Art school wasn’t for me. I tried for a while, back in 2008, but it wasn’t what I expected. I had hoped for guidance and stimulation, but instead felt very much steered into a particular, limiting style & direction; I had to do things a certain way and that was something I wasn’t comfortable with. To me, art isn’t about rules or methods. To me, art is about individuality, breaking out of shells and “supposed-to-be”‘s, it’s about finding your own way. So I quit, and to this day I have not once regretted it.

One thing I did take away from my short time at art school, and have come to see the value of, is the use of a Dummy. A Dummy is an artist’s notebook collecting – in my case, anyway – ideas, sketches, storyboards, projects, progress and motivational words. I think I need that, a compact real-life item to collect all that is in my head, and make sense of what I still have to give.

So today I picked up a brand spankin’ new Moleskine (my first plain edition) and hope it will help me find my own way again.