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Category: ArtLife
Oil Paint Anxiety
A studio note about returning to oil paint, technique anxiety, and knowing enough rules without letting them stop the work.
Sharing Without Turning It Into a Performance
Finding a way to show the work without turning art into a glossy artist-brand performance.
I Started Painting Landscapes By Accident
A studio note about recent landscapes emerging from abstract and textured work, and following the accident when the marks start working.
The Monsters Never Really Went Away
Childhood monsters, comics, pulp covers, fantasy art, and the traces they leave in later work.
I Never Really Thought of Myself as an Artist
On childhood drawing, monsters, comics, and the slow process of accepting the word artist.
I Cannot Control What People Feel
On viewer response, meaning, intensity, and letting people bring their own stories to the work.
Are you the hero of my story?
Do you want a sense of what it’s like to be a trying-not-to-starve artist? Well that’s pretty easy to summarise: you spend most of your allocated art time on thinking about or executing actions and strategies for promoting yourself. Sometimes you snatch a bit of time to make art. But even in those cherished moments…
Peopled out but not down
People exhaust me. They do. I don’t mean that in a mean spirited or misanthropic way, although some people are genuinely exhausting. But I’m referring to people in general. Being autistic, processing and reciprocating human interactions takes a lot more processing power than for non-autistics. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like being around people,…
Block Party – Why it’s OK to get stuck once in a while
I’m a strange beast in that I hate deadlines but I also need them. I hate being constrained, but I work best when I have a clear goal. I love to explore, but get twitchy when I don’t know where I’m going. I love to start things but sometimes, just sometimes, I can’t. So I…
No Doubt – A tale of my lifelong romance with low self-esteem
People who write for artists have a lot to say on doubt. Self-doubt, projection of doubt, the general fetishisation of doubt. Doubt, it seems, is an artist’s foremost skill. Even as I write this I’m fighting the doubt that I can or should have anything useful or insightful to say on doubt. And perhaps I…
Drawing from multiple sources, or things I do while watching TV
While I watch TV I like to make pictures with pencil. I never just watch TV. I’m not very good at that. If I try I get restless and fidgety, then irritable, and eventually end up doing something else. It’s not that I don’t like watching TV. It’s one of my favourite activities. I simply…