This is a good time to emulate another maker’s method/style/palette etc. in order to learn something new or discover a new direction for your creative endeavours or… this could be about literally learning some words or phrases in another language and apply that to your creative project.
Still confused about what you’re doing here? Read this…
YOUR turn to DRAW!
- Examine a favourite maker’s method/style/palette etc. – and try to emulate it in a project of your own. For example, I completed 365 Love Notes to Self, a year-long project in 2017-2018, and for one part of this series, I tried to do just that by drawing or painting a representation of myself in that artist’s style or colour palette.
365 Love Notes to Self, Day 106 (a. Susan Hiller ‘Painting block’), oil on canvas, cut and stacked.
365 Love Notes to Self, day 112 (a. Bob Dylan, ‘Self-portrait’ album cover), oil on canvas.
365 Love Notes to Self, day 134 (a. Francis Bacon), ink and pencil.
365 Love Notes to Self, day 129 (a. Paul Gaugin with a snake and a halo), ink.
365 Love Notes to Self, day 148 (a. Kara Walker silhouettes). - Maybe you could team up with an “Other”, someone from another culture, background, or way of working and collaborate on a project together, similar to Connect:Katowice, in which a group of British artists got together with Polish artists over a year-long engagement to develop artworks and a number of exhibitions and residencies. The collective aim was to demonstrate the benefits of intercultural communication “[through] investigating the subjects which address different layers of society, such as: Polish-British migration during the WWII and how it influenced those involved in the migration and their further generations or in other cases, studying each other’s lands, their hidden traces, and folklore. However, the main theme which can be highlighted is Identity and Communication.”
Click to view Connect:Katowice project catalogue. - Another idea is to literally learn some words in another language and apply that to your art. Here, I have tried to emulate a simple Arabic calligraphy style in which the characters spell and depict an image simultaneously. So if you turn this image 90* clockwise, it spells my name in simple Arabic script.
Maybe this Ransom Note gives you a different idea? Let me know!
ShaRe the LovE
You’ve come this far, now why not
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Not only does your creativity need YOU, but here’s a surprise, the world needs your creativity, too! By sharing your response to a Ransom Note, we are building a community who will enjoy, be inspired by, and learn from each other. Who knows, maybe some of us will “find our tribe” or even make the world that tiny bit more pleasant to be in than it was 15 minutes ago!
some artists who LEARN an OTHER’S language…
- Mosab Abu Toha is a poet, English teacher, and founder/director of the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza City. Abu Toha writes in English, having chosen his second language as the primary means to disseminate his writings more effectively to a wider audience. Recently, a compilation of his writings and poems were published in London as part of a collaborative artwork, “I was a thing” with British-American artist Kelise Franclemont and exhibited in the Passion for Freedom Festival 2018.
- Of course, it’s easy to find singers/actors who their very job is to be other people, and for some, they even do that in their second (or third) language, such as Jennifer Lopez, Selma Hayek, and Rami Malek, not to mention the influence of hip-hop on contemporary art and culture (Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, anyone?)
What other artists or techniques can you think of? Let me know!
Beware of Artists 