Assignment 5: Contextulisation

 Contextulisation

At the beginning of Personal Specialism I was confused about how to develop my art, where it was going and what it meant to me. I wanted to create but I didn't have the vision and focus on what I wanted to create and more importantly why.

It has been a journey of discovery of myself and my art which has resulted in both me and my work becoming stronger and understanding more about what I want to achieve. The turning point started when I entered a competition in Research, for the competition I looked in to emotions and how to create them visually with textiles. I didn't get anywhere in the competition but what it started to make me do was look at how I wanted to create emotion and feelings through art.

This took time to develop further but it opened up something in me that I hadn't looked at before and challenged my comfort zone. I was looking at my own personal thoughts and how to convey them in front of others. This was something I found intense and difficult to comprehend. However slowly and surely I found my voice. First through ideas of emotions and feelings I wanted to portray. Then subjects that I felt needed a voice. The menopause was very personal but yet also very contemporary in challenging the lack of discussion about it.

The more I looked at artists who had approached personal subjects the more I felt I should take a leap of faith and open up with my art to show how I felt and see how my art could connect with others. Even some of my early weaving and crochet work connected with women when I discussed it with them. By talking about what I was abstractly creating they commented and started to talk about how they felt with colour and texture.

I have found that the more I connect with people the more I feel engaged myself to continue and develop. I have gradually been confident to seek reaction to what I have been working on, explaining to people and asking for feedback. This has been exciting and interesting and spurred me on to do more work. By asking specific questions and collecting small surveys it has made me understand that art really does connect to people. Visual stimulus can create noise and really pull people in to discuss and think about subjects that they may never have thought of discussing.

The menopause gave me my subject but the idea of creating how I felt and portraying that through art came from many inspirations and sources. Through art galleries, You Tube interviews, my family and friends, my tutors, the mixture and mixing pot of ideas brought out lots of ideas. The sketchbook diaries were extremely useful to get my thoughts and ideas on paper ready for the visual ideas. The experimentation and techniques I use may not be perfectly executed, this is something I will work on, but they are honest and raw and this is something that I want to get across to people that emotion is not perfect, but the imperfect can be beautiful too.

The subversive nature of my work is something which developed. I didn't set out to do this but it does seem to come very naturally once I start and feel passionate about a theme.