Category Archives: Thoughts

On a walk recently I was mulling over my position as an artist. Many artists seem to have injustice either in their past or their current society to rail against in their artwork and give them a strong sense of direction and purpose.

I have no such injustice in my life. There is injustice in my society, but it is self-absorption, ignorance, capitalism and a lack of caring about society and the environment. They impact on me to make me despair of the human race and I can produce work which makes comment on these, but I would be very naïve if I though such work could really make any difference in relation to these issues. That is not to say that I won’t make comment about some of these, but what do I seek to achieve with my art?

I think there are a number of emotions/sensations I could hope to stir:

• Beauty
• Intrigue
• Discovery
• Spark of imagination
• Playfulness

I thought it would be interesting to note down my current feelings on “art”, to see how they change over the length of this course.

My definition of “art” – a man made object which elicits an emotional response.

In my opinion, art seems to fall into two/four categories:

1. Beautiful
2. Meaningful
3. Both
4. Neither

I view a lot of modern art as being complete rubbish (category 4) – that may well be from a lack of understanding, but it will be interesting to see how my opinion of it changes! What I enjoy about art is those objects which I feel fall into categories 1 and 3, and my worry is that in studying it too much will lead me to producing objects which fall into category 2 (which other people will then view as category 4)! What I hope, is that I will produce work in category 3 – work which can be viewed simply as a beautiful object, but which has some meaning (if only to me).

Only time will tell…..