16/12/2018

WHY?

... do we make art? Out of love? compulsion? habit? When one compulsion - the need to keep up a sturdy research profile for the forthcoming REF and impress your boss - is removed, the other imperatives rattle around a little before settling. Without realising, we can let our work be steered by external forces - the need to make a living, to comply with a client; even if we work only for ourselves around "a day job" it can still steer us away from creative experiment and towards the safety of a successful formula. So lots of experiments. A list of 4 projects - 2 waiting to be started and 2 that have been begun and swept aside in the excitement of the moment of starting work on a fifth. (and then a sixth) Not much discipline, but plenty of joy. I will finish them all. You probably don't need to read about them
Miki now in Xmas paper & a snowglobe
and then - christmas on the horizon. Everyone is asking me if I am doing another advent calendar. But it took so long last year...can I start another project? Yes apparently I can... with animation projects 7,8,9 and 10. An opportunity to have fun with pattern and stop worrying about realism. An opportunity to play with variations on a theme...using the research, drawings and ideas I'm already working on but without the pressure of a complex narrative. And these have the virtue of being short, so relatively quick, and a cast-iron date deadline, which none of the others have. And an audience. Actual feedback. closing the circle.
Happy Christmas/ Hannukah/ Solstice/ Festival of friends-and-family