« Journal d’artiste » takes you in the daily life of a visual female artist Today, welcome in Ge L’Heureux’s head. Art of this multidiscipline artist builds on the concept of Slow Art, a movement based on aesthetics and and ecological values.
The Challenges of a Mutlidiscipline artist
Some kind of an extreme motivation to dive dep in a project. a new opportunity appearing super exciting, as important as everything that was already going on. Thinking about it night and day. It’s there, it’s burning!
This is what happens very often in the head of a number of artists. No matter how hard you try to plan your calendar, when ideas pop up all the time, it becomes difficult. Sometimes, only one thing matters to you: focus your energy on a project right now. This is not what was panned, but well, it seems that it’s where you’re going to be productive.
Really, it’s constant fight to successfully build a somewhat stable time schedule, and accommodate time for your art, and also administrative duties.
With regards to the admin. part, I mean responding to calls for projects, subsidies requests, responding to e-mails, and so on. Call for projects can be for a multitude of opportunities, in particular for exhibitions or openings. The ones of us with good organizational skills have a nice calendar capturing due dates for registering to events, and they try to apply in due time to those various programs.
On top of all this: unplanned invitations! You are invited by an artist to collaborate on a really cool project. The organizer of the festival gives you a super opportunity to expose your work. You accept. Well, it’s in a week. It just ruins all of your nice plans and calendar. You eliminate some duties; you cancel appointments dinners or with friends… You already had fifteen other ongoing projects, but well it does not matter: The time is NOW.
Waking up at night
This gives you a idea : I’m back to this Frenetic impulse that takes you sometimes to dive deep into a new concept: Think and rethink about it again and again, dream about it and amplify it … Can be a form, a material, a word, a technique : whatever motivates you, it takes the whole space.
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How can you reconcile your “push” to follow your instincts, and the need to efficiently manage time? It’s all a question of balance, as I said before. I’ve been working for the last three years as an independent worker, and I have probably tested over ten different work schedules; quite a bit of time spent in the little time boxes of my agenda, really.
Trying to practice yoga each week when it fits or setting fixed dates three times a week? Well, how do you deal with it when you woke up a 3 AM the night before, to put down on paper those ideas that popped up while you slept? Your morning yoga is quickly gone when you did not sleep enough.
If you don’t capture those « nightly revelations »on the spot, you are at risk of letting this great idea evaporate, this one which maybe would have led to to you best poem ever… You never know: Am I just undisciplined or is it normal to let your impulse take over? I always wonder if it’s a better choice to give priority to your creativity, even sometimes at the expenses your own health or social life.
Ongoing projects
The last thing I tried is to put a large sixteen blocks board on my wall. I write the various projects I’m currently working on, and I try to check it every day (not yet a routine admittedly). It brings me back to my priorities and me what’s the most urgent, to complete. Okay, let’s say that I’m not in the mood of : I ABSOLUTELY NEED TO DRAW THIS ? BECAUSE I’M SO INSPIRED. No, I pick project # 1 up on my board. That’s what I’m testing for now. In the end I’ll find the process that works for me.
Oh, by the way, one last thing: Starting January 2019, I decided that I would work every Friday on my art book. This one I’ve been trying to finish for the last 2 years I tried so many ways : One hour a day, some 3 hours sessions here and there, lock myself in a cabin for two weeks… Will I succeed? Who knows?
Ge L’Heureux