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While researching blankness/silence/nothingness, I came across this blog entry by author, Thaisa Frank. It's entitled Speaking of Silence
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It offers advice for writers but can be adapted for artists. As I also write, I found it extremely helpful.

Thaisa explains that the unfamiliar is a good route to expanding your practice and suggests that silence, does not hinder an artist but can actually increase productivity, leading you to new material. Her insight has given me a new way of approaching the concepts that I fear.

"...even if you aren't that interested in readers, experiencing the world without language it's crucial to discovering your most original work"

This could also be related to the viewer of an art work. Language that does not need to be written, or visual language, can often express more. An audience will respond emotively to what they see or alternately, don't see. During my exhibition, I spoke with several viewers, some of whom expressed that my coffee table did not require a written statement. It was evident to these particular viewers what I, as an artist wanted to express. I created this piece through challenging my practice by experimenting with the unknown (sculpture/3D work/furniture design). I am hoping to take this on board with any future work. I feel that Thaisa's comment relates to my current research - my own fear of the unknown needs to be challenged!

No matter what anyone says, there's a part of writing that you can't talk or think about. You're either writing or not writing. And, if you are writing, it's either going well, not going well--or at some point in between.

I have adapted Thaisa's paragraph on silence:

When the art flows, you don't care that you don't know how to talk or think about it: You move easily between intuition and practical work, thought and imagination. Creativity expresses what it means. Images create a subtext. And when you step back from the work to view it, there's a kind of rightness to it. You feel like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat--no one, not even you --can see the hat's false lining.

It's when the art isn't going well that you want to get to the heart of what's not working. You mull over it. Or return to some past work. Attack it at different angles. Or try to remember other moments when you felt stuck, and created something that worked. Often you mimic old strategies--without results. Sometimes, no matter what you do, the art withers on the vine. And sometimes, without quite knowing why, it comes back to life. You may have theories about why these things happen: But since art making is partly an unconscious act, you will never unravel the mystery completely. This is why each new piece of work often feels like the first, no matter how much art you have created.

There are a variety of ways to coax creativity back into motion--all valid, and I may share some of my own ideas later. But often the only solution is to do nothing at all. In homage to this solution, I present a small paragraph of silence. It dedicated to the elusive Edward Tolliver, as well as all artists who reach a point in their work where the only solution is to create nothing. Most of us stare at the blank canvas: Few of us bother to read into them.

The Paragraph of Silence:

















I think this piece of writing is particularly helpful. At least, it has been for me.
Whenever I lapse back into the fear and panic of a new canvas I will come back to this paragragh. (I have decided that my fear may lie in the language "blank" so will refer to the blank canvas as "new". Whether or not this helps or just projects my feelings of panic from the word "blank" into the word "new" we shall see)...I also intend to look at a blank/new canvas (it's actually quite difficult to stick to "new"!) and try to create some work from it, not adding to the canvas but creating work inspired by it's concept.