2014 — August
I got more confident in the third month of the art journal challenge.
I was beginning to see the inklings of my personal visual language, which was something that had eluded me during the intense pressures of art school, and left me fearing I'd never have one.
Organic and precise shapes, black and white with bright colors, and nearly-always including some text — it's still my style now.
This last spread was an attempt to portray how much of an effect the art journal challenge itself had had on me.
2014 — July
This was a flat-lay of all the art supplies I started with for the art journal, minus the papers and magazine cuttings.
This series of spreads, some of the ones I made in the second month of the challenge, explored the tension between wanting to open up and share about myself through the art journal, and my reluctance to be seen.
I would always share up to a certain point, especially while within a crowd — but I'd hit the wall of close-down if attention was directed at me.
That made it hard to deal with people liking my work, which the other artists in the online challenge did.
I created a third space of metaphorical self-exposure to try and deal with this ambivalence. It carried through a lot of my work for the following year.
2014 — The Art Journal Group
I stumbled across an online art journal group in June of 2014, that shall not be named (because it still exists). I'd recently tried to begin a certificate in graphic design, but the timing fell through, and I needed an outlet for the reawakened art drive.
In hindsight, my impulsive choice to take part in a weekly art journal challenge makes perfect sense: it fit into my small (!) apartment; I already had everything I needed to do it; and the entire year of 2014 was about stepping carefully from one rock to another, so as to not fall into the dark river of depression.
At the time, though, I had a lot of angst about it (of course). I had never considered myself the “art journal” type, and frankly that was down to doubt about my talent.
I felt amazed that these pages came from myself, in just a few days' work.
Over the next five months, essentially I built an alternate identity for myself from within the gloom. It was instrumental in taking the steps I took in the following years.
Art School, 2001-2004
A lot of my art in this era was an attempt to process my feelings about the war America waged in the Middle East, which I was 100% unequivocally against.
I felt poweress at the time, and looked for small meanings and hidden opportunities to do something, anything, to affect my life — let alone the world.
It puzzled me when things worked out well. But successes lodged in my mind, to be built on later.
I was trying to get comfortable with the idea of an endless slog towards something better, in my art and life, and the future was a problem for another time.
And yeah, I was pretty pissed off, behind the normality I was still faking.
Things have a way of coming out.
Someplace To Start
Despite having been to art school, and having created all sorts of things since I was a kid, I've never made a website specifically to share any of my pieces. Why not change that?
This isn't a professional site, and I'm not a professional artist — I never really wanted to be one, only to get closer to proficiency and beauty.
Artmaking has always been one of the best mental health boosters in my life. The early art journals I'll share here were created during hard times. And looking back I can see myself leveling up through this art, towards things I really needed to realize.
I'm in a better place now, but I still love creating. I think having this blog, and committing to an actual art practice that I share with other people, will help me take this more seriously — while at the same time pushing myself to have even more fun with it!