Who am I?

Who are you now-has anything changed your view of your practice?

Right now I'd say I'm in a good place; I'm feeling excited about the year ahead and I'm ready to embrace all the opportunities that may become available to me that could shape my future creative career. I've proved a lot to myself in the last year both personally and in terms of my practice, facing challenges that I never thought I could accomplish. 
To me, and I'm sure this applies to many others, my creative ability is heavily intertwined with how I'm feeling in myself and what is happening in my surrounding environment. In the last 12 months, the experience of recovering from the most difficult struggles I've ever had with my mental health has honestly changed my perspective on life and the way I think about literally everything. I really don't mean to throw that around like such a blasé term, but when you look back and see how much you have blossomed in confidence, how you approach every day situations, how you interact with others, how you see the world it really is astonishing. 

My new years resolution for 2016 was to "say yes to everything", and this approach pushed me outside of my comfort zone in many aspects and wasn't the easiest mantra at times, yet it bought me so many opportunities. Outside of college I've flown to America on my own, learnt and taught children how to survive in the woods and even run a half marathon, which I never thought I'd be able to do in my wildest dreams! With my practice I've partaken in really exciting briefs, collaborating with others, taken on responsible roles such as putting myself forward for student rep, had the opportunity to be part of a large-scale public art project and many other brilliant things that have made me prove to myself that my level of determination has helped me to realise that I am capable of doing anything I put my mind to. Even simple things have been valuable, like making the effort to interact with my peers in the studio more instead of feeling immediately threatened and comparing myself with their style of work which has made a huge difference in the way that I apply myself to a variety of situations.

This wasn't meant to be a huge long cheesy essay because a lot of the things I have written about above certainly aren't easy to talk about, but my recent experiences have shaped who I am now, and given me a much more positive insight and approach to my future aspirations within illustration specifically and the creative industry as a whole. 

What are your plans for the structure of your future practice-Collaboration: Individual : Full employment: Other?

The prospect of leaving the comfortable studio bubble is somewhat daunting, but also really exciting. I've figured that I work best when I'm given a brief to work on in an environment with other creative people doing similar or the same kind of thing. Working off my own back on more self-directed projects would initially make me feel pretty uneasy and confused, which wouldn't start me off in a positive direction career wise. As well, I definitely want to try and avoid working alone. I don't bode well being isolated!

After graduating, the ideal situation for me would be to work full or part time in a creative agency or design house as an illustrator. I am desperate to gain some experience within the industry as opposed to taking up my postgraduate study plans straight away as I have realised that this will be a more suitable option in a few years time.

The option as to what kind of illustration I want to specialise in is still a bit of a mystery. My practice is really quite broad and I have a lot of different interests; the prospect of narrowing down my interests feels more restrictive to me at this point in time as I am still experimenting in different areas. For example, my interest in illustration to do with health and wellbeing is a hop, skip and a jump away from my pattern work. I know that it will become more evident as my extended practice develops as to where I will end up, but for now I feel most confident having a relatively fluid approach to what kind of briefs interest me and the skill set I have to complete them to a high standard.

In relation to 'Other', teaching has always been in the back of my mind as a potential career path. I have heavily stated in previous blog posts that I don't want to teach a-level art as a fresh graduate with no life experience, because I won't have fulfilled my creative ambitions if I go down that path too early on in life. Plus I think A-level art is complete bullshit anyway. Because I have more tendencies of an extrovert it is vital that I have some sort of human interaction within my career, as I've mentioned above that I will go crazy if I have no-one to talk to! As well, I have a huge interest in people and the psychology behind different types of behaviour, personality traits, decision making etc which has made me develop an interest in becoming an Art Therapist, although I have realised that I need a sufficient amount of life experience to be able to do this effectively.