Throughout my degree, multiple tutors, fellow students, graduates and visiting artists have repeatedly told me that my final year would be the most vital and pivotal year of my artistic practice, not just in terms of it determining my grade and potentially influencing my future prospects, but in terms of defining myself as an artist, finding my artistic identity and discovering the driving force behind my practice.
Of course, I could in no way comprehend the extent to which this was true until now. With two months to go until my degree show, I am finally beginning to grasp how important this year has been to the development of myself as an artist, how enormously my work would change and evolve, and how I would find myself approaching my final exhibition with an equal level of apprehension and excitement. In the last six months, my painting has developed into a succinct, comprehensive body of work with a distinct visual identity. Along with my painting practice, I have also found a new love of and reliance on drawing as an essential part of my practice and contribution to my body of work, as well as collage, print making and sketching, which has culminated in my view of my practice as one continuing body – no pun intended.
With an impending deadline and a to-do list as long as my arm, the concept of completing my degree after nearly 3 years of hard work has really made me reflect on how the presence of a deadline or set parameters of a task impact productivity. In this post, I want to discuss how I have coped with university deadlines, how I tackle looming procrastination, why deadlines can be an excellent motivator and how I’m feeling about graduation! (Do note, I am fully aware of the irony of writing about procrastination when I have multiple module components to complete currently – eek!)
So, deadlines. Unfortunately, they do not exist exclusively within the education system, and particularly for independent artists, can be even more difficult to manage without the support and guidance of tutors, fellow classmates, timetabling etc. Once I graduate and venture into the big wide world once again, I will be solely responsible for keeping to deadlines, whether they are self-prescribed, open call applications, exhibition organisation, completing a body of work, keeping to a commission date, and so and so forth. Because of this, I have tried to treat university as a test run, an attempt to train myself to pre-empt deadlines and minimise procrastination. In the first two semesters of university, this was relatively easy, as the main component of assessment was based around a portfolio of work, this meant that as long as I was making work, documenting process and reflecting on my practice, my portfolio was being completed as I went along. In the 2ndand 3rdyear, the work load increased and a variety of different modules meant a variety of different assignments and concurrent deadlines. My approach to tackling a the seemingly endless task list, is simply to start. By making some sort of progress on each task as soon as it is assigned, I find that rather than a daunting mountain of huge problems, I simply have an already begun task that I just need to finish. Particularly when it came to writing my dissertation, I found that by habitually writing something – ANYTHING – regularly, or just reading a relevant chapter of a book and taking some notes, I slowly chipped away at the word count during my summer holiday and the penultimate semester, leaving me only editing and rearranging to tackle in the last few months before the deadline.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a super human who has never felt anxious or overwhelmed by a task, I am a mere mortal, who after years of running around like a headless chicken at the last minute, has finally disciplined herself to use all the possible time given to complete a task, wisely. Procrastination is still, however, so difficult to avoid. Especially in contemporary society, where there is an overwhelming surplus of content available at our fingertips to distract us at every moment of the day. Pile on top of that the pressure to have a social life, work out, have a side hustle or part time job, get enough sleep, do the food shop, drink water, be present on social media and keep up to date with current affairs, often, annotating a sketchbook or starting a presentation can feel like the least important, and certainly the least appealing task. As I discussed in my ‘Down-time, self-motivation and time management’ post, you just have to be realistic and make a plan: There is no point banning yourself from watching Game of Thrones if all you’re going to do when the new series airs is trawl through other people’s live tweeted reactions, but what you can do is allow yourself an hour or two ‘off’ in the evening to indulge in the white walker apocalypse as a reward for two hours of painting or reading or note taking or planning. I use this approach as a motivator and also a way to not feel like I have ‘wasted’ a day or an hour just lazing around on scrolling through Instagram. I find that by setting realistic goals for the day or week that chip away at assignments or task I have, while also scheduling time for myself, makes me far more productive than if I try to cram in too much and end up burnt out and exhausted!
This approach works for me, but just as I have explained in previous posts, you’ve got to find what works for you and remember your motivations. You’re never going to get accepted for that dream exhibition or scholarship if you aren’t motivated and organised enough to apply!
Now, the crux of this post it deadlines, how we approach them and what they can do for our productivity. As paraphrased in this posts title, one of tutors – the brilliant Dr Jane Watt – often refers to the last month or weeks before a deadline as the time to find sixth gear. Effectively, she means by this that regardless of whether you have been working consistently for that last six months or are in a frantic panic feeling like you haven’t done enough, the final stretch before a deadline – in my case, my degree show – is the perfect time to step it up a gear, rather than resting on your laurels if you have already done a lot or spiralling into regret and panic if you could have started sooner, you just have to hit the accelerator and make every last mile – stay with me on the analogy – count. Because ultimately, your destination is important, and slowing down or stalling could mean you only make it to the service station, not the first-class degree, dream job, solo exhibition or commission you were aiming for.
There, I think I got all the car journey metaphors out of my system.
So, with many impending deadlines and the pressure of finality looming, yes, I am anxious, yes, I am apprehensive, yes, I really want to watch all the new Netflix documentaries, yes, I have a lot of work to do, but, I know that all I need to do is get my head down, shift into sixth gear and keep working, making and creating. I can’t wait to share what happens next with you.