Fig 1 – Automatic Drawing
“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
– Gustave Flaubert (Kleon 2008)
At this juncture I am logging ‘my event’ which is to say that I am writing a reflective blog post that should have been completed at the end of November. There are many reasons for the delay of this post. Paradoxically one of the predominate ones is my struggle to connect with one of the key features of reflective writing which is the integration of theory and practice(Reflective Writing). I do feel like this is happening organically and many of the activities from Practice 1 are converging with the activities of Research but the completion of these activities and the priority of which should be done first is making my head spin. My automatic drawing above is a visual representation of how I feel at the moment. In the spirit of another key feature of reflective writing I am taking time to gain insight into my own process and by reading of the suggestions of other creative people I might learn from this experience. One of my early posts was about making drawing a daily habit. I also referenced books that examine creative work habits in order to help me achieve this habit. I am prioritizing my urgent and important tasks. But as I created a detailed list of deliverables on my granular timeline and I marked out deadlines for my activities on a calendar.
I have been working hard to stay organized and embrace some of the methods I reviewed in my earlier blog post Practice. The issue I have run into at this point, however, is I feel that the integration of theory and practice does not lend itself to this kind of compartmentalization – which has been my go-to in the world of ‘getting things done’. As I have read more about practice-led research and attempt to engage in it myself, I have come to realize that my old strategies of categorization do not work with this kind of research. This is why I have struggled in my approach to these activities, despite my best efforts at organization. That plus my age-old habit of taking on too much is leaving me tangled. I wanted to take stock at this mid point blog (which is actually being written on the 10th week of the module) to see how I can improve my work habits and embrace this feeling of being tangled. Strangely enough my attempt to quell these unruly threads of anxiety have led me to reacquaint myself in automatic drawing (fig 1)
Mark McGuiness writes in his book Time Management for Creative People about the ‘sisyphus effect’- that is the never-ending task list the condemns us to a constant stream of demands.(McGuiness 2007). I know I will continue to have demands as I am a teacher as well as a student. I am ambitious and enthusiastic about new experiences and opportunities which leads me to take on too many commitments. Unsurprisingly, I become crushed by the weight of my list and my enthusiasm and energy wanes. The threads just keep me up at night and I become blind to the places they might take me. To combat the sisyphus effect McGuiness concludes ‘ …you need to install a buffer between other’s demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.(McGuiness 2007) I am learning that reacting unconsciously to an assignment sucks the creative life blood out of the outcome.
Writer and artist Austin Kleon suggests that artists should actively procrastinate. To him procrastination means moving from one project to another. If you are stuck move to something else. If it isn’t working dump it and move on. He shares a quote from Steve Jobs that says – ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.’ (Kleon 2008) An iterative cyclic approach to a creative problem is just this. The amassing of dots, varied in size, shape and colour that eventually connect into a single entity. A result that could never be achieved by a linear approach. A slavish devotion to completing tasks is counter intuitive to this approach. One becomes blindsided by ticking off the long list of to dos working in a pre-destined straight line instead of a cycle of investigation.
Moving forward to the next stage of my MA project I feel like I need to balance these two strategies. One is in keeping with Flaubert and McGuiness’s notion of managing commitments and keeping your house in order. In doing so I can be free to try Kleon’s approach of procrastination and allow myself to feel ok about automatic drawing knowing that it will take me somewhere unexpected.
Moses,G. (2018) [photograph] Francis Bacon Studio Recreation – Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin Ireland.
Kleon, A. (2008) Steal Like and Artist New York: Workman Publishing
McGuniness, M.(2007) Time Management for Creative People London [e-book] Available at: http://researchswinger.org/others/creativetime.pdf (Accessed 9 November 2018)
Reflective Writing (date and author unknown) University of Reading Available at: https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/ld.php?content_id=23073800(Accessed 3 January 2019)