”from the sketchbook”

All photos that I used as a screensaver on my mobile phone are authored and made within the last twelve months. Due to the circumstances I use what is available to me, everything from my phone, my video camera and my computer (Photo Booth). By exploring and playing with the image, looking for different perspectives and visual possibilities or in order to achieve specific visuals I used crystal, mirrors and different light sources. I also included special effects provided by the app on my phone or by Photo Booth. Most of all these photographs are a result of my constant need to be creative on one hand and my lack of time and resources on the other.

I want to be creative and I want to be an artist, but after I started on an additional career in nursing this has lead me to a conflict of my interests and has pushed me into a state of limited creativity, where I found it difficult to express myself. There were moments were I didn’t even doodle.

I always thought of myself as an artist, this was a very solid image in my mind, actually much more than just an image, it was a solid ground on which I built my identity, my persona, my ”self”, so when I decided for an additional career, I knew that becoming a nurse will not only be an additional role but will also enhance my image, it will add something. What I didn’t know is that I actually declared war with myself in that particular moment.

My best defence according to Pam Grout and her book E square is to seek and find sings of luck or talismans in my everyday life or as I define them ”proof”. A lucky four leaf clover is one of those signs, which I often seem to find. The moment a clock shows a certain time, for example 23:23, I also consider a lucky charm, which I document in a form of a screenshot just like I always pluck a four leaf clover and I save it in a form of herbarium. I believe that with this process I can capture a piece of luck found in one specific moment and by doing so, by repeating the process, I am starting to grow a collection, an opus. There are many manifestations and many embodiments of this basic form or moment, which I see as proof and this creative process and belief behind it brings it all together. This process which proved essential to me, is apparently not just a hypothesis, since the lack of it lead me to a mild depression.

Screenshots made with this idea in mind are part of my collection entitled ”from the sketchbook”. I’ve chosen the name to add a dimension of time to my work, which on one hand imprisons me and on the other hand allows me to seize the moment and use it for expressing myself.