Unplugged

After five years of enforced rest, fake patience and bargaining with the universe, finally I am back on the tools.

In the times when I allowed myself to believe this day might come I imagined a sense of home-coming, a warm mutual embrace. Ha! Not so. Instead I find myself high on a windy ledge, all uncertainty.  The visual language has changed, the discourse has moved on. My technical skills have faded from muscle memory and I stop/start my way through my studio days, rarely experiencing that state of flow that makes everything so fine. And the bigger picture; the planet. Technology, globalization, climate change, the refugee crisis. The exponential rate of change in almost everything.

In the face of all of this, I am constantly questioning – why make things with my hands? Why make more stuff in a world already choking on stuff? Why even be an artist at all?

As always, writers say it best. Paul Auster, on his craft:

Surely it is an odd way to spend your life – sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.  

And Tania Luna, The Washington Post, 25-8-2015:

We feel most comfortable when things are certain. But we feel most alive when things are not. 

So. Shut up and make, then.

2015 Occupy Crossley St (with OCCUPATION: Artist), Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne, Australia