People can or have written novels about their creative process so I will try and summarize the main points of mine. I feel that I don’t fully understand or have control over my creative process at this point in time in my life. When looking back on projects I have made, I have no idea how I made those projects. In my process, I lose control of what I’m doing and or thinking. It feels like something takes over and tries to create something through me. It is as though I’m in some sort of trance. Time and any conceived notion of our physical reality slip away. While in this state of mind, I’ve found it not too difficult to come up with strong compositions. But it is hard for me to bring the composition into the physical, because my drawing chops are not the greatest. Which is why I find it important to study other artists and try and copy different techniques one finds interesting so we can infuse them with our compositions. This all may sound very odd and a little crazy but I don’t have any other way of explaining this. I feel that When I personally try to force an idea into this world without the “zone” that the whole project turns out quite shotty. For example, a project I did in the fall of 2017 titled UNTITLED001, I found to have a decent concept tackling an issue that has very much impacted many people, but the image turned out to not be the best. Maybe it just wasn’t ready to be made yet. Which means maybe I’ll go back and revisit that project someday.
As far as generating ideas goes, much like the actual rendering of the composition I have no idea where they come from. I put the prompt in the back of my mind and let it sit there. I am aware that the prompt is there and don’t lose sight of it, but I let it sit there and send off a beacon of sorts that tries to pull in ideas that are of the same or similar nature as the prompt. It is fun to think of ideas as some sort of invisible living organism that is just floating around in the cosmos waiting for a vessel (we being the vessel) to come along and inhabit it. If the vessel is willing to work with the idea then it creates space for it and allows for a positive environment for it to flourish and grow through the vessel. Once the idea feels it has utilized the vessel for all it can it will leave and enter back into the cosmos. If the idea enters a vessel that is not willing to work with it right away, it may stay or it may leave. So really it’s up to us to decide whether or not we want to work with it. If we don’t we just have to face the possibility that it might not stick around. To answer the second part of this response I don’t feel I’m in control of generating ideas. I feel that they come to me, often late at night which is hard because as human beings we need sleep to stay sane and stay alive. As a consequence I end up not working with many ideas due to the fact that I need sleep.
A public artist is someone who presents their work to the public in a format that can be viewed or experienced while one is physically present. Although there are exceptions, such as a website design, I don’t feel that artists who solely put their work on a digital platform is a public artist. I do consider myself a public artist because I have put my work in galleries and have hung it for people to experience in person.
I use social media as a tool to try and get exposure for my work to a larger group of people that I may not be able to do on my own. Although social media can be a tool to help one expose their work it can also kill the creative process. It can cause people to overthink whether or not their work is good or bad in fear that they might not get a lot of lies and thus discourages them to create more art. In short, although it is a tool, I feel that it can be very toxic for a creative mind.
