2014-2017, household paint on wooden board

In the first couple of years after graduating with my degree in fine art, I worked in several different jobs; making Christmas decorations, working as an artist’ assistant and being a teaching assistant. In this time, although I often enjoyed what I was doing, I felt a bit bewildered and quite bitter.  I’d always worked hard while on the conveyor-belt of education, and always done well, but now I was struggling to know what the next step was and I questioned whether this art thing had been a bad choice.

These boards feature notes I made while struggling to make art post-uni. They are painted onto wooden boards that I had to cut from the peep boards I made for my degree show piece ‘I could do that’. Of course after art school you are left with lots of work, some of which is impossible to store and find space for.

I decided to reproduce my notes onto the recycled boards, as the peep boards had felt like the highest part of my art practice so far, but I now I felt at my lowest. I felt like it was important to document this period of frustration and I decided to paint in Times New Roman font as I felt like everything I had to offer had been reduced to an a4 sheet of text in Times New Roman font.

There was something about the process of rollering on the block colour background, tracing the text, transferring it onto the board and then painting within the lines that was both therapeutic and seemed equivalent to the way I felt I was trying to tick boxes and make myself as as palatable possible.