The Creative Zone

I've spent most of this year submerged in a creative process, just making sculpture in my own moment. I don't have a particular direction but am trusting in intuition, guided by my judgement in an open search. All I have is a personal benchmark for relevance so that when I make a sculpture I know if it works within this hypothetical framework. It's not about money or showing the work, instead it's about the creative act of defining and the materialization of a vision from the existential confusion of being. I don't know where I'm going but I'll trust in myself.

To enter this zone of creativity I have to switch off much of my normal life so that I can wander into the wilderness of my imagination and forget my normalized structure of habits. A practice which upholds the 'unconventional arty farty' stereotype as I become submerged in an alternative reality of imagination loosely connected to the society I reside in. I don't do this intentionally, it just happens out of a desperate need to find relevance and meaning from life and for people who know me, well they must wonder why, all I can say is it feels like a desperately necessary search for truth.

To enter a phase of work like I have this year almost requires me to feel empty and washed up, drained of ideas and inspiration and through this emptiness I have to find something to hold onto which will drag me from the abyss. It's like a need to do something that breathes life into me so that I can feel relevant and engaged by the very act of existing. I just need to go from a nobody to a somebody in my own mind, knowing that I'm using my life in some way to justify being present to this precious existence that could be so easily taken for granted.

My latest period of creativity has been my greatest and brought so much clarity to my years of confusion. A confusion made worse by my circumstance and the ill fit of my work into any established arena of society, a life in which my eccentric creativity has been kerbed to a point where I've felt so entirely compromised. Now I have clarity and it all appears quite simple, I feel I've unlocked the gates that were holding me back, both the real world barriers and my own psychological barriers. When I refer to my psychological issues it's really about getting over self by understanding conditioning and the emancipation of the true being within.

The true being within is important in art because when you make art with your own little soul, the truth is always lurking behind the ego. This peaceful creative process is a dynamic confusion of inner dialogue in which battles rage, what you think people expect, how you think people will react, wanting to be liked, wanting to shock, wanting to be relevant, a list that just goes on and on and on, and at the centre of it all you're just trying to be connected to your true self. So you work and then work some more, the years pass by, you think, contemplate and review, then you work some more, slowly evolving as you clear a path. Eventually if your lucky you awaken and see through the veneers, maybe start to see through the clutter of life and society where a greater level of freedom exists.

I think that freedom perhaps holds the key to creativity, allowing the intuition and intellect to combine in the construction and creation of art. It's like being in the present where you're not concerned about outcome or the past, liberated by the freedom of the moment and that is the place where I've been residing of late. It is a deeply connected space that is perhaps the antithesis of societal convention where lives are held in some kind of servitude to more linear conventions and order.

Society has this tight grip on us all, it uses hierarchy and patriarchy amongst its many mechanisms to impose a social order and control over the population. Invented currencies, politics and laws are amongst the ideologies used to govern and control humanity through the setting out of parameters. However in art, the hierarchical pyramid, the manipulation of art by the financial, academic and institutional elite doesn't really cut it for struggling artists. I guess this is why I feel anarchy is the answer in art because there are no rules, there is no good or bad or league tables for human creativity apart from that grip society takes over the art world. Imposing buildings to house art, imposing writing by academics build an elitism that runs counter to the true worth of human creativity and the equitable sharing of art.

Now the reason why that society rant is so important is because when I make art, it's not about fame, not about being better than anyone else, not about money, instead it's about seeing through all of societies conditioning and into my own little soul. As an artist I don't want to be the product of a cultural manipulation because I need to know and feel something of my true planetary existence without being told how to do so. I need to be free to think for myself and feel that what I express is true to my real presence. It's by no means easy and my body of work is convoluted, though I do believe there is a thread and reason behind all the work I make.

I feel this work I do is about an analysis of life and circumstance, breaking down myths and rebuilding with truths so that there is more certainty within and a level of empirical wisdom to act as a safety net. Through my art I feel there is a joining of the many disparate strands of life into a coherent whole, which ultimately express and acknowledge experience as well as all the mysteries. But above all my work is just a celebration of this wonderful life and the opportunity existence empowers us with through our consciousness. I will never truly know anything but I will try to experience and appreciate this life through the making of art with an open mind.

Thanks for reading and best wishes too