things I love

I love Tracey Emin.

Kind’ve controversial this, haha. To me, Tracey Emin’s work is incredible. The raw emotion present in such confessional work is just so beautiful, and inspires me so much. Her work is incredibly introspective but at the same time so relatable, drawing on the fact that human emotion is universal. I’ve read her autobiography and to me she is an amazing person, it really moved me and actually felt like I could be reading something I’d written myself. Her work is visually interesting and full of meaning at the same time, and she uses such varied media, she really is an incredible artist and really inspiring!

I am beyond excited to see some of her work in person, I’ve wanted to for so long. She has an exhibition opening on the 18th of may and I’m so unbelievably excited.

I love (contempory) art.

There’s nothing else that makes me feel happy in the same way that going to an art gallery does - when I find a new artist I love, or see work that makes me think and feel something. I absoluely treasure all my books about my favourite artists, and when I buy a new one the excitement I get before reading it is ridiculous, I’m like a little kid. Writing and reading about art just makes me happy.

I love creating work to, though I don’t think I’m very good at it. I like exploring my mind for possibilities, finding ideas that I want to turn into pieces and trying to come up with ways of doing that. I love the feeling of satisfaction when I can create something I’m really proud of. My work doesn’t impress people in the same way that a well executed painting or detailed drawing does, but that doesn’t matter to me. I love art that has substance and really means/conveys/evokes something, to me it doesn’t matter how much skill it demonstrates. This is why I love a lot of contemporary and conceptual art, I don’t even know why I do, it just makes me happy. I love my mind when it comes to art, I love the way I think about it and the way it makes me think, I love that I can see things in art and appreciate it in a way that some others simply can’t.

I love that I’m not entirely ordinary.

Several years ago I watched ‘The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive’. Stephen Fry spoke to different celebrities living with bipolar disorder and gave them this scenario: if there was a button right here on the table that you could press to take away your illness, would you press it? Each person said no, and I just couldn’t understand it.

For a long time I wished to be ‘normal’, thought it ‘unfair’ that I had to deal with things that my friends didn’t, I felt I would give anything to be like everyone around me and not have to feel the way I did.

Now that I’m older though, I understand why people answered no to that question, and these days that would be my answer too. This ‘disability’ is a part of me, and is part of what makes me who I am. Sure there’s a lot of shit that comes with it, but there’s also so much that I couldn’t imagine life without. I would hate to no longer be able to experience emotions in the way I do, I couldn’t live without the intensity and complexity of the mind I have. I am able to experience feelings and think in a way that many people I speak to can’t understand, but that I think makes my life and my mind exceptionally beautiful.