Life in 3d

There was an art session at a social club at the university: Life is Better in 3d. Coming out of the first year of university a social recluse, I was determined to make a change. Having a total of five finished paintings under my belt, I was slightly worried. Luckily, so was everybody else. It was an inviting space, and being there forced you to do something creative.

I didn’t have a set endpoint, or really, beginning the first time. I wanted to do something with collages. They had a lot of vintage magazines. Specifically the old bodybuilding magazines, advertising steroids that have long been banned, were inspiring. The open-ended mindset is something that has carried over to a lot of my other life. I make an active effort to avoid limitations, or “red tape”. You can clearly see the paintings I made to reach some end result and those I made as a process. I strongly prefer the latter.

The second important factor is the time constraint. Perfectionism can be a bitch. It tells you that if you’re not going to be perfect, it’s better to not try at all. Being at meetings for 2 hours, after which I had pledged to finish, or “abandon” a painting, forced me to work. This process helped me get stuck in my mind less. You just kind of have to do something. We cannot wait for things to be perfect before we start, cause they never will be.