Professional Practice
Based on overall impression through MA degree program, I feel the Professional Practice sessions were one of the most valuable presentations of the program in providing professional methods, processes and real-life experiences directly from artists and colleagues of the art world.
The professional practice sessions provide ways to overcome confidence issues and demonstrating that the artistic profession it is not simply creativity and painting, but it must be conceptual and unique. The sessions are brilliant in providing suggestions and tips on how to present yourself and your work and things to look for or pitfalls to avoid.
For me, the professional practice sessions demonstrate how to combine creativity with a business-like approach to yield the most optimum personal result. I greatly enjoyed hearing the personal experiences of the artists and will consider and store their insights and advise.
Further, I am inspired by the artist presentation of life experiences, their style and approach and the means employed to overcome artistic adversities towards becoming successful and not just creative in your own world. The Artists/presenters provided plenty of new ideas, ways and means to show that this is not just simply about the artwork but that paintings need to structurally evolve, develop and include promotional activities to push the work and yourself forward.
Particularly helpful was the lecture discussing the need and ways to evaluate and target galleries. Many artists do not understand how to select galleries, which would project their work and attract the proper target buyers. It is important that the artwork fits the theme, type and style of art of the featuring gallery.
In terms of post-program career direction, I will continue to pursue my interest in paintings by taking a studio and to cooperate and display my paintings with a number of select galleries within Europe. Further, I would look to other commercial artistic ventures specifically within stage design. My essay research on Rauschenberg’s stage planning and design creations opened my eyes to other artistic channels, mediums and possibilities. I envision artistic collaboration with the theatre and dancers in creating original stage designs and backdrops for dance productions, operas and theatre. This would be my large format canvas to display my art.
Carrying further on my research work on Art and Artificial Intelligence, I will continue my collaboration with Dr. Francesco Gardin on AI art machine learning. The plan is to collate and analysis the artistic knowledge, style and technique of past artists and apply emotion and feeling to create works of art with machine cooperation.
Another career direction that has always been appealing for me is to teach painting technique and art to young new artists. I would greatly enjoy teaching art to children to uncover and cultivate their creativity at an early age. And finally, another area of interest is to run or work in a gallery.