End of second year!!! Thoughts and feelings?

 Surrender........that is a lesson i learnt this year. I don't mean that in a defeatist kind of way, don't let life beat you up. Singing in the rain. 
I mean just use everything that happens, everything you cant control, use it. It was a weird start to the academic year, i had three wonderful people pass away within weeks of each other which knocked me a bit. I have never been very good at the whole death thing, i tend to go numb and quiet. The style of work i was making was the perfect way to express these feelings without speaking. Using large loose canvas's, natural pigments as well as inks, charcoals and chalks. It was the perfect medium to work with. I didnt have to be tidy, it was all out-doors, i didn't have the pressure to create something that had to look like anything......and it helped a lot with these emotional processes.It is far easier to explain grief in patterns and color than words. My partner and i also moved a lot this year.....a week before the start of the academic year i lost my job, which also came with our cottage, another blow but it turned out alright. We decided to house-sit full-time until we found somewhere ideal. The plus side of this was that everywhere we stayed there was a new woodland, a new setting to make work in. The down side was it was very unsettling, no sooner had you got into some sort of routine then we had to move again. Art really does help me, being an artist isn't a choice, you don't wake up one day and think "I am going to be an artist" You do realize one day when you have had a string of messy random creative jobs and you are always covered in paint and your house is full of moss and tree branches that really the title of artist would be most appropriate, you just can help making something. And i guess that is what i mean by surrender....to use all life's ammunition to make and inform your work. I guess a musician thinks and feels in notes, and a poet thinks and feels in rhymes and riddles.....and i think in color and texture. I never think "i am going to make a peice of work now, i am going to put three hours aside for making, i find i am always making something, gathering something from every walk, i dont know what i will use it for but i know i have to collect it. I realized this year i am never off duty as an artist, because i am never on duty....i am just doing my thing, which feels authentic. Struggling with the idea of choosing an academic or artistic path in life, history of art at oxford, or a creative masters at the RA....i am terrible at choices. It has been a great yet exhausting year. There are lots of ideas i have had over the last few months but just not the time to make then, so i am looking forward to having more free time in our new home to birth them over the summer. We shall see. For now i am running into the woods and not coming back for a while x 

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