Thoughts on art, life and expression

Its funny how everything in your life intertwines. I am trying to create balance in my life and include God in all areas. I think that is the reason why everything seems to relate, because he is everywhere and in everything. I have been thinking about what informs my art practice, and I am coming to the conclusion that there is nothing that does not inform my art in some way or another. My art expresses my life, my thoughts, my opinions, my experiences, my ideas. Everything is intertwined.

I decided the other night that I would just have a go at drawing. Just for fun. Not for school. Just draw and see what happens, just be expressive. I found it so hard not to be critical of myself. I had started drawing with pencil.Tight, controlled, precise. That is so typically me. Structured, planned, organized and it shows in my art. So Rosy recommended that I use fat crayons or pastels. So I did. This was hard..i was scared to make a ‘mistake’. You cant rub out pastel.. But as soon as it hit the paper something in me was set free. I loved it. Just being free and playing around without too much thought to it. And the colours! New Revelation - Coloured pastel is just so much cooler than pencil! And so I am inspired to do more. I find that it really helps me to connect with god. To draw my prayers, or draw what he is speaking to me about. As a visual to put on my wall and remind myself etc.

A similar thing happened yesterday. I went into school and tried to do some photopolymer experiments and just played around with colour in an experimental and gestural way. And I loved it!I came up with some pretty cool images And I thought I would have a go at photo transfers..and it totally did not work out the way I wanted. But for the first time in ever I wasn’t pissed when something didn’t go as planned.
When I was cleaning up my table I thought that I better make the most of the leftover ink. So I pressed my paper into it, and it created some really cool patterns..and I could even work out images in them, that I could draw into. And then I thought that I would take some photos of the inking stone after that…because pressing the paper in had affected the ink and left really cool colours and patterns on the stone. I heightened the contrast a bit on photoshop, and now I have some really cool, colourful, expressive, spontaneous images. And so I think that something is happening in me that im beginning to like. Im beginning to loosen up. Below are three of the photos.

But what is funny is that immediately I was like ‘this is cool, im going to do this each time’. That’s me immediately trying to create structure again. Funny. Terrible really. It is terrifying to allow yourself to lose control and be spontaneous. But freeing at the same time.

And without realising, this totally relates back to my conceptual thinking again. We as humans are too controlled, we like to do things our own way. We like structure and routine, we like to know what is happening all the time. We are scared of the unknown. We think we are ‘free’ but our movements are too violent, too structured, too harsh, too routined, too planned.

This is why I am using imagery of humans in my work. I have photos of someone running and attempting to ‘fly’ but failing. I have imagery of my friends doing tricks skateboarding and snowboarding etc, in attempt to ‘get some air’. I have imagery of parachutes, hang gliders, hot airballoons, planes etc. human attempts to be in the air, but they are all restricted to some point. Aeroplanes definetly changed our idea of travel, but even they are restricted to some point. I want to portray this in my work. I want to show these violent but structured human efforts in contrast with…

The sky, air, birds.God. True freedom is only found through Christ. In giving up everything to him, trusting him with your hopes, your dreams, your plans, your fears, your hurts to him do we truly begin to experience what its like to be free in this world. That’s definetly what im beginning to experience and im loving it. Faith, trust and hope in what you cant physically see, but boy can you experience it. This is only the beginning. I want to portray this idea through the use of colour, gesture, birds..in particular the eagle which is symbolic of both freedom and of Christ. I want to create images of the birds lifting up the humans. For it is only through Christ and with his help that we can truly get some ‘air’. We can do nothing apart from him.

I would also like to continue to play with imagery of planes to, because this also relates to me personally. As far as travel is concerned, planes changed our perceptions of travel in the world. The freedom to travel.In giving up my fears to god, he has helped me overcome them. I used to be terrified of planes and had no desire to travel at all, not even to the north island. But since I put my trust In Christ, he has been working in me and has flipped my life around. Now I love aeroplanes and one of my biggest desires is to travel around the world. I have found a new freedom in travel.

I think that’s all that is on my mind right now. Time to go to school now I think.