Being an Artist and How University Could Be Improved

I think the most soul-crushing thing as an artist, is when you work hard on a project and you get nothing back and bad grades. At university you get a brief, I look at that brief and see how my vision can fit into it, I was overjoyed at the prospect of creating something for a project entitled “Narrative”, for me this is something I excel at and have done before.

I enjoy creating stories and constructing images and I have done my whole life, I have been writing stories since I was six and taking photographs, seriously, since I was fourteen, I saw this project as a chance for me to incorporate everything I am good at and everything that inspires me into a piece of work I could be proud of, and that’s what I have done.

I was and still am incredibly proud and passionate about this project, and the fact I got it all done and to the standard I wanted in the midst of personal turmoil and life in general make’s me even more proud. But I guess all my hard work, the time I spent on it, and the research I put into this project, which included analyzing TV shows, films, and music videos, as well as hours of research and listening to various pieces of instrumental music, painstakingly trying to pick the right one to create the right atmosphere, doesn’t matter to my tutors, because judging by my grade, they just didn’t get it.  

I do understand that some people don’t get my work and I don’t know if that’s because I have embraced my “geeky side” and am inspired by so many thing’s including Fandom, Fashion, Poetry, and Stories or my work just doesn’t appeal to a wide audience, which is fine by me, I make work for myself I don’t make it to please others. I make work to let my creativity out and I’m happy with that.

I do think that university projects or briefs should be more accommodating and general, if a brief said “explore the idea of color within a photographic context” you could fit that into any area of photography you were interested in be it fashion, art, food landscape ect. And I feel that would work better, that would make every student excel and push themselves and produce work they could use in their portfolios, instead of them having to go off in their own time to do it, university is about learning but it is also about crafting what you want out of life and your career and I don’t think enough places allow the student to be as free, open and creative as they could be.