SUNDAY SERVICE AND OPEN DOORS

It's Sunday evening and I need to get things done, as I have a very busy week next week with publishing work, and getting things ready for the Stuff fair in Plymouth in March. So I'm in designing and blogging, which is great and feels like my time, rather than guilty time. The dog's been fed and my roast is seeing me through! Here are some snippets of the book I'm working on. No new work as I haven't had time, but all my favourite MA work in a book together. I just hope I get it right and the costs work out too.  I'm working with Steve at A0 Printworks, and as always he's being super patient and helpful!

As time goes on I am beginning to realise where my ability to create my best work happens. I have worked to brief all my professional career, but I guess I have always known that my best work is the work I do for myself. As artists, with social media and the internet, we are constantly putting an image of ourselves and our work out there. The difference is that when we take it into our own hands we create an image that we believe is true to ourselves and our work. Putting the best work up there. Or at least the work that represents us most truthfully and in the best light! The image I nurture online with my blogs is different to that on my website. The website is an overall view of all the work I do, and a site that brings in work for me. My blog, however, is my inner workings and a more personal view of my work and my process. Something I am more comfortable with. I am happier when people can see the inside of me. I prefer open doors and unlocked honesty, that's just the way it is. It scares people and I get stung a lot and gets confusing when I react to that, but I want my work to represent the honesty of my character, and if I produce it with integrity and patience I believe it will find a place worthy of it's process.

Collaboration is such a valuable way of being creative and something I want to do more of. Working with a designer would be very exciting, putting my work into different formats and compositions and seeing what comes out. As much as I love putting my good self out there I also want to lose myself a little and lose a little control, to see what comes out the other end, to see how somebody else sees it.... I can feel a interactive project coming on!