my journey

‘Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful’ Albert Camus

While making a chronical of my MA experience during isolation and travel restriction I have to observe the difficulties that incurred along with the achievements.  All my research has been limited to online resources and books I have in my bookcase.  So, my journey has not involved travelling; I feel like Xavier de Maistre who journeyed round his room in 1784 while under house arrest for having participated in a duel.  It is a parody and humorously demonstrates that one can explore without having to leave one’s home.  Like my story it is a ‘shaggy dog’s tale’ (Maistre de, X. 2013) My journey and mindset as it began, was as Alain de Botton pointed out of Maistre or any traveller, that of receptivity, with no rigid ideas of what might interest me. I took delight in and was intrigued by everything. I left no stone unturned; made notes, sketched, and took photographs, frame by frame.  However, as time went on, I met a stumbling block, that of lack of digital knowledge and expensive technical tools.  It was like an unruly monster that appeared at every corner.  Meanwhile. my journey becomes more like Homer’s Odyssey, as Odysseus travels back to his wife Penelope from the Trojan war to Ithaca he met with monsters, plague and retribution which delayed his journey for many years. While his wife slavishly wove cloth by day and unravelled it by night to ward of her many unwelcome suiters.  While Homer dramatised the events for poetic effect, I can relate my journey to that notwithstanding the pandemic.  My adventure was often unsettling and not always exciting. 

Alongside the fear of the virus, travel restrictions and lack of resources was my desire to maintain my self-taught work ethic and to become recognised as an outsider artist.  While I wish to make a valid contribution to my community with my art by sharing, teaching and entertaining and this with minimal or no further education and costly overheads is possible.  However, if I wish to reach a bigger audience and achieve a modicum of notoriety, I will need to make further investment and possible extended education and therefore losing my autonomy and claim to outsiderness.  So the journey continues …