Principles

During our group session this week we briefly looked at a couple of artists manifestos including the Stuckists, Claes Oldenburg's "Ode to Possibilities" and Neil Cumming's "Create". We were then asked to write down four of our own principles, I wrote:

• Create to explore

• Use my hands

• Share

• Explore to create

This was done very quickly, but the more I think about them the more I really like this idea. Creating to explore is key to my trying to work in a way that involves practice based research. I want to explore through making.

Using my hands is central to the way I work, I want to create in an analogue way, I am happy to use photography and photocopies etc to aid my research but the actual work is made in a physical not digital way.

Sharing my work for the benefit of others is important to me. I want to continue to make charity prints, donate work and share my skills without asking for financial recompense.

Exploring to create is a core part of how I work, everything starts by exploring the landscape.

I'm going to make something to record these principles where I can see it every day.... I've done something simple in Word for now... it has images of things which act as prompts to me because I remember why I took the picture or made that piece.