Month: August 2019

I started off brainstorming, jotting down ideas in sketchbooks, on my iPad, everywhere, this actually freed me up, as I felt stuck feeling I had to be someone I am not, and have to know who I am when I don’t. When I decided for my Manifesto to be about growth and experimentation and where I am at now, everything started to click into place.

This summer I went travelling for 5 weeks around South East Asia, I know this may sound cheesy, but I realised a lot about myself in this time. 2 years ago I went travelling again in South East Asia but for 2 months, and I struggled. I struggled mentally, and didn’t enjoy some of my experience. I didn’t really want to go out and do anything. This time was different. I realised how much I have grown as a person, how much I’ve changed, I went I was on this trip I worked on this self portrait, and I wrote my ideas down for my Manifesto on it. It was completed digitally as that was an easy medium while travelling.

This is a piece I am proud of and I want to experiment incorporating typography into my portraits more. The ideas expressed in this self-portrait were the building blocks for my final Manifesto.

The main problem I encountered is I don’t know who I am, sometimes as a person but especially as an artist. Before a year ago, I was just someone who enjoyed painting portraits. It was a hobby. The change from a hobby to a potential career is huge.

Before a year ago I didn’t have the facilities to be able to experiment with my practise, and in the last year that is all I have done. That means I am still on the process of working out who I am and what my future will look like.

Only a little over a year ago my future was a life in the kitchen, I thought it would be impossible to make this step into a career as a creative. I haven’t had years on college studying art, or had any guidance before this year, I may be behind in this journey. However it is not a journey I am going to rush, I decided to let my manifesto to reflect this. I don’t want it to be an outward reflection of who I am now as an artist but of the way I am going to grow to be the artist I will be. Even if I don’t know what that will look like yet.

Before I started anything I started to think about what did I want to find out, what questions did I have. But also I realised research for this project wasn’t just about looking at other’s manifestos, but I would need to start looking into myself and determine who I want to be but what I want this manifesto to mean and communicate.

I actually first started looking at the examples given to us from previous students, I thought this was important because established artists know who they are, where as we are only starting to define our identities. And the variety I saw made me realise this is so personal, and everyone has different aspirations and goals.

When researching I discovered Judith’s Bernstein’s Manifesto. This was the one which inspired me the most. I didn’t want to have a manifesto which couldn’t necessarily be used, this gave you a list of activities and practises one could actually be used. I discovered several manifestos which were more conceptual, which I didn’t connect to, they didn’t inspire me.

The idea of a personal manifesto, the word personal was important. I decided at this point I wanted this manifesto to be for me. Not to define myself, because I believe my identity as an artist will constantly change, growth is important, and to make sure that point is evident in my final manifesto.