Week Twenty-Three | Digging

I haven’t found a minute of time for my work since the Easter break and I feel yet more squeeze on my poor weary calendar I have been gardening however, which feels relevant in my conversations with my compost heap. The heap is getting smaller and seems to have submitted to its biological destiny. It’s getting hot too, which I find interesting. Funeral pyres and compost heaps seem to be wistfully nodding to one another, waiting patiently for me to twig (pardon the pun).

A comment on external feedback. I used to feel more like a leaf in the wind, blown from place to place. I am more open to feedback and input from other than ever but happily I feel I need it much less. Possibly cause and effect. As much as I found the Unit One Assessment feedback helpful and I continue to pursue ideas of making my own materials, they are a bit of a distraction. I feel a quiet self confidence that what I am doing is the right trajectory for me and I am open minded but also focussed. I think. Weirdly I have less time for art than ever but yet I feel clearer than ever.

My work is increasingly focussed on the compost heap as a symbol for grief in a time of climate chaos. I am realising the landscape has an anthropocenic gaze weighing it down and I am embracing thoughts of hive thinking, a connectivity within nature where the human isn’t required. I feel a pull towards natural processes: water cycles, decomposition and diurnal rhythms. My excellent studio companion’s comment about me making annoying “tampon in a tree” art seems more insightful than ever. I still want to paint though and I must propitiate the intellectual demons around the use of fire, bleach and plastic polymer in my compost heap and grief explorations.

I notice as I write the ongoing perceived separation between drawing and painting and other general art making stuff. Note to self: you’re still not getting it.