"Chaos for me breeds images." - Francis Bacon

My nest

This morning I did some reflecting.  During my critiques it was suggested more than once to introduce more ambiguity in my work, be more suggestive and make the viewer work more. And by incorporating this I need to find a voice that will present the themes I explore but, I suppose, not so in-your-face. Not so literally. I completely appreciated this cog in my wheel. Before the residency I was, and have always felt I needed to 'toe the line', I thought I needed to push that limit to be heard. I thought I didn't know any other way, the emergency I've felt and the 'need' to operate at extremes was my niche, the way I was presented to the world and the answer I gave to the world. My work was loud in undergrad, I was mad at the world and I had to express it. Then upon graduating, and joining the army, September 11, 2001 occurred. From that point on, the extremes have been even more polarized, as my husband and friends have been deployed multiple times in a seemingly unending war. Meanwhile the times at home have been as contentious as times deployed. We have not been able to catch our breath.  And this has been reality for me as I grow and raise a family, and live through my twenties, thirties.
My work as an undergrad, or work at all, seemed naive in those early years when I was in the Army. I couldn't find it, couldn't grab onto something tangible that made sense, and maybe I wasn't ready to search it out. Then the opportunity of tattoo came along and I threw myself at it. That was an art to me that was as aggressive and courageous as the soldiers around me. Someone told me once it took 'balls to tattoo'. That art made sense then. Also, the ability to do memorial tattoos on soldiers, and how the history of tattoo coincides so with military life all helped me find was my station in the life I lived.  However, I was really just building an armor. As well as linking my artistic validity to mastering a craft, that I hid behind.
I knew going into an MFA would be an arduous task for me, but not just because I'm attempting to bridge my work as a tattooer with a finer art discipline, but also because this armor I have built needs to be investigated.  The experience of the first residency shed light on my own folly.  I came with my guards in place, not consciously but only because they have been there for so long.  My assumed resiliency was stripped away to reveal my contradictions.  I am not, in fact, 'tougher than the world', (in reference to the 'suck it up' mentality of military life), the current state of [everything] does piss me off and I do feel that, and it does break my heart.  I felt as if my tattoos had suddenly fallen off and I was there naked, with no assigned prescription to shield my exposure. And I am grateful for that.
Of course now, back in 'my nest' I can digest everything. And I still feel an urgency, but also aware of redirecting my approach in a way that may be heard more so than my work so far.  I was re-listening to Stuart Steck's lecture this morning for critical theory, discussing Baudelaire's 'Painter of Modern Life' , how the job of the modern painter is to paint life.  And I wonder if Manet racked his brain to figure out a way to paint that was so oppositional to academy painting as to express the changing world around him (or for that matter how any artist from Modernity on figured it out).
Stuart nailed it with the statement:
            "Don't worry about these concerns that have preoccupied art, put those away, and go find the concerns that should be important to us today, and find the adequate means of representing those concerns."
So now I have to find my way, my voice, to represent the world as I know it. I believe this semester will be mostly my search for this, and I am sure (and ok with) the many failures that will ensue, as long as I know it will get me closer to some realization, and the ability to address the truth, without armor.