My journey during this semester has been tough to say the least, I have struggled for ideas on what to create and when I have created something I have struggled with the thought of putting it out into society for others to view...
The constant barrage of questions that have been circulating in my head have been answered time and time again such as
What do I really want to create?
Do I create something simple or meaningless?
Do I create something more personal to me?
How will my story be received by the audience if it comes from such a damaged place?
The list is endless, I started out wanting to create sculptures of male star signs and their traits them Boom! covid and lockdown! Like the world is telling me to do something else, but what else do I do, so I start with images, sketches then I moved into portraits and drawings of people who have inspired my life growing up, such as Peter Capaldi and content Creator Jack septiceye. I toyed with the idea of creating fanart but the more I pushed on the more I felt like a fraud to myself, it's easy to draw someone in the same light as their photos and to add your own twist but I found it wasn't challenging for me.
I then went back to the drawing board and after consulting with my mental health and self doubt I decided that I should tell my own story, why should I be afraid of what people think? If people knew my story then maybe just maybe it might help someone to share theirs, it might even make me less afraid to open up to people...
I looked at ways I could distribute my work but the more I looked at zines the less interested I became in putting my story into a book, do I really need words to express what is in each artwork? possibly but then again art is generally created for people to interpret for themselves.
I opted to show my work on an Instagram page and this here blog...and it has made me realise that people including myself should create the work they want, I want to further this body of work and create bigger pieces, I want to not be afraid of putting my heart and soul into a body of work that means the world to me, and at the end of the day this body of work is the first piece of work I can officially say I am proud of despite the lack of detail and lack of clean up in the images.
It has been mentally draining getting to this stage of my work but I look forward to working even harder and longer on telling my story through art, I feel in our society today the still major stigma there is concerning mental health stops people from being open in their creative pursuits, which leads people to create 'pretty' art to soothe the publics opinion of them, but why should we hide how we really feel behind a thin sheet of glass.
From here on no matter how hard the journey I will be following my heart in my creative pursuits to achieve awareness of my own mental health.
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