winter light - 2010

winter light - 2010
Originally uploaded by kelise72

This used to be "gray nude" or somesuch - that was before I expressed myself all over it with Payne's Grey... I thought "noisy" was much better than the very quietly deliberate previous version. However, my tutor deemed it immediately "a disaster" - and in an assessment, too - with 4 other people present.

I didn't take it badly (in fact, I only laughed) - I *did* state before showing it that the Autumn term for me was all about "experimentation" (so it's OK with me if some of my experiments fail horribly).

The only thing is - now I am looking more carefully at this image as I'm cropping it for Flickr... and I wonder to myself, *what* exactly makes this "a disaster"? My tutor has never said anything of the kind in the 4 tutorial sessions, and has only seemed to be encouraging and mentoring during the session - but then he's never given me REAL feedback during the tutorials - instead he has done two things: 1) point out what he thinks is "my way of working/thinking" and 2) suggests artists for me to look at and off I go to the internet or library to try and glean something useful by looking at someone else's artwork.

He's never ONCE said by looking at my projects and any of the 4 times we've met, "This works" or "that doesn't work" (for me, my way of working, for what I'm trying to do, etc.)

So, he's deemed my "expressive brush strokes don't work" (for me) and now I'm a little uncertain about experimenting further, doing things "out of character" (like trying to be LESS controlled, LESS planned, MORE spontaneous etc.) - because I sense he wants me to explore, go deeper in the analytical, logical side of me.

And frankly, I quit the IT biz because I'm *SICK* to death of analysing, being logical and planning ahead.

Hopefully, it's not too late for me, hopefully I can find a balance (and soon!) of free creativity alongside balanced and thoughtful work.