I’ve been thinking about edges

Posted on 8 September 2019 by beckybendylegs

I’m still supposed to be finishing off my thesis, and I have done some work on it today (adding footnotes, very important) but my mind has been elsewhere, it has been on the edge.

My obsession with things has turned me to considering edges today. Without edges, we would not have things. I know I often talk about the blending of things, but in reality, there are still edges. Without edges, we would not have the difference between me, it, you, that, this, and the thing. Everything has an edge, even a cloud. Do concepts have edges? I guess that they do. They don’t go on for infinity so they must have edges, surely. Is there an edge to love? There must be, love cannot be found everywhere. And how about a dream? Where is the edge of dream last night?

We may be able to see edges, but they aren’t entities in themselves. I can’t produce an edge. I could try to draw one, but it would be a line, not an edge. That line itself, would have edges around it. So it is impossible to reproduce an edge. And the edge is just the edge, the border, the ‘difference’ between me and it. It isn’t a solid ‘thing’. It’s not even a concept. It is somewhere between the two. The edge is the start of something and the end of something else. It is what joins everything into the big messy blob I talk about.

I cannot exist without my edges, and nor can the thing. Even the internet has an edge, otherwise there would be no difference between this real world I am typing this in and the virtual world my words are appearing in. But where is the edge here? You can rarely touch an edge, even if you can perceive it and ‘see’ it.

The more I think about it, the more I see that there are edges everywhere. All I can see are edges. Suddenly, the things around me as I type this have receded (the chair, my laptop, the enormous tent to my left, the packet of Marks & Spencer’s Extremely Chocolatey milk chocolate orange biscuits, my keys, the table, my diet coke, my fingers, my phone, a leaflet from NatWest, and New Philosopher magazine). All of these things have edges and that is what I am seeing now. Most seem to have straight edges, my fingers being the main exception. And their edges seem to touch, overlap, go behind or in front of other things with edges.

Yes, they are very delicious those biscuits, even the edges of them.

The problem with thinking, is that it takes you to all sorts of places. Now I see that there are also metaphoric edges: the edge of reality, the edge of reason, the edge of sanity and the edge of something new and exciting. An edge seems to stand for a chasm between good and bad, safe and unsafe, or my mind and the rest of the world, thing and no-thing.

We also use edges to mean borders. If I cross over the edge to where you are, I am a visitor. We live within edges, in our own communities, whether we like it or not and whether we believe it should be so or not. I might decide to meet you on the edge of the corner.

To be on edge, is to be tetchy, or on the brink of something fearful. The world ‘ledge’ is close to edge, and to stand on the ledge is to be about to jump.

And now google, my old friend, tells me there is a book all about edges! I might just have to get this. What can a man have to say that might fill a whole book about edges? I need to find out.

I don’t have enough books to read…

I do rather like living life on the edge.

 

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When objects create objects – why I love tree tunnels

Posted on 7 September 2019 by beckybendylegs

If you have ever been on holiday to Devon, Cornwall or West Wales (and probably numerous other places I haven’t been too) and driven around the countryside whilst on holiday then you will be familiar with the notion of the tree tunnel. The tree tunnel is one of the treats of going away. They do have them in Staffordshire and Shropshire, but not many. I have always loved tree tunnels and you see them everywhere in Devon and Cornwall. 

A tree tunnel is a usually square-roofed, but sometimes more rotund, natural ‘tunnel’ of trees that stretches over a road that isn’t a main road but isn’t quite a teeny tiny country one either. It is usually one of those in between roads, the sort of road that lorry sat navs send lorries down in error. Over time, these trundling lost lorries create a natural shape out of the stretching overarching tree branches that have grown over head. The shape of the lorries, which is often square, creates an amazing man-made-natural phenomenon which is known as the tree tunnel.

This is a particularly beautiful example of the tree tunnel

I’ve recently become quite interested in such examples where nature and man interact to create new objects, particularly accidental ones. I want to find other examples. I’ve just more-or-less finished my MA thesis, which I fondly call The Beast, and my argument in that centres on this idea of the democracy of things and the impact that objects (whether they be organic or inorganic) have on each other. So my love of tree tunnels goes one step further. Not only are objects (lorries and their drivers, and trees) having an impact on each other, they are creating a new object (the tree tunnel created after buying them at dr deer pear trees for sale) that would not otherwise exist if it hadn’t been for the existence of the two creators: trees and lorries.

Isn’t that simply amazing? Perhaps this is the gem of an idea for a future PhD I might one day decide to do. I just can’t seem to stop.

 

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Nearly there – doubts

Posted on 3 September 2019 by beckybendylegs

I am just two weeks away from the hand-in date that is imprinted on my brain, and a little longer than that away from when I have to exhibit something. As a consequence, the dreaded doubts have started to show their ugly faces. Evil little critters, they are. I know this is normal, yet it still frightens me. It’s the curse of the creative.

If doubts were monsters…

It isn’t just me that has been feeling it; today, while in the studio, I sensed it from others. We have just two weeks left and we ‘should’ be nearly there. Yet, we all seem to be walking around looking somewhat lost as if in a fog of uncertainty, desperately seeking assurance on each other’s faces that the same emotion is being felt. It is, there is no mistaking it. I see it.

I have just varnished my finished pieces and for about the fourth time since I started making them I have concluded that they look ‘rubbish’. The varnish has left an uneven finish on them which to me is obvious and messy. They need another coat. Yet I can’t really get away with varnishing them in the studio as the smell is too potent, so I will have to carry them one by one outside and that is tedious. I will have to try to spray them instead of painting the varnish on and I am worried that this won’t work or that I will run out of varnish. One can doesn’t go that far. So I am sat here worrying.

As I write this, I am sat at home and it is 9pm at night, I can’t do anything about my fears now. I wish I could. I want to be there, back in the studio. I want to make everything perfect, I can’t. The thoughts running through my head are: what if it doesn’t work? What if they fall apart as I attempt to carry them outside? What if they still look awful after I have varnished them again? What if it is all a big waste of time and money? What if I fail? What if? What if?

It looks better in the photograph than in real life

Also today, I re-read my thesis, I must be in double, even triple figures now on read throughs. And the doubt monster has bitten me here too. I recently sent it to a non-artist to proofread for me and his comments which I received today, of which there are many, have sent me into a bit of a spin of terror. What if it doesn’t make sense? What if I fail? What if I have wasted two years of my life? What if it is, as I fear, utter rubbish?

He was better at herding cats than he was at art

Now both those fears are ridiculous, I now tell myself. Whatever the outcome of the thesis and the exhibition, I have not wasted two years. Even if I fail, it has not been a waste of time. It has been an incredible two years. And anyway, some of the best artists failed at art school. And some of the most well known evil dictators didn’t even get in in the first place. Perhaps the latter is not the best role model though. Boris, watch your back.

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Nearly there – reflections

Posted on 27 August 2019 by beckybendylegs

I have two weeks left of my MA. At least, I have two weeks until I have to hand in the thesis. I have slightly more time than that to finish the artwork for the final show, but I think that psychologically it will benefit me if I finish everything by the 16th September and that is what I am aiming to do.

One of the pieces in my final work for the show

I feel as if I have read, re-read and re-re-read the ‘beast’, as I fondly call the thesis, too many times now. I am blind to its merit or demerit. It is what it is.

It has been a part of my life, and has grown with me, for two years now. If I open ‘MA thesis first draft 2018’ I am struck by how completely different it is to ‘New MA thesis revised July 2019 formatted final’. They could be two different pieces of work.  

The beast

Since I have just two weeks to go, there isn’t much I can do now to change what I have written. I seem to have amassed 18,000 words about ‘stuff’ over the last two years. Looking at the bibliography, I have spent far too much time reading about stuff. I also believe that I have spent far too much time thinking about stuff. But what will I think about after September 16th? I can’t think about that yet.

Looking back at the past two years, and as I sit here in my studio surrounded by two years worth of artwork, I see how much I have changed, developed and learnt in that time. I have shed a lot of tears too. I have had times of deep introspection and existential crisis. I have wanted to give up. I have felt as if I am wading through trickle. I have felt guilt at not ‘producing’ anything for weeks on end (last August to this February). I have felt lost, stifled, confused and struck down with impostor syndrome. I have also had good days, days when an idea grips me and I am buzzing with enthusiasm, days when I have written a few thousand words in a frenzy of intellectual electricity. And I’ve had days when I’ve been desperate to paint my thoughts out. It may be a cliche to say this, but it has been a roller coaster ride.

My personal life has also gone through a major transformation in that time – one of the biggest a person can go through. This has, at times, impeded on my ability to deal with the art research. It has also, at times, given me the energy and enthusiasm and provided me with incentive to go that bit further. There has been at least one time, during the darker times, when I thought it would cause me to give up. I haven’t given up, the lighter times have beaten that thought out of me.

I now have two weeks left in which to give up but I can say with confidence now that that isn’t going to happen. For risk of sounding like a bad Oscar speech, I have so  many people to thank for carrying me on this journey and getting me thus far. You know who you are. I thank you with all my heart.

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Eleanor Smith – procrastination

Posted on 25 August 2019 by beckybendylegs

I was given the go-ahead to work on my Eleanor Smith Portrait a few weeks ago. Yet, I’ve been putting it off. There were a number of reasons for this, including:

  • Fear. Fear that it will all go horribly wrong.
  • Fear. Fear of that first brush stroke.
  • Fear. Fear of everything as fear is the enemy of art.

I also wanted to put most of my creative efforts into my MA first, which I did. However, during these initial few weeks as I’ve been concentrating on my MA work, the canvasses I had put aside for Eleanor, were winking at me, whispering ‘start painting, start painting’. 

In addition, a friend of mine who is also working on the Eleanor Smith Portrait Project kept asking me every time I saw her ‘Have you started yet?’ While she hadn’t started, I didn’t feel so bad about the fact that I hadn’t started. However, last week, she informed me that she had started. At this point, the guilt set in. I knew that my idea for the Eleanor Smith Portrait Project wouldn’t take me many hours. It predicted that it might take me much energy and concentration, but in terms of time, it was going to be three hours at the most. Yet, still I kept putting it off.

It was knowing that my friend had started her portrait that prompted me last Friday finally to unwrap the first canvas, fetch my new brushes and paints, and sit down and make that first scary brush stroke. To my great joy, the first brush stroke wasn’t so scary as I’d predicted. That first brush stroke actually looked reasonable. And, it lead to a second brush stroke, and then a third, and then a fourth. It wasn’t an instant disaster.

I had also been having a tough time, emotionally, when I started the paintings and was not at all in the mood to paint. Something in me prompted to paint anyway. My children were on holiday without me and I had been struggling, missing them. However, I managed to put my emotional angst aside and as I had a couple of hours to kill I channelled all my creative energy into painting. This strategy seemed to work. The next two hours passed in a haze, like a drug-induced, frenzy of creativity. In those two hours I managed to paint six of the nine canvases for the piece I had proposed. Thankfully, they were all acceptable. I hadn’t messed up completely, as feared. I was reasonably happy with my efforts. I was also utterly exhausted.

Two days later, I finished the other three paintings in a similar ‘frenzy’ of creative energy. These small pockets of frenzy is what I love about being an artist and they are what keeps me going despite ‘real life’ difficulties impeding on me.

Perhaps the trick is to paint it as it is, not as I think it is. And that is what I did. It is that ‘letting go of the ego’ I have written before here about allowing the hand and paintbrush to flow. I procrastinated a great deal for this, but in the end, it turned out for the best. I waited until I was feeling extremely low, and that seemed to work.

And, here is the result. Fingers crossed. Let’s hope Eleanor Smith and the other judges of the project like what I have done. It’s not brilliant, it’s not path-breaking, ground-breaking, or any similar hyperbole, but it’s ok and most importantly, I’m happy with it.

The final piece as it will appear

 

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Why can’t I talk to the M6?

Posted on 17 August 2019 by beckybendylegs

Recently, I’ve been having some interesting discussions with my eldest son about art. I like these discussions as much as he hates them. The reason is, because, by his own admission, he doesn’t see the point of art. He doesn’t really know what ‘art’ is and I think he finds most of it rather baffling and confusing. This is after many years of being ‘dragged’ around art galleries by me. 

Concurrently to our ‘what is art’ talks, we’ve also been debating the difference between ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’ objects, this being a topic closely related to my art practice. I’ve been writing about this in my thesis. I believe everything is animate and everything has the power to cause change in other things by the relationships between things (things including us).

This subject of animate vs inanimate started a few days ago as we were approaching the Welsh coast and I casually mentioned as we were getting closer that we would ‘soon be able to say hello to the sea’. He jumped in with, with much confidence: ‘No you can’t, the sea is inanimate’. 

My eyes lit up at this comment. On many levels, I disagreed. One one level, simply because of pleasure. Just because something, as science currently dictates, doesn’t have consciousness, it doesn’t prevent you from having a one-sided conversation with it. You can say hello to anyone and anything you like. I talk to things all of the time. When I mentioned this, his shoulders sagged as I fear he knew what was coming, and he replied with: ‘Fine, ok, but still, saying ‘hello’ to the sea is pointless. It can’t hear you or respond. It is inanimate’.

Oh, dear son, that is not quite the right way to conduct this argument. Define ‘pointless’? I wanted to say. I didn’t. I kept this particular strand of the argument to myself. My point, had I wanted to make it, would be that if I get pleasure out of saying hello to the sea, irrespective of whether the sea is able to feel my hello and/or respond, then it is not ‘pointless’. I didn’t make this point though. I concentrated instead on the second part of his reply: his firm belief that the sea is inanimate. 

‘The sea is clearly animated,’ I told him. ‘You can see it moving from here’. (By this point we were skirting the coast and had passed the point of the initial ‘hello sea!’)

‘Yes,’ he quickly responded with. ‘But it isn’t being moved by organic forces.’ 

The argument proceeded along the lines of what ‘thing’ or ‘being’ can be ‘animate’ and whether ‘organic’ forces are moving the sea. He firmly believes, as he proceeded to state, that the moon is the only thing moving the sea (I didn’t mention the wind but then it was a still day). And, therefore, as the moon is a solid object, the sea isn’t animate. We didn’t enter into a discussion of whether there is a chance that the moon is organic, never mind the sea, with all its organic forms contained within, whether these organic things within ‘move’ the sea, or whether it mattered whether the sea had been moved by organic forces or not to whether the sea is animate. At this juncture, as I was thinking all of the above, he thought of a counter-point to make to back up his thinking.

A calm and friendly sea

‘The sea doesn’t have free will,’ he said with arms folded, a grin forming on his face. He was conceding perhaps that the sea was maybe a little animate in strict terms of the definition of the word, ie ‘moving’, but it wasn’t in a state of flux because it wanted to. We left it there. He’s got a scientific, logical brain. I haven’t. We will never agree. I always keep the possibility in mind that science hasn’t yet found all the answers. He trusts science. So we didn’t delve any further but I haven’t stopped thinking about this topic, as I have been standing this week watching the waves pound the West Wales coast.

Then we saw dolphins. Then the rains came. Then the sea changed from warm and friendly to angry, rough and wild. See, what I’ve done there? I’ve given the sea a sense of how to behave. I’m not saying I may have ‘won’ the argument but I don’t think he has either.

I guess the jury is still out on this one.

So, this morning, back home, as we drove over the M6 I said: ‘Hello M6, you look nice and sunny today’. I was met with a withering look from the passenger seat.

A less-than-sunny M6

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The pleasures of slow

Posted on 2 August 2019 by beckybendylegs

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of slow recently. Painting is a slow process. 

Time can seem to race by, it can seem to drag by, it can be frustrating waiting for something to happen but rather than feeling that frustration, I am starting to think that we should embrace the waiting.

As an artist, I am always waiting for paint to dry. I was talking about this the other day with a friend of mine, how when we are planning a painting, with a deadline, we have to build in ‘drying time’. What do you do during the drying times? I often fill those times with other activities such as work or reading. But I also think. 

This week, I have been fortunate enough to have the time to spend every day in the studio. It isn’t often I can be here every day of the week. My children aren’t with me this week so I have had the time. In fact, I have had no restrictions at all on my time. It is mine, and mine alone, to fill.

As it is summer, the studio is relatively quiet. There are no undergraduate students around. Many of the MA students are working at home, working to earn money, or on holiday. In fact, for most of the week it has been just me and the occasional visit from the technician doing his health and safety rounds and one of the tutors who is painting in the same studio space as me. This solitude has afforded me a lot of thinking time.

The aforementioned tutor and I have discussed ‘slow’ this week since we are both feeling the force of it at the moment. He has been thinking a lot about the concept too, he told me. His paintings take a long time to develop and mature. They are made up of many rich layers of paint and tend to centre on a rare and luscious shade of orange. I have been quite fascinated watching him work on them. He only spends about thirty minutes at a time in the studio adding a new layer, then he has to wait a day, then he’s back to add another layer, then he has to wait a day. In between layers, he can think about his paintings (as well as do tutor-type stuff in the office).

To make slowly, to observe slowly, to think slowly

Slowness can be both positive and negative. In many ways, it helps the mind clear and gives the intellect room to find clarity and perspective on the many thoughts and issues churning around the head. If you are a painter, it helps you think about the painting you are working on. That is a good thing. But the brain doesn’t just think about art, even my brain. As someone who is prone to catastrophising, I need time to think to slow my thoughts down and this week has done that.

In a negative way, even during a period of slow, thinking can lead the mind down an existential path which isn’t terribly constructive. I have tried to avoid my mind going down that path this week. Interestingly, it has only done that not when I’m in the studio in the silence and solitude but when I’m surrounded by people in a shop or whilst driving home.

The positive side of this week is that I have filled the time well and filled it with much productivity. By the week’s end, I will have completed the first layer of paint on four ‘paintings’ (now time to wait for paint to dry), I will have copy edited most of a PhD thesis about the NHS (thereby earning money to pay for the coffees consumed in the studio) and I will have come to a few conclusions in my head about various issues demanding attention in my head.

So praise be for slow. Sometimes it is good to be slow and to just flow with time rather than fight it all the time. Next week, my children are back with me, I can’t wait, and we will no doubt be fighting time again. I don’t mind, I have had this week and I will have next. They are different and that is the flow of life.

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The start of disorder

Posted on 1 August 2019 by beckybendylegs

I believe I am finally on the path towards the end. The thesis has always been running furlongs ahead of the practice and I think it is virtually finished now. I fear that it should be the other way around. The writing should be informed by and about the practice. For me, it has been the reverse of this: I read, I write, I think, I paint. I love reading and writing. I love making art too but I have far more confidence in my reading and writing than I do in my art so that is perhaps why I have worked the ‘wrong’ way around for two years. The writing has come relatively easy to me. The art, not so. But I think I have now at least got a hook on which to hang something for people to see that I haven’t just been sitting on my bottom for two years. 

My children are not with me this week, so to distract myself from the pain of separation and to make the most of the free time I have been spending every day in the studio working. It has been hard work and slow (more about slow later) but very rewarding. I don’t really want to be in the house at the moment so if this helps me get to a point when I am happy with my work as I come towards the end then that is the best case of ‘using the difficulty’ (to quote Michael Caine) I can think of right now. I will ‘use the difficulty’ and make art.

The start – lots of wood

First of all, I layed out lots of wood and treated it with watery PVA, twice, each side. Then I painted each piece of wood, with black paint, three times, each side. This all took three days.

Next stage – priming and painting the wood

Then I put together the bits of wood, with powerful glue. That was hard. The wood kept toppling over and making me cry.

The still life is going to be a collection of 21st-century symbolic possessions or ideas in the form of objects.

The tricky bit – gluing the wood together

I decided to start with one of the easiest ‘things’ to paint: a pile of blueberries.They are the ultimate superfood and symbolic of our current desperate desire to be shiny and healthy inside whilst battling the ever-growing obesity on the outside, and they represent the fight we have against the short-term satisfaction culture we live in. I love blueberries. They are succulent. They have a unique colour.

Making a start on the ‘real’ bit – painting in oils

We don’t eat much that is blue – bubblegum icecream? And nothing else matches the colour of  blueberries. Blueberries taste amazing. If they do me good, all the better. They go superbly well with a dollop of full-fat, luxurious vanilla ice-cream.

Blueberries or just ‘squiggly lines’?

Is my painting recognisable as blueberries? No, not really. I am trying not to over think this. I am trying to let go of that old devil, the ego, and just paint. I am doing that at the moment: just painting. The biggest test is yet to come and that will come in October. What People Think.

 

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Completing the circle – ‘a still life of disorder’

Posted on 22 July 2019 by beckybendylegs

It is crunch time now. I have three months to go until the end of MA show in Walsall. Tomorrow, I am seeing the curators of the Walsall Art Gallery and I need to make sense when I talk to them. I need to sound confident. I need to know what I am going to do.

This time last week, my head was very woolly indeed, as reflected in my musing about the pain of the group crit. I realised at that point that I had exactly seven sleeps to come up with something concrete, something real, a ‘thing’ so to speak. There’s nothing like blind panic to bring focus.

It took a couple of days of blind panic, but while sitting in my favourite coffee establishment in Eccleshall thinking about oatcakes, I had an idea. It isn’t a revolutionary idea. In fact, it is just me completing the circle on what I’ve been doing for two years and what I’ve been thinking about. I’ve turned, I hope, the wool into steel. I’ve completed the eternal circle that has been troubling me for two years.

So this is the idea. I have decided to create a grouping of still-life objects as a semi-sculptural painting. Each individual ‘painting’ within the bigger painting will not be dissimilar to the paintings I have made recently, on wood, with a black background. The paintings will be bigger though and resembling the original object more than these did. They will adopt some of the virtual reality painterly drawing style but I will mirror the colours and form of the objects more closely. They will be free standing and more sturdy. They will be placed on the ground of the gallery so people can walk amongst them. 

A close-up

The title of the work is going to be ‘a still life of disorder’ which is a quote by Norman Bryson, author of Looking at the Overlooked, which is a well known collection of essays on still-life art and the still-life genre, published in 1990. The title refers to the ongoing battle within the tradition of still life of the objects often depicted in that genre: between vice and virtue, between wealth and poverty, and pleasure and abstention. I want to reflect that these battles are still inherent, in our live sand in our ‘treasured’ objects of today. The only thing that has changed, is the objects themselves. The metaphors they stand for, are the same.

To this end, I asked people to send me photographs of objects to paint. So far I have received a few and I have come up with some of my own including: blueberries (superfood – metaphor for life); a cup of Costa coffee (it is what it is); a fitbit (time – metaphor for death); apple (Apple features massive in Western society today – it is also a metaphor for knowledge, wisdom and joy); beer (alcohol – symbolic of debauchery, binging, a desire to forget and escape); Alexa (symbolic of monopoly, also domination, surveillance, convenience, isolation); a vape (not symbolic as such but a contemporary object); chargers (a source of technology oxygen); diet coke can (the epitome of company duopoly, capitalism); a cat (something the Internet seems obsessed with, as do people, traditionally symbolises lust and vice). And that is just the start.

Do you know what this is?

The background on the paintings will be black, to represent the fact that our modern objects exist in five areas of space: real, visual, metaphoric, imaginary and virtual. Space is black. Black also to reference the tradition of still life which often used and still does use a black backdrop as a way to highlight the beauty and power of objects. Black enobles them, isolates them and praises them.

I represent lust, apparently.

So, that is my idea. Will it work? I have no idea. Will I be able to paint the ‘essence’ of things in this idea? I really have no idea. I have nothing to lose now. ‘Fear is the enemy of art’ said someone I know recently. I’m just going to jump in feet first and face the fear.

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The love and pain of the Group Crit

Posted on 17 July 2019 by beckybendylegs

Every few months, we MA students take part in a ‘group crit’. This is where we all gather and take it in turns to discuss where we are at and what to do next. This exercise can be both vital and excruciating. We all get nervous about it, we all feel relief after it, but we all feel a strong need for it.

A black cat. He or she has nothing to do with this blog post.

When you are involved in an art project and a philosophy, you develop blinkers. You become unable to see what you are doing through someone else’s eyes. You understand what you are doing. It makes sense to you. But it only makes sense because you live, eat, breathe and sleep it. It might not necessarily make sense to fresh eyes. This is why the ‘group crit’ is so useful. You present your ideas to fresh eyes and they can be harsh, very harsh.

During the ‘group crit’ you explain what you have been doing, usually to your friends and others, and a random tutor. It makes sense, of course it does, to you. But, wait, once you have stopped talking you look up and see a sea of confused and blank faces. The result: panic.

I had to go through this ‘ordeal’ yesterday. I admit that beforehand I worked myself up into a bit of a nervous frenzy. This was partly because I’d missed the last one and it felt like a very long time since the last time I’d taken part in such a crit. This was also partly due to impostor syndrome biting me again. And partly due to the apparent surety of those who presented their work before me. They did seem to know what they were doing. I don’t.

So, yes, I did see the confused and blank faces after I’d introduced my work. However, once that moment of silence passed, I received some really useful and valid feedback, and, in fact, rather a lot. I want the criticism as much as I want the praise so all was good. I had both. Everything that my critics came back with was very useful.

However, I ended my day yesterday feeling discombobulated and confused. I had expected the ‘group crit’ to give me an answer as to what I was going to produce for the final show in October. It didn’t. It gave me things to think about, but it didn’t give me an answer. The MA course leader asked me to describe my practice in one sentence. That question threw me. I was struck dumb by his question. What I came up with sounded awful to my ears. 

So I spent the 12 hours after yesterday feeling rather worked up, confused, and uncertain. Then, today, I had an idea and that idea was thanks to the feedback I had yesterday. More on that next time.

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