Mesitso Manifesto #2

This past week has been the first time I’ve felt like I’ve reached a balance in how I’m approaching my practice full-time. I’m still making adjustments and will likely make many more over the coming weeks and months, but right now, things feel less chaotic. It helps that I feel settled after being made redundant, and can move forward with my life to focus on a full-time art career. Even if that may be temporary.

In my experience as a designer, you tend to move quickly. Most of my career so far has been spent working in-house. Deadlines are flying around everywhere, with new projects constantly being added, each with the same level of priority. You really just have to push out work continuously under a lot of stress and pressure. You don’t get as much time to craft and refine your designs; everything just has to be ‘good enough’ and tick a box.

Slowing down and being present was my main lesson this week. I realised that my life has felt like a constant race against time. The way I worked as a designer influenced how I socialise, handle tasks, manage my life and how I fit my art practice around my design job.

Naturally, I approached a full-time practice with the same mindset and framework I inherited from being a designer. I was doing the exact same thing I did in my day job, but in an art studio. Putting immense pressure on myself to churn out artwork and focusing on the end result to meet submission deadlines.

Some days, I would wake up wondering if this would be my life as an artist. But it didn’t have to be, because I was applying a process that didn’t fit with how I work as an artist. This approach had also been affecting the quality of my work. I felt disconnected from it, and extremely apathetic. Each day I came home from the studio feeling drained in the same way I would when I worked as a designer.

I have set specific working times to be in my studio, but I always found myself clock-watching. Time moved so slowly, and I slogged away on artwork, wanting it so badly to be completed. I wasn’t enjoying the creative process at all.

A few days ago, I had to take a moment in the studio to just stop. I needed to remember why I create in the first place, not from a career perspective, but from a holistic one. As a child, I didn’t create drawings or art with any thought of meeting a deadline. I did it because I liked how it made me feel, how it let me express myself, and I took as long as I wanted to complete it. We can talk about child prodigies with more successful careers than mine another time.

Once I took stock, I realised I’m allowed to spend time on whatever I want without an axe swinging over my head. There’s no finish line that requires me to complete a certain number of artworks by a specific time. The work will be finished when it’s finished. Nothing bad is going to happen. I'm safe in my creativity.

Though this doesn't mean I don't need to be organised. Submission deadlines and exhibition dates exist, which is why I work months or weeks in advance for different projects.

The last couple of days working in slow-mo has really helped me be present and mindful with what I’m doing, not to mention allowing me to be more patient with myself and the process. I’ve stopped the clock watching, and time is scarily moving a lot quicker, which is another fear I’m going to have to deal with at some point.