The Role of ‘Personal Work’ in my Art Practice
I have a few personal projects I’ve set for myself this year. To state the obvious, all of my art is personal. I am always exploring something deeply personal. But the end goal of my art practice is to develop and learn and investigate, and sometimes it’s nice to have a side project that means less because either it’s going nowhere or it’s going to someone who will love it no matter what. For me, personal work is an opportunity to not push or create meaning in my art, but just to physically paint.
I almost always have some kind of personal work going on in the background. I think most artists would say this is vital. Some artists end up feeling trapped in the work they are creating if it is well-loved by their collectors and audience, so it is imperative to have a side project going to keep the creative spark alive. For me, I tend to just follow the threads of whatever is intriguing me, with no real concern over its cohesiveness or perception by my collectors. Sorry not sorry, if things seem a bit all over the place. I am sure some of you are here for the landscapes and some of you are here for the more abstract work, and some of you just care about me so you’re here to see it all unfold. I am lucky that I am able to do this free exploration of ideas in my art practice, because I have a full-time job that provides me with a reliable income (though there are two edges to that sword, a future blog post).
So, while my primary art practice leads me lots of places, my personal work has given me opportunities for gaining breadth and dipping my toe into unexpected realms. Lots of this goes nowhere and is just me splashing paint around. Sometimes I set myself a little prompt, like nude self-portrait charcoal sketches to document my growing belly while I was pregnant. This year I’ve been bursting with ideas for personal work, work for me or for others close to me, with no intention of selling it. I am still working on exploring shadows and landscapes in my ‘primary’ art practice, but much of my time this year is dedicated to my personal projects.
Recently, I created two such pieces.
The first, a skateboard for my husband’s birthday. In his former life he worked in the action sports industry. To my mild exasperation, he has two large boxes full of special edition skateboard decks to be stored for the rest of eternity, as far as I can tell. Recently, we were reorganizing our storage space and we opened one of the boxes and had a look. I pulled out one of the boards and asked him about it. Turns out it wasn’t particularly special to him. I said, “Can I paint it?!” And he said yes!
It took some planning to come up with a good reference image for the elongated composition. I went with a photo Jim took on his annual-ish camping trip with friends. I’d always wanted to paint some of those images but since I’ve never actually been there it felt a bit weird to be painting someone else’s memory. For this project though, it was just right!
The next personal piece I’ve recently worked on is a teeny portrait of my son. I’ve been wanting to paint him since he was born but painting people is usually too frustrating for me. Getting a likeness is so hard to do! But a couple of months ago I snapped a photo of him which had perfect light and a background that could have been a painting itself. Something about the image seemed less scary to just try. So, I put it on my “ideas to paint” list and one day decided it was time.
After some initial doubts and a messy middle (see progression below), I managed to paint 85% of the painting in one sitting and managed to get a close likeness to the essence of my baby boy! I had to wait a couple weeks to work out the final details because my art practice is so infrequent these days, but I just finished him and I am very proud of myself for being brave enough to try something that intimidated me. This is how confidence is built after all. So here is your reminder to “do it scared”, as they say.
