The Quick Q & A editorial in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine is a much loved regular feature, in which we ask 6 artists the same 4 questions. In the December 2018 Issue 23, these were the Quick Q & A questions:
- What do you think your art says about you as an individual?
- What do you do to help move beyond ‘Artist’s Block’?
- What materials/tools (including brand) can you not live without and why?
- What inspires your creative practice and why?
We feel that the artists’ responses provide such a valuable insight for our community of artists that we wanted to share one Quick Q & A response from each issue with you, going forward. The December 2018 Issue 23 print issue is sold out, but you can download the digital magazine via our webstore to read more. To ensure you never miss an issue again, you can also subscribe to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, and have each issue sent straight to your door each quarter.
Excerpt from Issue 23 // December 2018 Quick Q & A editorial: Artists Orphné Achéron, Kit Mizeres, Jessica Tremp, Sam Yong, Alexander Berdin-Lazursky, and Harumi Hironaka respond to the below Quick Q & A:
What do you do to help move beyond ‘Artist’s Block’?
“Drawing regularly and recharging the mind. It is important for me to keep a steady pace so I don’t feel the dreaded apprehension about the blank sheet! That’s why I always have a notebook and a pen near me to be able to sketch and write down ideas at any time. Also, when I have free time, I allow myself a break to watch movies, read, flip though art books, visit exhibitions and walk through museums and incredible places that are steeped in history and legend. This allows me to manage and organise my creative process in a diligent way. Furthermore, music is often with me in the beginning of new works and helps me to find the necessary concentration to immerse myself in my imagination.”
“I used to experience artist’s block a lot when I was back in school, but ever since I began to be more consistent with travelling and finding myself in n w situations, I haven’t really experienced it. I think it helps to always find ourself in some sort of moderately stimulating environment as an artist, to draw in new inspiration. I could never be one of those artists who needs to seek out peace and solitude to create new things. I need things like surfboards smacking me in the face during rain storms, drunken bar scream, the pains of unrequited love, being bitten by snapping turtles, and being chased by small children down dark streets late at night to get my wheels spinning.”
“I used to be much more worried whenever I came to a creative halt. These days, I realise that for me it has to be a naturally occurring motivation to keep going, I can’t force it. Or rather, I don’t want to anymore. A writer I was sitting next to at a dinner table once told me he was taking two years to simply ‘ingest’ living life so that he may have something to write about again in the future. That’s always stuck with me. Therefore, these days if I simply feel depleted creatively, I console myself with the thought that I’m busy living life and that all this experience will one day come tapping on my shoulder, wanting to be turned into something visual.”
“My best advice is to usually to just keep working. You might make a bunch of crap you’re not happy with, but every once in a while something that you really like will eventually come out. You’ll get something good maybe 10-20% of the time. I think if the day ever comes when I’m actually 100% happy with one of my paintings, I’ll quit painting. I don’t think every piece has to be your best, but your best will come out after a lot of iterations and your volume of work. Look back on past work and look for things you like or things you didn’t and edit your new work based on that. Stay prolific.”
“When I’m blocked, I go to the Pompidou Contemporary Art Museum in Paris. This is the most inspiring place for me. After four floors of modern art, you leave the museum, and… the exhibition continues. Is this fi e extinguisher here for safety reasons? Or because it’s very beautiful? All these works in the museum break all the fossilised neural connections in the brain, mix them and create new ones. And then, of course, I go to the Catholic churches. I’m trying to remember the lighting that’s there, the smell. This impression is then superimposed on the hundreds of insane works from the Museum of Modern Art and boom! I’m ready to generate an infinite number ideas and images again.”
“I have to say I feel a lot of pressure and anxiety now that I have a big audience on social media. It’s unexpected and
overwhelming. I find myself thinking about what they want to see, and I start doubting myself, thinking that maybe I have nothing else to offer. But, after a couple of miserable days hiding, inspiration strikes me; I’m back, ready to start a new painting. It sounds absurd and I feel like lying, saying I spend hours sketching and searching for inspiration, experimenting with new mediums… but I don’t, really. I haven’t painted in a while now and I must keep reminding myself that it’s OK (and healthy) to take a break and do other stuff that feels more rewarding at the moment.”
