If you walked into my house, you’d understand quite quickly what kind of artist I am.
The first thing you see is a huge naked breast on the wall.
Then fairy lights spiralling up the staircase. You walk up and find a big wooden open plan room with a huge woodern table with all my work on it. There are canvases leaning against the walls, photographs of my travels on boards, speakers and brightly coloured things i’ve picked up over the years. There’s a big image of a vagina on the wall – it’s just my humour, along with Cy Twombly posters of his beautiful red painted walls.
On the shelves there are books like Beware of the Female Artist, The Topless Cellist, Keanu Reeves is not in love with you, things that amuse me, along with poetry, philosophy, big beautiful art books, music biographies.
My point is art is my life. It’s everywhere. It’s not neat or polite and I don’t need permission to surround myself with it.
The real task of the emerging artist is finding your voice and not being afraid to express it, through your surroundings, through your clothing, through the decisions you make. I don’t care if people like it or not. I am allowed to be myself and to express myself however I see fit.
For me, art is not decoration.
It’s a way of living.
And I encourage you to start to live with that openness to what tickles you, to what centres you, to what grounds you, to what sets you free.
What can you do today to step into that freedom?
Image: a photo i took at Yoko Ono’s exhibition at Tate Modern.
