What would Simon Cowell say?

First of all, sorry I haven't written in a while.. for a long time I felt I didn't have much to write about, but now I have a very good reason - I made it through to the interview at Oslo Academy of Art. I'm one of 62 out of 405, which I can't grasp no matter how many times I say it or write it. As much as I'm flattered, grateful, happy and excited about it I'm also getting increasingly nervous.

Ok. I'm absolutely terrified.

I'm supposed to meet in the auditorium with the other lucky candidates for a quick briefing, then I'll get assigned to a room where I'll be working on 1 or 2 given assignments. At some point during the week there is the dreaded interview, which supposedly lasts 20 minutes.

I've never been through this before, it's my 4th year applying and I've never got this far. I feel like in a way I'm given false hope, cause I can't bring myself to hope that I'll be one of the 25 or so left after the elimination process. More than anything I'm scared (and rightly so) that my nerves will get the better of me and I'll mess it up, and if I don't get accepted it will be 100% my own fault.

So now I'm trying to prepare myself. I don't really know what to expect. I'm supposed to study up on artists, see exhibitions, prepare questions, google the members of the jury and what have you. Only I'm not supposed to come across as someone who's spent the last month studying up on artists and seeing exhibitions and basically being a walking art encyclopedia. Keeping that balance seems difficult. Should I seem confident or not??

If I were to think about the dreaded interview all the time I'd be going crazy. But like in all things with me I brace myself by preparing for the worst... I've already spent several hours writing down every thinkable question the jury could ask me, followed by my answers. While imagining Simon Cowell sitting in front of me.

I've heard all kinds of rumours about what the interview is like, about how tricky the questions are - even rumours that jury members in the past have had a sharp tongue like Simon. Which is certainly an interesting thought. What if I were to explain my love for a certain artist or a certain work and I'm met by comments like "that was indulgent nonsense" or "I don't like what you're wearing"?

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

It's the most wonderful time of the year........

Spring is just around the corner (though it's hard to believe because of the weather) and that means... application time. Never too early to start working on it.
So I signed up for an "application writing course" at school. I hope it's going to pay off but for now I'm just scared to death.

I've sent applications to the art academies for three years now without even getting through to the interview, but each year I convince myself I have a better chance than the year before. This year I have actually been told I might have a chance and that scares me even more.

But the thing that scares me the most is the text that has to be sent in with the application - apparently it's extremely important and has to be perfect in order to get you through to the interview. So in addition to tearing my hair out because the photos of my work turn out awful, and I'm stuck without any new ideas, I have to dig deep into myself and define what my work is all about and put it into big fancy words - though not too big and not too fancy, just big and fancy enough to make me seem interesting but not pretentious.

To sum it all up - I'm working on my applications, I'm scared to death, stressed out... and in need of a miracle.

Just a note

I now have a photo album on facebook dedicated to pictures of unfinished work, stuff I'm currently working on etc - before the finished work ends up on the web site.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=170274&l=7e579&id=838195173

Enjoy!

Positive news

Lo and behold, for the first time in the history of this blog I won't complain or whine about things...

A few days ago I finally managed to build up enough confidence to volunteer to exhibit my work at a gallery connected to the school. I only have three paintings (well, make that two, I'm still working on the third) so I'll have to be joined by several others. I don't know how many have volunteered yet but I hope it'll all work out. If nothing comes out of it at least I'll know I dared to volunteer in the first place.

I finished a painting yesterday that I hope to include in the exhibition and I will add it to the website by the end of the week hopefully.

It had to happen at some point...

...I had an idea. I worked on it for nearly two months: I struggled, I lost track of what I was doing, I found my way again, struggled some more and eventually it all plummeted.

Some ideas are obviously not meant to be.

You don't need to be a brain surgeon to figure that out, to know that you won't succeed in every little thing in life, but still - when I realised that what I had been working on for the past few months was never going to result in anything, I was very disappointed.

Ok, I was depressed, I'll admit that. I felt like I'd practically wasted my time and that nothing I ever did would turn out well.

But a few days ago I actually had several new ideas, started sketching right away and I'll start working on this new project this week. I'm actually very positive about this, which surprised me cause I'm the self-proclaimed queen of negativity (if you don't believe me, read my oldest blog posts.....) I really thought that the failed project would have a bigger impact on me. Let's see how long I can keep this positivity up..

By the way, I'm working on updating my web site too, only I had to rebuild it in Dreamweaver (which I've never used before) so it's a little harder than expected. But I'm almost finished so watch out for it in the coming weeks!

Update!

It's been almost 2 months since my last post so I guess I owe you an update. I already mentioned I wasn't accepted into the Academy (boohoo) but I was accepted into another art school (yay) that's pretty much at the same level as the one I used to go to but with a whole different system and teaching methods. So I'm officially going back to being an art student!

In the last week of June and first week of July I was in Florence, Italy and it was just great. Not only is there art all around you; famous paintings inside the churches, great architecture, and of course the Uffizi (which was overbooked though so we didn't get to go), but we also saw some exhibitions of more modern, contemporary art. One of the last days of the trip we went to Siena and in the middle of the busy, tourist-crowded street there was a tiny gallery and one of the artists in particular appealed to me: Her name is Antonella Cinelli, and her paintings are very inspired by photos - both in terms of composition and technique - and the motives of her paintings for that exhibition were focused around femininity: Shoes, underwear, make-up, and portraits of women (possibly herself?) doing everyday activities such as putting on socks or pulling up her pantyhose. I guess you have to see it yourself to understand why it's interesting. The series/exhibition was called "Femminile, singolare...concreto".

The trip to Italy also inspired me to take my own photos as a source of inspiration to my paintings, instead of using film stills. After I made that decision I started taking a lot of photos of the streets, the people around me, people talking to each other, people waiting for the bus, or just wainting in general.

I've been home for a few weeks now so I've started on some paintings with some of those photos in mind.

I suppose I should have taken one picture of each of them but truth is I'm a little scared right now cause it feels like I have no idea what I'm doing.. and my self confidence is still not back to normal after the application refusals so I don't think I can take much criticism. I'm trying to find a liberating side to not knowing what I'm doing though...turning it into a good thing.

For the past year I've been worrying on and off about losing my technique and ability to draw and paint people (I miss 'croquis' sessions!!).. one of the things I've always struggled with is to draw and paint hands, whenever I try it looks like a big fleshy thing with sausages randomly attached to it. So I invested in this:

It's supposed to make it easier to draw hands. It works to a certain extent; the thumb can't be moved further from the hand than what is seen in the photo, and the fingers are too long. But it's fun, I've filled half a sketching pad with hand drawings already. I've named "him" Han(d)ibal. (it may seem obsessive to name ones art tools but we have a history for it in my family. It started when my sister got a similar wooden doll to draw and we all thought it looked like the Academy Award statue so it was named Oscar.)

That's about all at the moment, will add the two latest paintings (those I did before the ones I'm working on now) to the web site shortly.

...."Untitled"

(It sounds very posh considering it's just a roundabout way of saying you can't think of a title..)



Fact is I haven't been very active in terms of art lately. After having received three letters of refusal from art academies in just as many days, I sank into that famous deep black hole for a few days. I thought about giving up - there's nothing as nerve-wrecking as putting your life on hold like this and not even knowing whether it will ever be worth it or if you're just wasting precious years of your life. So my self confidence is currently just starting to emerge from a mud-pool of self pity, and there's no telling if it'll go right down again tomorrow.. so I'm clinging to the idea that I'll make it somehow and someday, it'll just be another year or so. It's not easy.



Because of that I haven't been very productive, but yesterday I tried to make an effort to start painting again and came up with this:



What was I thinking? I'm just coming out of a creative drought (or depression) and so I try to paint two paintings at once. Integrated into each other... I have no idea how this will turn out but I have to say I'd be sad if I work long and hard on this project and it ends in disaster - A painting that's been overdone and with too many layers of paint, or in general something I'd be embarassed to associate my name with (That actually happens a lot).

I did finish a painting about a month ago that I'm sort of pleased with but haven't come round to uploading it to the web site yet - just give me a few days!