All of a sudden I have concerns towards my place in the art world. This past week I have been thinking about how hard it is to be an artist. Never having felt like this before, I have serious doubts about being able to express myself 100%. It's very hard for me to continue working on an eating disorder installation for my final major project as I have realised I am quite clearly still struggling with it. It wasn't until I started thinking about it and writing about it that I realised this. It's made me get feelings I haven't had in a long time, I began feeling anxious and unstable.
I tend to block things out and just have a laugh, as I don't see the point in speaking about problems of my past and putting myself down like that. So thinking in depth about a seriously intense time in my life has really changed my attitude. I found myself crying last night about how unhappy I am with my body. I haven't done that since I was like 16.
It upsets me, how I really thought this idea would work so well as my final major project, getting very personal and getting it all out. But I can't. Even speaking to Catrina earlier this morning- just telling her how I have to find a new topic and how I can't do it- my voice was jittering and I felt like I was panicking. It's a major part in the final major project to speak about the wok and the feeling but if I can't feel ok just thinking about it there is no way I can create work about it and then stand up in front of a crowd and talk about, as it goes so in depth with things that have happened to me in my childhood and teenage years, making a project about it would wreck me. I can truly say I don't know whats happening to me, If I can't get this personal how can I be a fine artist?
Art is meant to be therapeutic, its meant to get my mind off things and it's doing the exact opposite in this case. The two units I expected to enjoy the most are the ones I have done close to nothing on. The units that are less personal- more physical, I am extremely enjoying right now. Paper making is very physical is keeping my mind at peace and surface pattern is getting my mind to think about decades, what happened and how to create a pattern in that context. Which seems to be working a lot better for me. Why can't I be an illustrator or a fashion designer where the work hasn't got anything to do with my own personal life??????????