11 October

It hasn’t been the easiest week. Indecision and insecurity about my work took hold when work with the monotype vases I was cutting out last week didn’t go quite as planned, and I panicked when my Instagram went quiet. I worried in case I was taking a wrong turn and getting distracted by the monotype process. I worried that the new work just wasn’t interesting enough. I worried I was being inconsistent.

I decided to abandon the vases and monotypes and do some more pareidolia work with splotchy, stained pavement photos instead. I nearly tore up something I had been working with on the monotype plate. I felt confused. Anyone who works in the arts will recognise this feeling - I have lost my mojo, I’m not as good as I used to be, everything I have done recently is rubbish. I cleared the failed work from my iPad and lined up instead everything required to make some pareidolia. I pulled it all into Procreate, then realised I was totally uninspired by it. The materials were doing nothing for me, to the extent that I couldn’t even see any images in the stains to make pareidolia with! 

The monotypes may be challenging, but the pull of the work was too strong and I didn’t want to do anything else (except the children’s book, which I am still loving, but obviously can’t yet share). It dawned on me that the reason for the panic return to pareidolia illustrations came about because I didn’t have anything to share at the moment, and that those and similar works got a lot of likes and attention on Instagram in the past. I realised that was just desperate and something I had promised myself I would never do if I used social media as a platform for my art, and furthermore it is absolutely nothing on which to base decisions about my work. How can you develop as an artist by trying to pander to an audience? Besides which, people can tell instinctively when you’re attempting to force something. They can sense whether or not an artist is totally engaged and loving their work, and the bullshit detectors are always on max! I judged it better to have nothing at all to share than something half-hearted and insincere, so I put it all away again and returned to the monotypes.

Luckily, I hadn’t cleaned the printing ink from the glass plate so I was able to get straight back to work. Oh, the joy of those soft, fuzzy lines! Okay, I didn’t really have much of an idea of what I was doing or where the work was going, but at least I could feel it. I just need to do more and more until I hit my stride with this, but in the mean time I was happy with the results. It may not get as many likes as I used to get (I don’t think anyone on Instagram is since they changed the algorithm) but at least I am doing something I believe in.

Then suddenly, completely out of the blue, B said 'I'm glad you're getting back into your monotypes again'. He usually refrains from passing comment on my work, remarking on it practically never and only when he feels strongly, so I take notice when he does. His opinion made up for everything, and I felt a lot better about what I was doing.

​This has been a totally honest apprisal, and you may or may not have enjoyed it, but as always, thanks for visiting, and I’ll see you next week!