I return!
With great trepidation, fear, confusion, a touch of rage and frustration. Significant overwhelm and imposter syndrome.
I don’t actually want to be here at all. It’s taken a lot of courage to step up again, one final time. I’ve paced around in circles for months… years… actually. Just not really knowing what to say, what to make, how to exist. Wondering if I was good enough, hoping I was forgotten so I could create in silence without anyone watching or judging. Feeling inconsistent, isolated, unqualified, old, too this, too that.
Shame shame shame. Guilt guilt guilt.
The advice and general consensus has always been come at this, Art, ‘from a place of joy’.
Make it fun, make it your happy place.
If you can’t do that then people will see, people will feel it in your work, know all your secrets and you will suffffeeeerrrr. And you won’t sell any work because it’s miserable.
No pressure then!
But dear reader… I am not fun and I am not happy. I am a bitter old hag full of demons and feminine rage manifesting as whimsy and dark humour, with innumerable health conditions, debt, and a significant pile of washing that never seems to disappear. I have spent the last decade going through some of hardest things humanly possible (and I don’t state that lightly) and as such I recognise nothing in the world anymore. Nothing feels safe, or joyful, or fun. It feels complicated, scary, deceitful and predictable. I am terrified and bored all at the same time.
But here we are. In spite of it all. Spite being the operative word. Because fuck it.
I will tell my stories in time, through my art, but for now I simply wanted to resuscitate my website and get this blog running again. Why? Because blogs are everything the internet hates right now and for me that means they’re perfect. A neglected, quiet outlet where I can talk about what I want away from the hoops, vanity and abuse on social media and allow myself to rediscover my voice and ideas without putting on a show and constantly second guessing myself. Blogs are so indifferent now I don’t even need to bother with photographs anymore or a glossy media package. What’s not to love?? I was sick of that crap.
I will be documenting my Creative Recovery and the art I make. All the art. Even the bad bits. Even the stuff I made for fun, for myself. I want to show what it’s like to pick up a paintbrush or pencil again after a very long break and claim back such an important part of my identity, just for bragging rights and to silence a little voice in my head that I have affectionately named ‘cockroach’. I will be creating on my own terms, not following The Artists Way of jumping through other peoples methods and arbitrary hoops however useful they may be. I need to do this myself. Alone. I’m a 42yo woman now with more life experience than 100 people and I am confident I can walk through this baptism of fire and fury by myself just fine. Not much scares me anymore. And it certainly shouldn’t be making shitty art.
If you find this message just know that if I can do it, anyone can. Honestly. I have fallen through every gap and been neglected and ignored from the moment I was born. I am invisible. And if I can still scream into the ether and make art, it means something. It means something to someone out there, I’m sure of it.