Coming to the end of this terms work I can not help but to have begun to feel slightly defeated. Having put a lot of time and effort into creating pieces I was yet to feel real satisfaction from the pieces I had created. However whilst continually talking about my work with friends and family and revising the work I have done this term that perhaps the fact that I am feeling more uneasy with my work is perhaps a positive step that I have pushed myself to areas which I am less comfortable with.
Remembering Tania Kovats's quote which I stated in a past blog, to repeat process which will guarantee a set style and positive result is to become complacent as an artist. It was tempting to remain in my comfort zone and continue with the successes I had found from my work of the mind and the brain last year, however this new direction has been challenging in many new ways. I have firstly found this particularly difficult as I find my love of nature and being outdoors something very personal to myself and how I experience the world. It has then also challenged me to try to find a new way of working and a sculptural medium which will measure up to the ideas I wish to represent. From this I have also found this challenging to relate to a wide range of religious, artistic and philosophical ideas which I have become preoccupied with through my dissertation studies.
Through this lack of dissatisfaction I have had to push myself and remember that out of failure comes success. I found this during my as level studies when due to ill health I did not perform to my potential in my exams, getting a D in my design exam was something which I took very much to heart as it is a subject which I love. However having then resat the exam to achieve a score of 95 out of 100 I was able to see that the initial failure had allowed me to strive and learn from my mistakes. I was reminded of this during the insight talk which Grayson Perry in which he also highlighted the importance of failing, but there is a definition between good failure and bad failure.
In light of this, I think it iss important during the artist process to not just dismiss experiments as soon as they are not initially sucessful but to revisit them and study them to identify exactly what is it which it troubling about the piece and whether it is necessarily a bad thing and reframe it as dissatisfaction or a unsuccessful prototype rather than a failure.
Though a rather generic quotation to make from a student of design, however I feel this quote is particularly useful to remember, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Steve Jobs.
