The Art Process
Having put the MA firmly behind me and having also graduated formally with Distinction, I am getting on with my process in a less formal approach. Relaxing back into my routine of studio time and personal life and several exhibitions around London.
This summer I have been to Australia for six weeks and enjoyed every minute. I travelled in a van up the West Coast and from Melbourne to Brisbane, taking in all the wonderful sites.
The lack of artistic boundaries a trip like this offered compelled me to take an extraordinary amount of photographs.
I always find it is these times that allow me the space to think and create work in my mind. Many works never manifest in the physical sense. I may jot down some words, symbols, ideas in my notebook, however generally I watch and 'feel' the idea develop, disposing of the embryonic beginnings as I watch them dawdle by. I don't think I am alone when I say I have a sense of knowing when it is right to go ahead and begin the making of the art physically.
At times my mind is full of many ideas other times it is fallow and rightly so, for this is the time when, as my former Tutor Rod Harman once announced, that POT BOILING occurs. It is the opportunity to grow new ideas and not keep BAKING BUNS - meaning repetitive work going round the same issues /techniques and not progressing. He would claim this at the top of his voice, hands in the air with implicit passion. He also gave me many other anecdotes like this and they are something I hold very close to my heart.
These other reveries are for me, for myself alone when I am perhaps dwelling in that fallow place. These pearls of wisdom offer much comfort and guide me slowly back out into the profound ability to create. They offer me the glimmer of hope and allow me to remember just how lucky I am to be able to create and craft the ideas which are flowing and tumbling forward. It is in these times I feel like the luckiest person alive, everything feels aligned. You never really know where it will lead you but you somehow know its a privilege.
It is from this profound experience artists call the artistic process, I have begun to create a series of prints called, 'Mistaken Identity'. These works are images taken from found photographs, found slides and stills from Super 8 imagery. They are then screen printed onto wire mesh of different gauges producing at times a distorted, pixellated image.
You can read more on my website if you are interested or have any further queries.
www.heathermeyerratken.com
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| Dreamboats |
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| Mistaken Identity 1 |
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| Mistaken Identity 2 |
