Mestiso Manifesto #10

This is going to be an emotional post, so if you’re not up for thoughts and feelings, I understand. Feel free to wait for a future art update post in the coming weeks. For those of you brave enough to venture further, I’m locking the door behind you — there’s no escape.

If you’ve been following along with my Instagram, I posted in February about the burnout and overwhelm I’d been experiencing. I mentioned that I was taking a break from art until I could put myself back together and that I would focus on other things, including my education and a new job. It’s been two months since, and at the time, I didn’t think I’d be ready to pick up the paintbrush again until around mid-year.

I haven’t created anything new other than two one-off cat-themed paintings for a group show, which was an extreme struggle for me to get involved in. I wanted to withdraw my participation multiple times, and I limited my engagement with everyone involved. I had no desire to attend the opening night, nor did I have the social battery to deal with people. It took a lot of energy for me to be there, and I crashed hard the day after from the emotional and mental drain it took to appear normal and professional.

The last group show I’ve been in (as well as the ones coming soon) feature work I had left over from my solo show — mostly because the drive to create hasn’t been present, and any attempt to produce anything was met with feelings of revulsion.
After my solo, I didn’t give myself much of an opportunity to unwind, reflect, and evaluate after the months of blood, sweat and tears I had put into the work and planning. Instead, I thought that I needed to keep the momentum going, as I was measuring myself against a ticking clock of limited full-time hours. This led to an additional four group shows, all of which I created new works for within a short turnaround, as they were all back-to-back.

In the seven months since my redundancy and the five months where I was in between jobs, I’ve had one solo exhibition and eight group shows — only one of which featured a single piece that was left over from my solo. That’s a lot of work in a short space of time.

This is only one piece of the puzzle, though. In addition to the art exhaustion, which I would normally be able to handle on its own, my mental health had deteriorated. There was a lot of stress around my financial situation and the climbing debt of not having an income. There were many times where I thought I would lose my art studio, my apartment, and possibly face homelessness. Additionally, there was the situation around being made redundant and its impact on my perceptions of myself and my career as a designer.

I had a lot of anger, resentment, confusion, stress, and worry that I was trying to manage, and it manifested in several different ways — a lot of which I’m not proud of, especially when it came to interactions with other people in my life, some of whom I love and respect dearly, and those I don’t. Rather than dealing with and processing those experiences in a healthier way, I used my art practice to bury most of it, until I basically broke. I don’t talk very often about my mental health conditions, but most of them are triggered by high levels of stress, and the amount of stress I was experiencing throughout that period brought out the full collection of them. I had no security or stability in my life, and it turned my entire existence on its head.

I’m not going to go into detail on what I was experiencing and how it manifested, but there have been only a couple of times in my life where I’ve experienced a complete breakdown, and I’m pretty sure this was one of the worst I’ve had — with my superpower of catastrophising reaching its peak.

So, after all that’s happened, where am I now? I’m happy to say I’m in a better place. I once again have financial security and stability after being in a new full-time design job for the past two months. This really brought down a lot of the intensity I was experiencing and allowed me to tackle things more rationally rather than reactionary. I kept my studio, my apartment, and I’ve financially recovered a lot quicker than I anticipated. While the job isn’t anything to write home about, it allows me to use all my creative energy (which I’m still building up) for my art practice.

Art-wise, I’m preparing to get back into the swing of things. I’m still not 100% there, but I’ve rebuilt myself enough to start thinking about creating again. The ideas are starting to flow back in, and the impulse for making has returned. The thought of being in my studio no longer repulses me either. I think to begin with, I’m going to go in just to tidy up the space, spend some time reorganising it, restocking and ordering materials, and making it a more inviting environment — especially since I’ve been thinking about inviting people in more regularly.

I have no desire to be involved in shows where I must create new work, so anything I’ve recently been involved in and will be involved in over the coming months is made up of work I created for previous shows. That’s not to say I won’t be creating new work — it’s just that I won’t be creating to the deadline of a show. I’m still finding my feet.

As to the specific point of when I’ll start making again, I can’t say for certain — it’s baby steps for me right now. More than anything, I’m just thinking, absorbing, and ideating. I’m reading a lot of books, looking at a lot of art, writing down and sketching my ideas, and just planning a few things out.

This whole experience, as traumatic as it was, felt like a change that needed to happen. It has allowed me to become stronger, smarter, more aware and intentional. On some level, I think part of me had to be left behind to make room for someone and something new. How that looks, I don’t know.