Turquoise with Threads of Black (2024) #366 series no.113
I have been keeping a creative journal since last summer, I have only really made the effort to keep it up since the start of this year. The process of journalling along with my 366 project are pushing my brain to reflect as a matter of course and recognise things about what I am thinking and feeling in a way I never have before. I have various themes running through my journal which is largely driven by my daily walks that I take for wellbeing, circles, colour theories (my own as well as established), trees, artist tools and zentangles….and I will probably think of more as I continue on through the rest of the book.
I have started a new job this week, I am going to be learning how to translate what I have learned as a University College lecturer into what is required of me to teach in a school. It is a lot to learn, I will have to think quicker and ‘do’ faster and If that isnt scary enough, I was used to a wellbeing routine, early morning walks full of rich green-ness and tranquility that started my day off whatever lay ahead. That has all turned a little chaotic and I need to find a way to develop a new routine, I need that walk infused into the start of the day. I already wake at the crack of dawn and I find that while I’m thinking all this, inside my head is like a roladex that flips round and round and I can’t quite grasp the visual and exciting ideas that whizz past at too fast a pace….Breathe…
…Today, I decided that what I must do, while my routine develops organically, I will take every chance i get to ‘bank’ wellbeing miles, minutes, steps-whatever I can to keep my mind healthy. So today I banked some, stopping (inside, I was annoyed that I kept on doing this) to take photos of the familiar route I have been craving all week, which had a newness to it, as though its a metaphor for the new eyes nature of my new role.
The Wood Melick brushes that delicately protrude from the side of my path and then once onto the newly mown and difficult to walk on fieds, the purple Orchard Grass catches my eye in the thick patches of wild that have been left.
Then there are my favourite trees, well, some of my favourite trees, I have several…I’ll stop now.
I have started an art journal so I can keep in one place all the art I am making in the name of looking after my own physical and mental wellbeing. I walk a lot and I don’t know about you but my phone is full of photographs of interesting things I noticed my walks such as a bindweed that I didn’t know could be pink and white striped, or a dandelion that looks different to yesterday’s dandelion that you also took a picture of. I have also been making art while preparing for and teaching art for wellbeing and have botanical drawings and Zentangle inspired pieces. As I have produced these works, I have placed them in my sketchbook along with flowers that are pressing nicely in the back pages. By keeping the pieces together in a sketchbook, naturally, a journal develops.
My art journal will contain art, not backgrounds for art (even though the art may be used as a background), preparation for art, not writings about art, not evaluations or process records or photographs of art…just my art.
oh, and it will never be considered finished, always a work in progress.
Aspiring to Matsutake (2020 An element of the second year Developing Ideas in Art and the Environment module on the course I teach on began this semester with an extract from the book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. As we (we, as in all of […]
This is my silver charm bracelet that used to fit me as a child. I used to like looking at it more than wearing it, each charm was bought by my dad when he traveled to a different country. As a baby, I went on the QE2, I can’t remember but the ship charm on the right hand side was bought from that trip and is a tiny replica in silver. I loved it. I’m not sure why I was bought the cat and the dog as I was (and still am ) highly allergic, so not sure what the relevance of those were. I believe I added the silver cross myself when I no longer wore it round my neck (I think the bracelet still fitted me as a teen)
My favourite charm was the rabbit as it had an orange stone for a belly and this fascinated me.
Before we had the technology that we enjoy today, art was used as a way to shape the perceived identity of those who ruled. In the time before photography, camera phones and celebrity imagery, leaders commissioned paintings and sculptures of themselves as a way to communicate a powerful image of themselves. It was a false representation but it was necessary to encourage and maintain the public’s confidence in them.
In today’s world we create an infinite self-portrait when we update our online status, forever commenting upon our evolving identities.
Like the Emperors and leaders of past times, we like to project a carefully constructed identity to our public rather than our real self. Only now, we can all do it, we don’t need to commission an artist to do the job for us. We use the tools available to us and we carefully sculpt out the self portrait we want to project.
I’m interested in how we present ourselves online, our status updates paint a portrait of ourselves in a way that we can’t do in real life. One statement can shape how we are perceived as it blows one small aspect of our being out of all proportion. On your profile page, the only thing they see is your status and not the other details that contribute to who we are.
Samantha Humphreys 