Bridging divides: my formative experiences

A significant aspect of this research project involved understanding what my interview participants wanted to share with me about their work and how it informed their approach to their art and the business world. Based on my previous experience as a

professional journalist, my goal going into each interview was to be a facilitator who encouraged self-reflection. This goal was based on my belief that people’s ideas and behaviours are strongly linked to their backgrounds, which, in turn, powerfully shape their identities.

Using one of my own memories as an example, I had a very close relationship with my grandfather when I was a child. At that time in my life he was newly retired, bored, and often sought out little adventures for the two of us. This included taking me to galleries.

Reflection Audience Innovation Netwrok Business Opportunities Weaknesses

While we were there, my grandfather would tell me stories about various artists’ work, though sometimes I was not very interested in learning about them.

When I reflect back, I can appreciate how formative these experiences were; they have deeply impacted my professional development and my career trajectory. Truly, they are at the core of my enduring interest in learning about artists’ lives and their work. Appreciating the role that these seminal experiences came to play in my life also informed my understanding that self-identity is a bridge that connects our past and future selves.

Artists’ reflections

During my in-depth interview with Lucy Sparrow – the creator of The Corner Shop – it was apparent that she had clear expectations of herself as an artist and the support she required from her backers prior to launching her campaign. In her words,

since I was tiny, like three or four years old, I was always making stuff, and I knew that from that age, I wanted to be an artist…You’re on this path of… I didn’t go to university I think that some art can’t be taught. They tried to encourage me to make things that I didn’t want to make…They tried to make me like everyone else, and I didn’t understand why.They sort of took creativity and made me hate it. And it took me quite a while to get back on track and want to do it again… And I think if you’re that young, and you know what you want to do, there’s no stopping you, really. When I pressed Sparrow for more detail, she remembered that she was four years old the first time she attempted to sew and that it came naturally. ‘I remember doing it for the first time… I made a felt star to hang on the Christmas tree and my mum has still got it’.

Peter Driver shared a similar narrative when I asked him to reflect on his childhood, explaining

I used to draw birds as a fairly young boy. I found that I was quite good at it. When you find you’re good at something, you like to pursue it, so I did that. I did quite a lot of drawing, painting – mostly figurative landscape and nature… We lived up in Cambridge shire, so trips to London were pretty rare, but when we came down, we would go to museums and galleries….

From my in-depth interview with Sophie Giblin, I learned that her artistic career could also be traced back to her formative childhood experiences. Giblin recalled her childhood with her mum, saying

my mum is very outgoing, but she speaks a lot about her trauma… I think about everything she’s gone through, you know, she had a very strange way to bring me up... When I was younger, I was quite noisy and playful… She would give me a pen or pencil and paper and say, “Just draw. No more speaking. Just draw.” So drawing became a type of discipline but also became the thing I loved doing… She is the reason I do everything creative. Pretty much every project that I have done is about her, and her relationship with her mother, and the death of her mother and how she brought me up… My dad is very supportive of my art… He is involved in my art very much on the commercial side, but he would also say things like, “It is very nice – you drawing – but how can you make money from it?” He was always talking to me, even at a young age, about the importance of money. He cares too much about money.

Katrin Albrecht’s mother also played a significant role in her art career, but as a negative force. In Albrecht’s words, ‘she never wanted me to become an artist but she took me to all the exhibitions… she introduced me to art but then she didn’t want me to become an artist’. I asked Albrecht to repeat her mother’s words to me that she had stored in her memory. She closed her eyes and said

You will never earn enough money and you will have to marry a dentist… I mean… my mother has an image of me, but it’s not me, so I have to tell my mom “this is my life and I have to do what is right for me, not what is right for you”.

It is not uncommon for artists’ close friends and family members to be concerned about their financial well-being. Yet, in Albrecht’s case, her mother’s concern did not impact her decision to pursue her passion. Perhaps this is because she is strong-willed and

independent, above and beyond loving what she does. It may also be because Albrecht’s father assumed a more neutral position on her art and career choices. Though he was ‘not encouraging’, he also did not hold her back.

Dianne Bowell also spoke about how her relationship with her parents influenced her artwork. ‘When we start to be interested in art, we always seek our parents’ approval, don’t we? So I probably made things that my mum was going to go, “oh, that’s nice.” And I did so repeatedly so that she would continue to support me’.

Peter Driver shared the following about his formative experiences:

my relationship with my father wasn’t ever very strong. He was a very quiet and reserved man, and I was a very quiet and reserved boy… At art school I remember gravitating towards sculpture, because my dad was a carpenter and he worked with his hands, and he made things. I felt like making stuff, constructing things out of wood but from an artistic perspective might somehow be more in line with what my dad would appreciate or value. Like a lot of children, I always wanted my dad’s approval, which was quite hard to get. I started painting again after my father died… One of the things that, I guess, as part of the response to that grief, I took up the two things that I was doing when I was a child, which was birdwatching and art. I took them both on as activities and went for them thoroughly.

My interview with Emily Brown presented a different relationship dynamic. Rather than having a formative relationship with a parent who inspired her artwork, her dad was

liberal and would say stupid stuff that would annoy me… He is sort of supportive but… I don’t know how to describe it… He is an attention seeker… My mum is very positive about it (my art), but she always questions my views and tries to get to the bottom of why I think this way and that… She is always interested in my ideas. So our conversations are very rewarding… I think that influenced me quite a lot while I was growing up, and she’s always been really interested in my art. She’s actually quite creative as well but she’s never really put the time into it. She is always focused on doing other stuff, like having kids.

Even though Mike Spence did not attend art school or earn good grades in university, his parents encouraged him to become a graphic designer so that he could teach

undergraduate students how to make video games. During our interview, Spence told me about his parents.

My parents are from a working-class background. My mother worked in retail and my dad worked as a carpenter… My mum would sing all the time, and my dad could make anything out of wood. He is quite a creative man. I learned quite a lot from both of them – from their attitudes and their approach to work. I suppose they did influence me in that sense. Maybe even from a socio-economic standpoint as well,

insofar as how I grew up and that I was allowed a kind of freedom, I suppose, to be able to be creative and to try ideas out…

During my interview with Diane Bowell, she shared the following about her relationship with her parents:

my mum is incredibly supportive, but also, she is quite a negative person… I don’t show her most of what I do because she’s like “that’s not a pretty flower, I don’t like it” or “Why do you keep doing people’s faces?” I don’t really talk to her much about my practice, unless it’s something big, or something that I think she’d be like, “oh that’s really good”, then I’ll sort of show her. She is always asking me, “When are you going to get a proper job?”

On the struggle to balance being an artist with earning a living wage, Albrecht shared:

my dream was always to make a living with my art and to have a sort of career that makes me slightly famous… not famous, but I wanted people to give me enough exhibitions to keep on working and earning money. That was my dream, and then it becomes smaller and smaller from there.

Following her successful Kickstarter campaign, Albrecht attempted to continue working on art full-time but was unsuccessful. Her frustration is evident from her choice of words

I really, really tried to sell my bricks and even went to local markets to sell them. I told people “you can use it as a door stopper or a book stand” and so on… I really tried everything to make people treat it as art… but nobody bought it … I think maybe it is because they are composed of the clothes somebody else wore, or people do not know what to do with them.

Through my interviews I came to appreciate just how many artists struggle to earn living wages, even when they have had successful exhibitions and campaigns. For example, before Sparrow’s two successful Kickstarter campaigns, she also struggled to find the time and resources to sew.

I was working a full-time job and doing art in the evenings, on weekends, and any time that I could spare. There was certainly no money being saved or anything like

seems to be the only way. Hopefully, by the end of this, I will have raised enough to actually pay myself… I think when you’re self-employed, when you’re starting out, it’s so rare that you get a wage as well. You need to do two jobs, three jobs just to sort of keep the household running.

Echoing this sentiment, Bowell said

I need to prove that it’s going to work... I’ve given myself a deadline, which is in about a years’ time from now. If I can support myself, it’s great. If I can’t, I’ll think of getting another part-time job, and, at the moment, she [my mum’s] good with it… I usually do all my parceling up at home, and she can see that stuff is getting shipped out. She can see the movement in the art.

Brown’s experience was similar in this regard,

I work and earn money for myself, so I am quite driven and independent… I have never been like “Oh, I just want to be a full-time artist, and float around and dream… I always do part-time work, or work for someone else. I am quite practical. I’ve just been glad to be that way, like always. It is like you can have dreams but also have a plan – how are we going to survive and not end up living on the street?

Indeed, through my interviews, I found that most artists have had to work two jobs to support their art, or they would have to give up on being an artist altogether. Sparrow is a case in point.

When you’re an artist you have this – slightly delusional – way of thinking, of wanting to do everything, but at the same time having these moments of crippling self-doubt. It wasn’t until two years ago that I gave up working so that I could go full-time as an artist. Before then it was a case of juggling the two worlds. I think a lot of people believe they can go straight into working full-time as an artist, but realistically you have to juggle the two for a while and work your ass off! Bowell echoed these sentiments:

of all the people that graduate from a BA in Fine Arts, there’s a very, very, very tiny percentage of people who can continue to do it for ten years or so... There were thirty-five people who graduated at the same time as me in Fine Arts, but there are three of us still doing it.

Moore shared a similar experience, claiming

lots of artists end up working in coffee shops to support their art… I did that too… I worked at bars and built up my clients gradually... It took me ten years to get to the stage where I don’t need to do irrelevant work to support my art career.

At the same time as these interview excerpts highlight the challenges of establishing an art career, they also demonstrate the determination and drive that many artists have to see it through and make a career in the art world. This is aptly characterized by Menger (1999) as ‘shadow pricing’, meaning artists are willing to take on lower-income work because they feel self-actualised through their artwork and are fulfilled by their artistic community. This explains why Sparrow was willing to take on two jobs and complete her art on the side and why Moore devoted eight years to working in cafes and bars to develop her art career. Truly, these artists valued their creative work more than financial stability.