Finding My Voice

One of the more difficult parts of being thrust into art school after having only minored in art during college is that most people in my classes seem to have a very good idea of what their style is, while I'm still searching for mine. Most students at Bezalel, at least those beyond their first year - ie the ones I'm in class with - seem to have developed at least some sense of what their style is. I'm not completely sure about this, and I know there are many exceptions, but of course, when I'm sitting trying to figure out how I'd like to approach the assignment, feeling completely lost, I tend to only see those students who have already made significant progress because they started working right away.

In spite of everything I wrote in the previous post about the importance of constraints and how to use style as a personal constraint, this seems to be something that I have a lot of trouble with. In typical Raffi fashion I tend to push off decisions and choices, and so I refuse to allow myself to be constrained. That might sound romantic and free, but it's no fun. It means that every time I enter my painting class, or sit down in front of a smooth, blank lithography stone, I get stuck. Ideas pop into my head, and I push them away, ruling them out for being trite or overly conceptual. I fight against representing my thoughts too literally, or producing something that is simply representational, without enough conceptual backing. Once I finally decide on what I want to do, I immediately start doubting it, thinking of all the other possibilities I might have chosen, and am now missing out on.

For example, people I've spoken to are always interested to know how I plan on combining art and computer science. Will I paint pictures of computers? Will I decorate actual computers? I immediately dispel the notion that my art will have any direct connection with computers or cognitive science. It will be a much more abstract connection. For some reason, literally trying to create art about computers seems trite to me. I'm not quite sure why. This past week, for the first time, I decided that I will try to start incorporating some of my interests in cognitive science or math into my art. I'm not sure how exactly. I'm not going to paint a picture of a computer (I don't like computers very much), but I think there are other things I can do that will somehow connect my interest in art to other interests of mine. All I can do is try and see how it goes. I might give up after a bit, but I still need to try. Who knows, maybe I'll find that there's a way for me to say something unique in this way.