Why do people do what they do ? What is it that makes an artist pick up a pen and begin to draft an idea ? What is it that makes any man or woman do what they do, do what they do when they do, do what they do as they do it ? I am looking at motive. If living is an art, and i think it is, then we are all artists. 
I have had a couple of weeks at university i would rather not had happened. I was struggling to assimilate conversations i'd had earlier this month with my GP and the surgeon who would perform the operation they advise. I was feeling drained, my body was giving me issues, run down and exhausted i asked my tutor if i could be excused from a taught session that week because i did not feel strong enough to hold my fledgling ideas intact if i gave them to a group of other students i hardly know. I also felt too debilitated to engage with their ideas without damaging my wellbeing. I have been told since i should have emailed admin to say i was unwell and therefore unable to attend but i didn't i spoke face to face because it felt more honest and respectful and adult to explain why i felt unable to attend. I thought as a fellow artist he would understand. I was wrong. He did not understand. It has been implied that he thought i was being high and mighty and picking and choosing what i wanted to do. Anyone who knows me well will know that i have chronic & destructive low self-esteem and an inner critic that loves to take me down. I think because i smile it makes people think i am more confident than i am. Should i smile less ? 
As a result of trying to explain myself I received what felt like an aggressive email from the person above my tutor to whom i am given understand he had complained. The email seemed to accuse me of poor attendance and not engaging with other students. It felt like slap in the face, a denial of my need to self-care at that moment. I was hurt and bewildered. I asked others if they had received emails when they missed class. It seems i am the only one. It felt wrong and has made feel wary of certain people and my trust in the university is no longer as it was. I do not know how I will move forward. I hope i will re-find my flow. I feel less open and less free.
Trust is a gift given. If trust is given, be careful with that trust. Trust is like a rope. If trust is broken the cuntline within the rope is irretrievably divided and the feeling will never be the same. Trust comes into all our relationships. If we cease to trust our sense of safety is compromised. It is hard to regain trust. It is hard to trust again someone or a body that has broken trust. It is political.
How can errors be made good ? It has to be ok to fail. But what lies behind a fail is important. The intention behind an action or word makes all the difference. In shiatsu, as i have come to understand, it is the triple heater meridian that paired with the heart protector regulates and holds us to appropriate social boundaries.  I have been studying and practising shiatsu for over twenty years now. Intention is key element to my practise. How do i come into another's sphere what is my intention when i address another. My intention when i spoke to my tutor was to let him know that my absence was born out of my needs and was not a rejection of his teaching or the other students. I am sad i was misunderstood. I think it may be better not to speak if i can stop my mouth.
As an artist ... ugh, what is an artist ? As an artist, i want to give presence to ideas that i can't express in words, to make thought tangible, that i guess is my intention. Other artists will have other driving forces. Maybe one of the good things that has come out of a bad week is that it has forced me hard up against why i am doing my MA because when i considered leaving i had to think about what i would be leaving. What i would be leaving is the chance to explore further with people who i like and respect ways and means of doing the above, making thought tangible, giving ideas presence. And there now i feel like i've blogged the best of me and want the world to go away, not look, not see. 
I came to my MA with a desire to learn about printmaking, specifically etching, drypoint, mono print, collagraph and screen printmaking. Last term i occupied space in the print studios and this term i have too. I have been working with photographs exploring what makes an image worth a second glance or a longer look, how images connect, how to tell a story using my own story, and also how to print, how to print CMYK, seeing how coloured layers change a picture, how to print the same image unaltered, what is the difference. What is it that draws the viewer in. I love sampling it is a serious part of my creative practice. I sample and compare and by sampling and comparing i learn how i need to make what i need to make.
Currently i am making plates of an image of myself as a nineteen year old. It is a strange thing to look at oneself, to look at oneself over and over again. It feels peculiar and narcissistic at first and then the self becomes an object, a thing that could be a teapot or a flower or somebody else. A few weeks ago i screen printed a picture of my five year old self. I think it would have been around about the time my grandpa died and i need to look into that because this week while all the horrible-ness has been going on, as well as finding myself in the thick of Jon-grief, i also discovered i have a child's grief. 
My grandpa was the only adult i remember as playful from my childhood. He would swing us under his legs. When he got ill i remember being told off for showing him a book i'd been given and was proud of. It was a big book, he was in hospital and i lumped it onto his chest as a child would and was told off and he said no it was alright. He was dying but i didn't know it. Even dying he was kind. I remember the phone call we received when he died, "grandpa is dead" i was told. I was in my bedroom with red curtains reading "The Cow Who Fell into the Canal". And i remember going to see him at the morgue and thinking if i cried on him he might come back to life but of course i wasn't allowed close enough to cry on him and it wouldn't have worked even if i had would it. And now i remember his absence. Absence i think is a huge part of grief.
Photographs trigger memories. My nineteen year old self has flicked switches on the lack of self worth i had then. I have put in a proposal for one of the Curation MA students exhibitions, the brief is Self Love and my working with this image, whether she accepts my proposal or not, is an act of love back passed to the girl-woman i was then. I have over time learned to love myself a little more, i cannot change my past and my innate lack of self confidence is a demon i think i will always struggle with but i can give my self of then kindness and understanding i couldn't give myself then. 
For me understanding is the bedrock of my practice. Understanding on lots of levels. My SNU project is a lot about sampling, i am exploring the emotionality behind the images but also those images are giving me the opportunity to learn about the materials i am using and this for me is how i build my practice. If i know my materials i am better able to use them. I often say that thought is my medium it is true even if it sounds a bit pose-y, but university gives me the chance to explore the physical process under the guidance of experts. NUA has some fantastic technicians.
So what else have i been up to this week. Well last term i and others met with some Business school students from the UEA and we were given a brief and asked to give a presentation based on that brief which we delivered last Friday. That has taken up the best part of three days this week. Although we are in the same city our campuses are about an hour apart and collaboration has not been easy as we are all studying at MA/MSc level and have ongoing commitments to our courses. Still my group managed three further meet ups, a brainstorming session, a brainstorming for the presentation session, and then a presentation run-through, before presenting last friday. 
I learned from this presentation, i was a relatively silent party but I nudged to get things going when there was silence from the other side. My four partners were hard working and committed and we all made all the meetings and we all had a voice in brainstorming sessions. They made the questionnaire and slides but i gave ideas and i think created emotional connection to the subject matter. I was impressed by how cool they were and unafraid. I suppose if you have travelled from far away to study for a year in a strange country you have to be a bit plucky and able to handle yourself. I learned from their courage and self confidence as well as their skills and it was good to be in company with their self assurance. It was hard to speak in front of people especially as i was having a difficult week but i did speak albeit for just a few minutes. 
Also I finished making and made some new silicon moulds of things. I am learning and brushing up on mould making in case i should need to know how to do this for my masters project and also with a view to making things for my ASU 2 and SNU tho time is always a factor. Everything takes longer than i think it will which adds to the stress as the weeks and days tick down towards deadlines and finally leaving. 
And i had a meeting with Maria Paveledis who is a printmaker who works in Norwich. I have seen her work in exhibition and like it a lot. She asked on facebook if anyone was free to help her with running a print workshop for the XR pilgrimage of the animals this Easter and i said i would love to and so i am, it feels like a privilege.
Maybe on that note i have to give myself credit for holding it together through a rough week enough to make four extra-curricular meetings (3 x St Martin's Project & Maria), to have made six new copper plates almost finished and prepared one more to also finish next monday, I have made some new moulds and a two part mould and have begun exploring how epoxy resin behaves in a mould. And I have made new marks on my drypoint and hard ground test plates which has also led me thinking more about Judas' kiss. And yesterday i went to Holt Church to see the representations they have there of the Stations of the Cross. And by chance met and spoke to a retired Cannon about the Stations which was very interesting and he gave me the name of an artist to look up. Life goes on. Life always go on. 
My SNU began with grief as its seed and a need to look back and look forward. All the time this balance is something that i feel. Perhaps this is my cross. Maybe this is how i carry forward my ASU 2 work. And there again i say more than i want to about my creative process. Reveal too much. let myself fall and be vulnerable. But how can i make work if the work i am making asks that i be that and i refuse. It can't be done. If i must feel the scourge of whips, of nails in my hands and feet then so it has to be. But i must remember that imperfection is ok, for me and for others. And if i fall its ok too.