Episode 31: Privacy, Artistic Ethics & Trusting Your Style

A quick note before we start: I accidentally recorded this week’s episode without my usual microphone, so the sound is slightly more echoey than normal. Everything is clear, though, and I decided it was better to share the episode than record the whole thing again!In this episode of The Creative Couch, I respond to three thoughtful creative dilemmas from Hope, Kathy and Gina, exploring privacy and openness online, the ethics of using other people’s images as artistic reference, and whether improving your technical skills can sometimes interfere with the very qualities that make your work your own.Hope has been making work inspired by landmarks in the village where she lives and running community workshops locally, but she has been reluctant to share much of this online because she worries about giving away too much information about where she lives. She knows this caution may now be holding her back from making local connections and sharing her work more authentically. We talk about the difference between choosing privacy and allowing fear to make those decisions for you, and how an ‘openness audit’ might help her work out what she genuinely feels comfortable sharing.Kathy is a tapestry designer and weaver who has used the Sktchy app for many years as a source of photographs to draw and paint from. One particular photograph inspired a large tapestry that became deeply connected to the time of her parents’ deaths. She would now like to exhibit it, but the original image is still recognisable and she has been unable to contact the person who uploaded the photograph. We explore permission, acknowledgement and artistic reference, and whether being transparent about where a piece began can allow her to exhibit it without feeling she has ignored the contribution of the original image.Finally, Gina is self taught and wonders whether her lack of formal training is actually part of what gives her work its particular character. She would like to understand perspective and colour better, but worries that learning the ‘correct’ way to do things might interfere with the slightly unconventional way she currently works. She is also questioning whether making bright, idyllic work feels frivolous when there is so much difficulty in the world. We talk about learning selectively, trusting the visual language you already have and whether choosing to notice beauty means ignoring everything else.My Loving Lately this week is The Land and Its People, the new book by David Sedaris. I’ve loved his writing for years, particularly the way he finds humour and absurdity in ordinary life while still allowing something much more poignant to sit underneath it.I also mention two upcoming workshops here at my new studio. There are currently two spaces available on my Multi-block Linocut Workshop on 10 and 11 October, and one space available on my one-day Etching Workshop on Saturday 24 October. All the details and booking information are on my website.If you have a creative dilemma you’d like me to explore on the podcast, you can send it to [email protected].