback about how idyllic the setting was in my view. She was in a kitchen area, which basically seemed to be just a small kitchen table, where I imagined many a discussion took place. And right across the space which was the other half of the room lay a very large canvas against the wall and  in front of it stood the artist Leon Golub her husband. Being quite young I though how amazing a life this is, fantastic space, buzzing with work energy and ideas, and having that to share with someone you cared deeply about. During the interview Leon would speak at times and finish Nancy's sentences. They had a great comradery, not just as husband and wife, but one of mutual respect for each others work, Leon understood the struggle Nancy put upon herself for the kind of work she did, for her opinions, for being different, for giving a voice to the victim, for not being afraid to force people to look at something that they may not like.
Nancy and I sat at that little kitchen table and spoke for a long time, she was just as interested in me and what I had to say. I felt she had a very nurturing side to her, I felt very at peace in their home. I will always feel privileged to have shared a Sunday afternoon with Nancy Spero and had the opportunity to watch Leon Golub painting in the background.....below is the interview.


The Interview

JB   Lets start big! What is the meaning of art to you?

Fig 1 Head with phallic, The WAR series - Nancy Spero
NS   It is all I can do, this thing called art. I do not have the capabilities of doing anything else. Recently and building up since the seventies I am fortunate to get attention, before that I was not really a burgeoning artist. I was participating in the art world by exhibiting and producing. What is art...something that is on the edge. The wonder of art is that it is symbolic you can act out or say things, that could not be achieved on a one to one daily basis. Art has to do with the school* the group you associate with, the other challenge is the art world. Leon Golub interjects at this point with a comment: We Nancy and I were restless, both of us figurative painters which was still acknowledged in Paris.......allot that was going on in the art world  did not get into the media here! Except minimalism  it was an illusion of power......what would life be like without art! We (Nancy and Leon) were in Chicago the "second city" we were the rebels resistant to the abstract expressionism which was the New York school, De Kooning, Pollack, Franz Kline the New York hierarchy.

JB   What is the other to you? with your views of not being recognized in the earlier days, did you feel like the other?

Fig 2 The WAR Series - Nancy Spero
NS   Not in the gender sense. In the art scene being the other is the artist if I am interested in the extreme, the edge, that my mind set is not working in the norm. I feel different - the artists lifestyle, the stigma of being understood and misunderstood at the same time. Yes you could say as a woman artist but I did not realize as early as you. During the revolution(the women's movement) of the late sixties I realized within this analysis of power that we(women) were subservient to male revolutionaries  so came W.A.R women artists revolution.(Fig 2)

JB   Considering the war series its subject matter and imagery are you trying to rewrite women's history-herstory therefore guaranteeing your own place is history?

NS   In a way as you mention in the war series(Fig 2). I used an image of a tongue(Fig 1) sticking out, represented me being angry with the world. It is a phallic tongue. I used Artaud as a vehicle for my message because he had been silenced by the bourgeois society. I felt lost as an artist in my society. I had seen nothing like the mental torture and the physical anguish of Artaud, his pleas to be listened to, moved me very much. I felt it clever and funny my responding to him......he would have hated me doing this. As artists we use things as stepping stones to get our message across. I decided what I wanted to focus on was the status of women, a hot subject, very controversial but not an excepted topic. The everyday occurrences in the lives of women keeps me very interested. I would not like to be brushed aside! I am talking for myself but I want to get into the public domain where it can be understood rather than a personal biography.
Fig 3 The first language - Nancy Spero 

Fig 4 The first language - Nancy Spero
                                   

JB   A Lot of articles discuss your turn towards Artuad is because of his "hysterical" voice - the Greek word hysteria means uterus and has been used to connect a woman's sexuality with madness  Do you think this is true, is your voice one of hysteria?

NS   No. I relate it to being silenced, being on the edge in a selfish society where no one is (was) generous to a living artist. I relate it to language using the image of the tongue sticking it out at the world bringing my personal outside where it can be understood. I was concerned with this going back as far as 1962 with the great mother piece, which deals with the birth of language.(Fig 3, Fig 4)

JB   I like that you are illuminating women's language in your art. Should art represent gender? Some female artists are always fighting the male view that dominant in sectors of the art world. Should your art be used to point this out?

NS   Yes, they should listen! We have spent our time in art history in the media looking at male art. It is time they look at our artwork and listen to our voice., be forced to look The reins of power have been very carefully under control by the masculine so there is a fear of appearing too feminized, its less valuable. This control is by the macho artists like Al Held, Jackson Pollack  Franz Kline.......but there are the sensitive ones....like Artaud. The ancient birth in the woman series deals with this, it is very symbolic of a different kind of power that is language. It shows this birth of language and if it is cut off that is then like a death, like the myth of the young woman who witnesses a man murder her own sister he then cuts off her tongue so she can not tell on him. The woman series is about the polarity of opposites, of ourselves in control of our bodies, moving in the world rather than being the victim  After Artaud and the woman series it changed to the actual being in control rather than anger. the shift was from internal psyche-to investigations (black paintings) becoming externalized with the sense of reality having a voice. Finding a voice with which to say there are possibilities. There are two stages of victimage:
1.   The voice of Artaud which is realistic but internalized and needs to find a way to get across.
2.   The voice that is external becoming powerful more male.



JB   With some of the images of women in your work, are you expecting them to live up to the traditional images of warrior-male, like "Running Totem Woman"?

Athena - Nancy Spero
NS   This is complex, the images are more complex than that. The sexes change. I have taken images of men and changed it into women. Sometimes women are very masculine looking. the images of the past are of men making men look more powerful. I have felt free to show women as powerful even what we would consider masculine looking. The image of Athena with her helmet, spear and shield  The goddess of wisdom and menura. I used everything from fashion model to old scrubbing lady. I have reasons some come out and some are arbitrary.

JB   In an article from Art Week Nov 26 1988 Andrea Liss writes about your "Celebration of the body as it's central archetypal icon is clearly at odds with such feminist practices of representation as those carried out by such artists as Barbra Kruger and M. Kelly for example in which they refuse to picture the female body or allow and condone a position of male spectator-ship for the viewer/voyeur....would you like to comment on this?

NS  They do not condone my artwork. I can not say at all if my artwork is detrimental to women. Their(feminist group of eighties) tactics are to treat the subject of women as elliptical. That group of the early eighties are more gung-ho seeing the image of women as object all the time throughout art history for the delight of men, that they disapprove of my imagery of women. Their attitude is very different being one of theory with art practice, mine is theory to a point but I do not want to illustrate it! It is correct that use of female imagery would allow this spectator ship  but the male spectator would get caught up short and realize that this is woman as activator, that my work is not averting the male gaze but running past oblivious or defiant-independent.

JB  Are you ready for another quote from the same article by Andrea Liss?
"Attempts within Spero's projects to unify womankind into one harmonious kinship also reduces the important historical , ethnic and economic differences among women....can you comment on this?

NS   I am trying to achieve the opposite as a matter of fact. I want surprises! Tensions! Shocks! Shocks of recognition, that these images are out of context, you have to take a second look to see what is there.

JB   In some of your work, the body is placed on the canvas, paper......in a way that  leaves allot of space around it. Can you talk about the body and the importance if any to that space you give it?

NS   I was interested in putting these images into space, this started with Artaud being isolated in his pain, in his otherness, a sense of disconnection from society. this format was more technical while the ideas are more of utopia in a way woman as antagonist to move freely in space. I do like to think of my artwork as a continuum, open-ended.

JB   I feel that some of your images are like butterflies that rise above the official discourse to be heard and taken seriously, can you comment on this idea and on the process of creating this work?

NS   In Spain I did an installation on the fourth floor of an old baroque building. I used soft plates to press images on the hard surface of the walls. These images found themselves in unexpected places right out onto the terrace. That was a beautiful ruin which appealed to a romantic side of me. One of the images which was both humorous and sinister floated on the wall like she had wings and I thought of her as a butterfly, but not just beautiful because she was sinister as well.

JB   Why did you become an artist?

Leon Golub 
NS   I was encouraged by teachers in grammar school, not by my parents.
Leon Golub  shouts across the room "There is no other area we could go into!" they laugh.
NS   I had a certain need to become an artist its intangible. In the beginning it did not seem desirable, but I was pulled in, drawn in by the visual. Its a hands on thing using the mind, its the challenge of the blank page, the blank canvas, whatever, its like a mania, a Frankenstein,  we all create monsters!
Leon Golub   (pointing to his side of the studio and then to Nancy's side) "On one side you have corruption and evil while on the other you have purity and decency"

JB   Can you comment on the art world today?

NS   Its just a can of worms.

JB   What do you think people are thinking of you and your artwork these days? That is if you care?

NS   I think they have changed their minds! Fortunately they are looking. They think I'm aggressive on some level.....you never really know, you just get an inclination of which way the wind is blowing. appreciation but still a certain amount of resistance.......that is pretty neat. I sell my work but not enough for the amount of press I get. I can see the resistance but people have put up a few bucks.
An artist can spend many years underground (no recognition) and when they surface, they will be questioned: where have you been all these years? Because of this there is a lot of bitterness and few rewards.


Wednesday 5 December 2012

Inspired by the artist Louise Bourgeois to put down my paint brushes and create an installation


Mulling over the idea of creating an installation


I want to share the artist Louise Bourgeois with you, her work is influencing a work I am focusing on at present. Although this Artist has always had an impact on my work in general, it has only been through the early stages of MULL that I have rediscovered the artists work and this work has directed me to: finally finding a solution for choosing the right medium/materials and media to create my next piece of art work. Below is a link to a media release by the Guggenheim museum in New York titled:

"FULL-CAREER RETROSPECTIVE OF LOUISE BOURGEOIS PRESENTED AT THE GUGGENHEIM THROUGH FALL 2008" discussing the life work of Louise Bourgeois. http://www.guggenheim.org/images/content/pdf/new_york/press/louise_bourgeois_press_kit.pdf

As I mentioned earlier I am in the process of reviewing Louise Bourgeois for MULL, and during this process of revisiting the work of this artist I have decided on a creative solution/choice in order to put a physical dimension to an idea I have had for a few years. To date I could not start creating any art for this idea as the medium I have relied on (painting) is not the right choice for this project. So I have now decided to put down my paint brushes and focus on creating an installation. I really connect with Louise Bourgeois work and I am planning to create my installation using her work, in particular "The Cells" as a starting point for my installation. In a media release by Lauren Van Natten, The Guggenheim New York, she states:

The cell (Eyes and Mirrors) is one of a series of installations which Bourgeois began making in 1989. The Cells are typically constructed from a mixture of such salvaged architectural materials as old doors, windows and wire mesh combined with found objects and sculptural fragments. As a result of their elemental materials, simple form and large scale, the eyes convey a sense of monumental force, both inviting and repelling the viewer’s gaze.

Cell-Louise Bourgeois
                                                                             
I want to process my ideas and gather my sketches, thoughts which I have been "mulling over" for some time now and then combine these ideas with a number of choices for the media/materials required to create this installation.
The installation, will be multi-sensory, it will have a strong physical presence, becoming a work that engulfs'/cannibalises the viewer, they(the viewer) will literally enter the artwork and become part of the artwork. . I have been finding additional creative solutions from my fellow MA-participants. David Phelan's work has helped me to address adding a dimension to the installation that is required, The installation will need to have a video and sound dimension and when I had the opportunity to view some of Davids work I found another creative solution. http://pinterest.com/jenniferburke94/installation/
Still from "The Artist is Present"
I am looking forward to working with Aine and Jean on MULL, and the required analysis is a great opportunity to evaluate this work and be influenced by their (Aine and Jean)work and by the artists they recommend Aine introduced me to the artist Marina Abramovic, in particular a Film titled "The Artist is Present" This Film discusses and documents Abramovic's work. In ways she is similar to Louise Bourgeois, exorcising demons fears and pain, but she has chosen to use her physical body as her media rather than using a representation of her body.

I have been toying with the idea of creating a work in which the viewer becomes part of it, the viewer can enter it, exist in it, becoming a "live material" if you will. Similar to Abramovic using her body as a medium. Abramovic also touched on the idea of having the audience become part of her performance piece at a performance in MoMA,

Its interesting the process of how artists arrive upon creating their work or a body of work, initially it can be a very daunting exercise. The blank canvas is very intimidating an empty space can taunt. Once I come up with an approach to give a creative and a physical life to my ideas, it becomes a kind of full steam ahead. This seems to be one of the ways I know that I am in the right direction as I have started the creative dialogue The first words are spoken and the piece I am working on communicates to me if you will. The work itself becomes a creator and begins to communicate with the artist. When the finished work resides in a public space the viewer has a dialogue also, it is this interaction that I am very interested to focus on when I show the installation.

I will continue to put together my sketches, ideas etc for this installation and post it on my blog in order to get your thoughts.

Friday 9 November 2012

Students work and the importance of the materials they use


This is an illustration by one of my students she is 11 years old. I have noticed that, since the children have been using charcoal, pastels,( basically all Artist professional materials) their work has improved so much(the children are 4 years up to 12 and they have never worked with these materials before). The children love working with these supplies, using their fingers to blend pastels and charcoal, they have opened an amount of new techniques available to them when they are creating art, and the new materials combined with instruction are responsible for this new creativity and skill level. The children are especially happy with being able and confident to realize their ideas on paper, they are happy with the work they are creating. This goes back to something that I am extremely interested in: the process of creating art, the materials used and rendering ideas from the mind on to paper, canvas etc......................................has anyone had a similar experience in that the tools the children use can have a massive and positive influence on the children, especially unlocking the images in their minds and putting them down on paper, the work on paper is as good as their images in the mind. I know it probably is an obvious thing to most of you better materials equals better work, but this is more than that, the materials have control of the outcome of the children's work, so much so that they are craving the use of these material all of them have asked their parents to get the new supplies, especially charcoal and pastels for Christmas! The children go to a rural primary school with about 200 or less kids in the school, they never get an opportunity to work with these materials in school nor do they get a small introduction to art history or the masters. I believe that the primary school curriculum should include art as a subject rather than a pastime. Do you agree? What about the larger schools closer to the capital and in larger cities around Ireland, do these schools have a better art program for primary school children? 

Thursday 8 November 2012

Creating again

How I create and developing my Artwork


Work in progress 2012
Entry Nov 16th 2012

I have been feeling so inspired by the participants of the MA course I am taking at LIT: MA in Art and Design Education. All of you have amazing talents and ideas on art! The above work which is a work in progress.  I have to say: I am really enjoying working on this painting. I feel that I am part of a larger piece of art work, which is all of us creating work individually, but at the same time our work is inspired etc by each other, by the group, we are a collective artist----gelling.  On a certain level I feel this work belongs to all of us, give me your comments, what direction would you take from this point, as the above is a sketch. I would really like to continue painting with your input and influence!!

Entry Dec 14th 2012

The finished work Dec 14th 2012

As I have mentioned earlier I was influenced by the MA group and course to start creating work on a regular basis. When I first started the above painting I was really excited about it and the direction I thought it would go. That feeling changed half way through the work! This painting is a "perfect"example of art that I create because of a need that I have, which is to please other people and avoid criticism. I make assumptions on what is an acceptable type of art for the masses. At times these"influences" have a powerful impact on my work. It is an ongoing dilemma that I have which is: the decision to create work that I want to, work that I don't apply my own set of censorship guidelines to, (an example of this type of artwork is the installation I am currently developing) VERSUS do I create work that I think is acceptable based on my upbringing, based on not shocking 
people, not making people uncomfortable work that produces "lovely pictures"


Entry Feb 14th 2013

An interesting thing happened to me as I was focusing on the artist Louise Bourgeois for the MA in Art and Design Education course at LIT (project titled "Mull")
While I was reviewing her work I remembered why I became an artist, I felt a new confidence and began to believe I could work on an installation piece that I have been mulling over for a number of years. The reasons I did not actively pursue working on this installation are many, one in particular is this need to please and I realised that this need was influencing what I was creating. I am now feeling free to now cultivate my own creative thoughts and resulting artwork. The MA art and design in education that I am currently participating in has also had a massive impact on my moving forward with the creation of the installation. I have found a community of artists that I feel nurtures, motivated and protects me. I am creating this installation as if these artists are my audience, but not to please them, just to share my work.....

I do not plan to create work that will always shock people, it is the subject matter that I am interested in that can be uncomfortable. I am interested in giving the victim a voice in my work, I am interested in having the viewer experience what it is like to be the victim and the oppressor. I am shifting towards creating an experience for the viewer rather than a visual experience. I feel that a full sensory experience is the only way that I can communicate or say what I need to in my work. I want the viewer to be part of the creative process. I want the viewer to have a responsibility, to take ownership of the ideas and the statements I am expressing. I do not want a passive viewer. I want to create an experience.



When I create an Installation there are three stages:

1. The physical stage of the work. The process of creating the work, the exorcising of ideas, demons, giving a voice to the victim to the other. "To meaning and shape to frustration and suffering" - Louise Bourgeois. The materials selected and the forms that will take shape, I have been reading so many interviews of Artists who are influencing my own work at present. "shapes that will provide the viewer with premeditated experiences in order to invoke feelings similar to the victim or oppressor. "When does the physical become the emotional its a circle going around and around" Louise Bourgeois 

2. This is the emotional stage of the work. The Installation is displayed in a public space where the viewer can interact with it or become part of the installation and experience it. The experiences are premeditated  I have a specific set of experiences I want the viewer to have. I want to go further than Louise Bourgeois when she created her Cells, Ann Hamilton is another artist who’s work inspires me to "art"iculate what I am trying to achieve in terms of creating an Installation, I am intrigued by the materials used and relied on to create an environment that stimulates all the senses  auditory, visual, touch and smell. I want to expose the viewer to a world where secrets are exposed. I want the viewer to enter a world "the installation" where their own body becomes part of the Installation and their experience is relying on so many senses, their response will be emotional. The key word is "experience" I want the viewer not just "looking" I want to get a particular emotion after they have had an experience, so to speak. The installation will be in control and will be designed to purposely ignite specific emotions the experiences which will be premeditated. "The viewer would be swept into an awareness beyond that of the normal viewer, intriguing the whole body. I want to bring to the surface the questions we should be asking"  Ann Hamilton.

Katy Kline, the director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine, who chose Ann Hamilton for the 1999 Venice Biennale, says of Hamilton, "She invites the viewer into a set of visible and auditory conditions where their entire bodily experience is activated. They are swept into a state of awareness beyond that of the normal viewer. She tries to intrigue the whole body.The second stage is the active stage in this process. The work will take the shape of cubed spaces. The viewer will enter these cube like spaces that will have different materials, that take different forms that the viewer will feel as they pass through these cubes. While some of the viewers are passing through the installation there will be a viewing/voyeur area which allows other viewers to watch the reactions of people as they encounter and navigate their way through the installation.

3. This is the validation of the work. Validating and applying value to the experience. The final stage of the installation is to take the 3D shape and return it to a 2D shape, this is done by opening the installation piece just like opening a box and flattening it ou. Once the installation is "opened" it will then hang on a wall to expose the internal of the work, just like a traditional piece of artwork. The viewer can now look at and review the place that they were part of, now it is an image of their experience, they can reflect and see the innards of the thing.

Below are some photos of my journal, these are rough drawings and notes on installation.






















Tuesday 23 October 2012

Becoming an Artist....


My life as an artist to date...............



My first memories of really enjoying art were: watching my Mother decorating our home as a child, I developed my love of colour watching her mix and match colours and patterns  She had a great eye for design and this was how she expressed her creative side. Her father was a master carpenter and was very interested in architecture in fact the majority of my mothers family are creative and we have quite a few artists in the family, my Sister is also a painter. I remember an experience as a child when my Father had the job of painting the walls in a room of our home. he allowed my four sisters and I to paint whatever we wanted on the walls, all over the walls, every inch of the walls, before he then painted over it and "tidied" the wall. I always look back on those times as the beginning of my love affair with Art and particularly painting, the physicality of creating art is so important to me. I am a very sentimental artist, I view all art with emotion first thought second. From a very early age I knew I wanted to paint. I was brought up to believe if you could "draw and "paint" you were "gifted" you had been given a gift and as such you were not to waste it. So I planned my life around my Art Education.

I left Ireland for New York after I completed the Leaving Cert as I wanted to study art there. I never thought of Ireland as a home for visual artists, this was back in the late 80'ies and I grew up in a tiny village in west County Wicklow, I don't believe I ever got to see very much art, I had no clue about art history, etc. The type of Art I was exposed to were reproduction pieces of milk maids walking in farm yards being followed by geese or a beautiful Turner type landscape, that was the range of my knowledge. You can imagine the first time I went to the MOMA in New York and stood in front of a Jackson Pollack, a Rothko, I was totally Blown away, even though I had nothing to reference in my mind to help me make the leap from a painting depicting a country landscape to now looking at a Jackson pollack vibrating right in front of me I immediately understood what I was looking at. I experienced a rush of excitement I had found where I belonged and I knew where I was going!!!!  I enrolled in Parsons School of Design and began a two year course in Illustration, I really enjoyed the course but could not fit in, most of the students were carrying portfolio's containing their beautiful illustrations but I was struggling to carry large canvases around the school and on the subways(wet) at rush hour. I realised I needed to paint and when I finished my course in Parsons I enrolled in School of Visual Arts and began a BFA in Fine Arts, Painting.

I loved every second that I spent at SVA and to have the Museums and galleries of New York available to reference the art I was studying was a gift. I had a wonderful experience my last year at SVA I got the opportunity to interview Louise Bourgeois who's work I really admire, from this one visit we became(Friends)I would say and she would probably have said (tolerated) in her strong french accent. I was invited to come to her home and studio most Sundays each week for the rest of that year in school, I feel so lucky to have had those conversations with her and the tours of her studio. Her work had a big impact on mine in New York.


When I graduated I remained in New York but moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn to find a large space to work in, at that time the rents were very cheap in relation to New York City and a large community of artists moved to the area. I lived and worked with fellow artists and began the creating/showing phase. At this point I understood that the majority of people who would care to see an artists work were other artists. The community of artists in New York is very large and a strong and supportive group. An artist will find inspiration and support from so many artists, but I was so interested in having the general public more involved in art, I came to believe we are all artists and every person has the ability to create, just as the early people did in the caves of Lascaux, they had a story to tell and they picked up charcoal and began to create. In 1992 I got together with a group of artists in the city and we decided to create an event called  Art Around The Park
We erected canvas all around the railings of Thompkins square park and invited artists and the general public to come along and paint create what ever they wanted to. It was a great success and a wonderful experience watching a plumber by trade discussing his colour choices with the artist Stephen Westfall or a mom and her young kids working on a painting with Georgia March......I have been thinking allot about this project since being part of the MA in Art and Design Education program at LIT. I would love to develop this project again, keeping it simple and fun to attract the public and then stand back and watch the art develop!!!

In New York during the 90ies I began to meet artists who were experimenting with different media in particular video and computer art....digital we say now. I was given the opportunity to work for a video production studio in Frankfurt and decided to move there. I continued to paint but most of my time was taken up working on video production and I learnt quite a bit. One day a letter came from Stephen Spielberg asking all video production companies to work for a foundation called the Shoah Foundation. The objective of the Shoah Foundation was to create a video library documenting the stories of the Jewish people who survived the second world war, the concentration camps etc. I had to travel throughout Germany filming interviews of people who survived the holocaust  All of the Interviews can be viewed in the Smithsonian in Washington DC in a video library. I have to say this experience had a profound impact on me, the fragility of life and how a simple decision of making a left or right turn could mean death or life, My paintings were very much influenced by the stories I heard. I did allot of work on how we nurture our world through death no matter how horrific, that no death is in vain and we influence the world even in death, I needed to feel that even those who died were survivors in some way.

I returned to Ireland and started a company in Dublin. I sold media, editing equipment to the video and film production companies here. After about 18 months I decided to move to Kerry and start a family. I began to find it more difficult to focus on painting or even making time to go and see an art show while caring for my young family. I had lost my community, the community that had provided so much support which for me was made up of artists and other people I could share my ideas with and draw inspiration from. I really came to understand the importance of the support that I had, before returning to Ireland. I remember reflecting on my time in New York and came to realise that I had not achieved going to New York, training to become an artist, working on shows and projects on my own!!! It was a kind of collaboration I only achieved these things by being in a community of other artists and like minded people.

So while "alone" in this rural town here in Kerry I began to not paint as much I began to not talk about art, I stopped completely I craved the world I had left behind me, I craved the support, the encouragement I took for granted. I felt like I was alone on an Island uninhabited. When I decided to teach Art about 2 years ago I started to come alive again even though I was talking to 4 year olds about Andy Warhol and having them draw his famous red cat, or showing them all the colours Monet used. I was starting to talk about art again and I had a captive audience they were excited about what I had to say. I began to create work again and somehow made my way to this course, I feel like I am just crawling out of the water on to dry land and starting to look up and see other people on the shore waiting for me, even though those people are in digital form its still a community......I learnt the value of a community its the beating heart of my work.

What I am focused on now: Currently my focus is on experimenting with different media I will try anything and see what happens!! The process of having the media I work with has a major influence on the out come of the final piece of art work is fascinating to me, I have witnessed this when teaching very young children art, their response to the different media and materials they use has a positive outcome on the work they produce, they feel so positive about the work they create. They have no expectations of what a piece of charcoal will do, for most it is the first time they use the materials, charcoal, acrylics watercolor and they feel so liberated, just as I did when I was a child being given a golden ticket for a day to paint on the walls in a room before my dad painted it. I am sure there is also an element of me trying to find a footing and a starting point for a body of work. At the moment I am uncertain what way to go, but at least I am working. I will continue to experiment with different media and continue to become involved in a community filled with Artists, Creators, Consumers, Students........my community!

In Progress.....