Learning from viewing other artists's work
May is cracking on like mad, tearing towards Summer at an astonishing pace. How fast this year is going. That means I’d better not be wasting moments or else days and weeks will run out way ahead of me.
Preparation for September's New Artist Fair is moving on a bit. On Sunday my storage cubes/makeshift table arrived – I’d better practice setting it up and seeing how I can display work on it.
Planning to do some A3 size originals with frames and backing mats and have spent ages trying to work out which sizes I need. Annoying how suppliers switch between inches and mm when describing frame sizes and apertures (if they even give an aperture size) which makes it pretty confusing. Anyhow, finally worked it out and made a mock-up of the frame I’ll use for some A4 size work as well, which also meant that some of my line drawings were a bit big so I had to re-size them to fit. I have about 4 different ideas for how to paint them...Guess I'll have to try them all and see which works best.
Went to Landmark Arts Centre in Teddington on Saturday for the Spring Art Fair. They have a new person handling the exhibition selections and this year there was a much greater diversity of work on show, including a great mix of artists from different cultural backgrounds such as Turkey, Sri Lanka, Korea, Hong Kong and Russia. Really enjoyed it all and when I went to bed and closed my eyes, all I could see was colour bombs going off, so it must have been a good show! Looking forward to seeing who appears at the Autumn one in October.
May is the start of Open Studios season and there’s a fair bit going on around the county so lots more art to check out over the next few weeks. While I have a fair chunk of my own work to get on with, it’s really important to get out of the studio space and see what’s being produced elsewhere.
I look at who appears to be starting out and how they present their art, how work is displayed, what the prices are (to help me figure out mine), what seems to be selling and just generally see what makes me zoom in on a piece and what it is that draws the eye so strongly. I also take note of how artists come across in their booths - who looks approachable, who is stuck in a book (!) and how comfortable they are talking about their work. All things to learn from.
You do get into some interesting conversations about art and its conventions (i.e. ignoring them!), to title or not to title (generally yes, titles please, despite being guilty of not taking time to work on that myself) writing artist statements in the third person (pretentious and not fooling anyone) and the politics of art organisations around the country and what’s deemed ‘in vogue’ or considered ‘good’ or whatever.
The only thing you really can take away from all of this is that everyone is different, every perspective is valid for that person, everyone’s taste is their own and there’s no one size fits all in what art you can/should do, how you should work, exhibit or represent yourself. There’s no point in being in a creative field if you’re going to insist on having a bunch of rules to follow, though I get that not having a structure to work off can be a bit disorientating. But once you realise that the best path to tread is the one that’s unique to you, you can loosen up a bit and start working out how you really want to do things.
Maybe, because I’ve always gone my own muddled, figure-it-out-as-I-go-along way in life that I’ve come to feel it’s the best way to approach my art too. I keep coming across people saying the old way of doing things is changing…but to what exactly? Well, the answer is – yes, pop up stores, online, social media and all that stuff - but essentially, it’s whatever you can come up with. Much more fun don’t you think?
