After the huge creative drive and motivation of studying a Fine-Art course from 2016-2019, COVID came along and whittled away my resolve. The galleries I wanted to exhibit at were either closing or running at a severely reduced capacity. There was a huge message from society at large, stay home at a crucial post-university-bubble time I was left piecing together projects and trying out ideas mostly in Isolation.

A few projects and showings came from this 2020-2021 period but I found my creative output slowly decreasing and my artistic voice becoming quieter, even to myself, within a world that I had inhabited months before.

Up until this point I had always thought of myself as someone whose creative drive was ceaseless, who took inspiration from the mundane or the everyday, and that I could rely on my subconscious to generate ideas as long as I was able to sponge something up some content from the world. If I could get a pulse, I could resuscitate. I'd recently relied on this kind of intuitive processing to generate ideas through Art School and it had seemed to be quite effective, at least within the institutional echo-chamber.

During art school I was forced to engage, forced to look up artists that interest me, talk about art with my peers and with people in the industry and to view myself as an artist. I was also encouraged to differentiate my work and practice from others. This process of contrast was helpful in defining the scope of work and projects.

I was a lot more immersed in the art-world generally, and I had access to people who think critically about art and who are developing their artistic voice as I was myself. During these crucial conversations I could talk technical requirements, workshop new ideas and be exposed to new work which then went though this subconscious processing step, became absorbed into whatever part of my brain it is that archives and sorts ideas for relevance to the current situation.

Then during 2020-2022 I went through an experience I'm sure that a lot of artists also went through. Isolation. Not only did I come isolated from my peer's work and their thinking, but also from my own. Everything seemed harder. It seemed pointless to make work with nowhere to show it and no-one to speak to it about. I'd gone from a large echo-chamber with lots of voices to one where my voice rang out alone, and I had failed to transition into the new cycle of proposal-exhibition-collaboration and conversation that makes up a career in the arts.

At the start of 2022, when things began to open up again, I saw my peers begin to exhibit and the arts flourish again to a certain extent. I'd go along to shows and see them continuing practices I'd seen before or taking new directions. I'd see them continuing to ask questions and think critically about their surroundings.

I'd recently taken on a full-time job at a startup which was taking up a lot of my time and mental energy. It was creative, interesting and challenging work but left little time for anything else. So this artistic drought continued, and I was then faced with an increasing gap between myself and the art-world I had left. When I talked to these peers and they asked what I was working on, I'd just shrug and say "working". I felt a lot of shame that my creative output had been reduced, that perhaps my ideas had become stagnant in the time between art school and now, and that I needed to update my approach for the new world post-COVID.

From then 'til now I have found myself under pretty extreme time-pressure between work, family, a social life and relationships. I've found myself increasingly frustrated with being unable to utilise the decreased amount of time I have to make work. Quite often I'll sit down with an idea and then become overwhelmed with the prospect of making it and the steps required to get it to an audience. Further, I've been lacking in inspiration. Those really basic engagement tasks: talking to friends about art, going to exhibition openings, brainstorming, developing studies etc. have all vied for the ever-slimming part of my life dedicated to making art.

So that brings me to the title of this post. Reconnecting with my own practice, and the practice of others is the key to opening up this part of my life again. I'd previously lost sight of the sort of multifaceted approach that makes up and art practice. Of course, making work is a huge and crucial part of it but so is all the other things: gaining inspiration from people, places and works. Talking to yourself about work. Generating ideas and sponging up content, news and stories from the world. Consuming and regurgitating content through the subconscious. All these things lead toward the artistic voice becoming more defined.

I recently went through my body of work and selected a few for this site, as well as designing and creating the structure of it. This is an attempt to embrace the idea of my ongoing projects as a Gesamtkunstwerk. The container or context of your work and ongoing practice is also important, and all of the small things you do to build a career, brick by brick, contribute to it.

A holistic view of art-making is one which I'm working to embrace. This means accepting your current capacity to make work and all of the soft-dependencies that link to it. I'm coming to the realisation that it's not just time that's required, it's continuing to develop the capacity to build on your existing body of work, reconnecting with your own motivations and ensuring that your creative drive is satisfied and your artistic voice is present in your work.