Artist’s Date
My artist’s date for the first week was an exhibition called “Abode” at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre.
This was a small exhibition by several artists on the theme of “home” and what it means. On the way back from seeing it, I wondered if there’s a particular balance between security and freedom that makes a residence feel like home.
Reflections
The theme for Week 1 is “Recovering a Sense of Safety”.
Several of the tasks for Week 1 were about healing from the damage to creative self-worth caused by past criticism, suggesting this is a near-universal experience.
Dealing with some form of unhelpful criticism is probably inevitable for people who persist with creative endeavours and share their work. And so learning how to hear that sort of criticism without becoming permanently discouraged is a part of becoming resilient. But I still wonder if there’s some aspect of our current culture that leads people to be unnecessarily critical of creative work.
The tasks suggested in this week should be useful, but perhaps there would be benefits in turning the concept around and trying to look for other ways to respond to creative work, beyond evaluations of whether we think the work is good or bad.
Related posts
Introductory post: “The Artist’s Way” diary: introduction
Next entry: “The Artist’s Way” diary: week 2