I am beginning this week slightly differently, I was given a task in my tutorial last week that might help me overcome some of my negative thinking. This was to make a list of my fears about the exhibition and my art, in the hopes that it will help me move through my anxiety’s and establish my relationship between the literal and the abstract.
- I won’t be proud of my work.
- The public will be very negative about my work. (Saying its ugly, boring ext)
- Being judged as a person based on my work ( being talentless, entitled a narcissist ext)
- This is my final year, I don’t want to have regrets surrounding the takeover.
The class.
This week we were practicing grounding techniques, to help us feel more secure in ourselves but also to help stabilise our thinking. One moment that stuck out to me in the class was when we were asked to visualise our work in its literal state of being ( The size, texture, smells ect). I found this useful as it brought me away from my busy mind and back to what it was I would be showing the public. As I have discussed i have been struggling to materialise; my concepts, my research and reflections, all into my paintings.
This class was also helpful as we began to plan our our group project proposals based on our projects so far. I decided to suggest a paint based time challenge workshop, this is because it directly feeds into my work allowing me to expand my thinking about what my “final” pieces may be. But also I hope that a project like this would be beneficial to everyone else in my class, giving them time to be creative without pressure and preset expectations. Below is my Pecha Kucha style presentation of the group proposal (ideally 20 seconds for each of the 20 slides)
Research
For this week’s research, I wanted to investigate the relationship between art and ADHD. I experience difficulties every day and throughout my projects, either I can’t get started or I can’t stop focusing on a piece of work. I want to consider my difficulties during the formation of my project, therefore I have been reading an article on art therapy (available at: https://arttherapyresources.com.au/case-study-adhd/ ). Reading this article solidified my understanding of how I work, despite the case study (and most studies so rounding ADHD and art therapy) being child cantered, the principles are still the same. One of these key principles is that in my practice I need something that ‘stimulates’, in other words I am constantly looking for something that gives me dopamine. So how do I do this? Well, it’s recommended that I turn my workload into a game, make it feel that I am rewarded for beating my goals and creating a sense of achievement. It is also important that like a game, I set myself boundaries or ‘rules’ in order to keep focus and give myself cognitive rest breaks. This research ties directly into my current project and the issues I have been discussing last week. By giving myself the time limits I am preventing myself from cognitive exhaustion (feeling overwhelmed) as well as creating a system which I can remain focused and feel rewarded.
Experiment
Reflecting on my experiment I can say that my research was correct. I gave myself 10 minutes to draw and painting a troll doll I had in my study; I found this practice to be fun and challenging. In hindsight maybe 10 minutes was not enough time, I messed up some of the features and found that the drying time of my paint hindered me slightly. However, I enjoy the unfinished look in particular the textures, the experimental nature of the project resulted in some interesting mark making. I think moving forwards to next week I will work on a larger piece of paper, or possibly revisits my previous canvas pieces and explore the possibilities.