I have felt unable to write on my blog for the last week, because I was focussed on writing my essay and felt I had nothing to say. But this morning, after a week's silence on the blog front, I have drawn some significant conclusions about my working style.
I have been unable to work in a creative way on my artwork since I got stuck into the essay. I had put this down to a reaction against my working life, where I have multi-tasked for as long I can remember. Since I retired, I have not been able to focus on more than one task at a time, which I have accepted as a pleasant benefit of slowing down as I no longer work for a living.
However I have been writing my essay about factors required to conduct creative thinking. And I identified that creative thinking requires an environment where playfulness is allowed. While I have been working on my essay - which is serious research and writing - I have not allowed myself permission to play! I have planned my time up to the essay deadline of 14 December, and had enough sense to allocate myself rest days. (As a former shift worker, you have rest days rather than weekends) But on rest days, I have only allowed myself to do a restricted range of activities - like going to the V&A to listen to a day lecture on Ravilious (an Essex printer). Other rest days were allocated to going to Bridgwater to be fitted for a new bike (for a summer holiday with my husband cycling Lands End to John O'Groats) or going on a drawing weekend with my sister-in-law who has a weekend's respite from caring for her Mum who has dementia. So my rest days were related to research or to activities that supported or benefited other people. No time was allocated to me just having fun and doing what I enjoy, like drawing! I think my protestant work ethic is over-riding my creativity.
But having said that, it was the research into creativity and playfulness that enabled me to have the shaft of self-awareness that informed my practice (or non-practice as the case may be!)
I have also had further thoughts about how the sense of touch is very, very important to me. Again this is as a result of my essay research. I have known for a long time that I like practical application of artwork, so I enjoy textile art, specifically the creation of furnishing fabric. I thought it was about looking at things and enjoying the visual sense. But I have discovered I enjoy the link between sight and touch. The necessity of touching and feeling fabric when it is used as furnishing fabric is very important to me. I don't need to make art objects, and part of this feeling is about art objects not usually being available to touch. I know I am a very tactile person and I like to keep my hands busy. I have only just worked out that my sense of touch is constantly in use and I like to handle objects/materials a lot.
I also see a link between touch (which is static) and kinetics (which is about movement) which gives feeling when hands are moved across a surface. The tactile sense from the moving hands is called feeling. Emotions are also described as feelings. I see the linguistic synonism of emotion and touch, as feeling, as significant. There is also the linguistic term tact, which means the verbal adroitness of dealing with the feelings of people. Words, hands and emotions, and how they are used, all link together for me.
I had a tutorial with Sara a couple of days ago to discuss my essay, which I think is coming on quite well. I had printed the 4000 words written so far, and in the right hand margin, summarised each paragraph in 4/5 words. Sara was interested in this way of working. I wanted to identify whether the essay flowed in a logical manner. I had laid out the 10 pages of the essay so that only the top page, and all the right hand margins were visible. Sara was quite impressed with the way I had laid it out, and recommended I photograph it. I was a little surprised at this, because it seemed an obvious way to show the key points, without the visual distraction of all the script.
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