Hello again;
This time I’ll try to touch on some of the issues I promised some time ago on my blog.
The assignment for this term is done and posted. I don’t know yet what my tutors think of it. I don’t worry too much about things I cannot change.
However, the research I did helped me to discover lots about myself (it is often the case that you research something for an art project and all the topics take you back to an earlier time in your life, but this time you see things from a new perspective)
In my research I explored the issue of identity, how art can be used to express, construct or challenge notions of individual identity. I analysed works by two painters, Alice Neel and Max Beckmann. Both of them quite different. Both of them, though, owners of enormous amounts of self-determination and persistence to follow their own path in defiance of trends, fashions, the market or any ulterior motives.
In a nutshell, both of them doing their own thing. (Check these links if you want to read further about Neel and Beckmann).
My research has a funny way of taking me to other topics at times. I found myself reading about psychology, about transactional analysis, about gender identity, about madness, fitting in, going against the norm.
And it makes sense that identity is not who you are. It’s who you make yourself be.
We are born with choices. You may be told otherwise, but you can either go along with what you are told or you can choose to think for yourself and act accordingly.
Sometimes it takes a whole life to learn such a simple thing.
We can choose: to listen to other people’s opinions or to make up our own mind.
-Every choice changes who we are .
To keep a job or to leave.
-And who we are changes our future choices.
To hold on to our beliefs or to be open-minded.
I think I’m going to leave this post here. I like the openness of the last sentence. It invites thinking…
Thanks for reading this.
See you on the next one? I’m working on a topic that fascinates me: madness. Part of my personal project proposal. I can’t wait to see it finished: It will be good.