"Stuck" from 2012. There´s a lot of thinking when you go to art school. A bit too much.
To be honest, this is one of the reasons that I applied to this school: I wanted to feel accepted and get the benefits that can come from an exam. After applying three times and not getting in, I decided to give up the idea of going to school and work on my own. But then I got in because someone dropped off. I think it´s been extremely good for me that I didn´t get accepted at once. I had to learn that I can create anyway. I learned not to wait for anyones approval, I learned to create what I wanted to, and I learned that you actually don´t have to go to art school in order to be an artist. You can be an artist how much you want anyway! I still believe this to a 100%. Only YOU decide if you´re an artist or not. In some ways, having a paper to prove that you´re educated within your field, can be a good thing and maybe give you a short cut. But it´s not necessary for you. If you don´t want to go to school, can´t afford it or didn´t get in, I would advice you to find your own path and go for it anyway! To me, school is mostly a piece of paper. I´m happy that I got in, but I still have to work as hard as before for my art. And I´m happy that I found my artistic voice before I started this education.
Well... here I am, in school. And it´s such a transformation. I used to create on intuition, sometimes doing a lot of thinking beforehand, sometimes not. I used to only care about how I felt about my work, not what anyone else thought. In art school there is a lot of focus on the process of creating and on critique. You quickly get self-consious. I´ve also started to feel anxious about what I create. My education is more focused on theory than practice. It´s more about the why than about the how. This sometimes leads to over thinking an image or a project, and you may never even start with your project because you feel like you haven´t thought it through enough and maybe it´s better to not do it at all.
One great thing about art school is that you get many possibilities to exhibit your work. Here I am next to one of the images that I applied with, at our first exhibition in school.
Another great thing about my school is the resources. We have access to a lot of equipment as well as studios. I´m not complaining about this :)
I have already heard a lot of peoples thoughts on my sketch (that I usually never show to people). I have thought this picture through and talked about it in class. Because that is what we do in school. And I get more and more anxious that someone might not like the finished picture, because there are so many perspectives to see it from. I´m sure someone will feel it´s cliché (a lot of things are cliché when you go to art school). Someone else is sure to feel it´s too beautiful. Sadly, many people in my class seem to think that a beautiful image is only beautiful because the artist had no idea when creating it, which in my case isn´t true at all. Beautiful art seems to mean shallow when you go to art school. Someone else is bound to feel that it´s too symbolic, it tells too much. I should be more difficult, maybe remove the person in the image, make people think a bit more. In art school, creating art because you want other people to feel better and get to know themselves, isn´t a very "fine" purpose. I want to create art for as many people as possible. That isn´t a noble goal at art school. In fact, it almost seems as if it´s better if only a few people appreciate what you do, which I guess means that you´re not mainstream. And, of course, selling your art CAN´T be a goal. That automatically means that you created that art only to sell it, and that it´s shallow and only a product of our modern, capitalistic soceity. Not real art. I haven´t created one single picture with the purpse to sell it. My purpose is to visualize inner worlds, to interpret human emotions and transform them into a beautiful and thought provoking image. I want my art to inspire someone to look inside herself and maybe get to know her inner world a little bit more. This will always be my goal with my art. This is the reason why I create. But I still want to sell my pictures. In art school, this seems to be a contradiction. You have to choose. Sell or starve, basically.
I have licensed one of my images to a card company in USA. I had no thought of this when I created the picture, but I was so happy to get this request!
In 2012, I was contacted by a record label who wanted to license one of my images for an album cover. Again, I didn´t think one second about selling this photo when I created it, but I was SO happy when I got this request!!!
Happy with my printed image "The edge of itself". I love seeing my images in real life!
One thing that I´ve started to understand is that it´s common to have mixed feelings about going to art school. Many people seem to start doubting themselves and the art they´re doing when they start a higher education in art. And this can actually be a good thing. I believe that I will be stronger and more self-confident in what I´m doing, when I graduate, because I will have had many talks about my art and why I create it. To question yourself and be forced to explain what you do to others can only make you grow. But what I don´t like about my school is that there seems to be a bit of a lack of respect for the photographic craft. Theory seems to be very much respected, and the aesthetics isn´t discussed very much. I almost feel that it´s wrong to be focused on the idea AND the aesthetics. It´s as if you´re shallow just because you´re focusing on the aesthetics. To me, the best art is art that can be both beautiful and painful at the same time. Art that makes you feel small, art that makes you look inside yourself, maybe understand the world and your inner self a bit more. I don´t want to be clever, I don´t want to fit in to the norm of the minimalistic art at my school (yes, there is definitely a norm there, even if no one talks about it). I don´t want to create art for the small "art world". I want to create art for the world! I want anyone to like my pictures, it doesn´t matter if you´re from the art community or not.
I´m always thinking of this quote by writer Jeanette Winterson when I´m creating: "In order to criticize something you don´t always have to go straight to the problem. You can do it by offering something else." I have so much to say about society, about what I feel is wrong in the world. The lack of human rights, the lack of equality and how we treat the earth we should be so grateful for living at. But my way of doing this is to create worlds where people can get lost, where people can put themselves in and feel better because their imagination is awakened (I will write more about this later.)
What I hope the most, is that I can stay true to myself and my inner voice while I´m attending this school. I still want to grow of course, and I want to learn, but if I loose my own voice, I loose everything that I have.
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