So busy with the holidays, and now just settling back in and work will start again on Monday. Arghh.

Am thinking once again about doing a year of art school. As a non-degreed artist, I have the urge towards the pressure-cooker of the academic learning environment and seeing lots of visual ideas from other artists. It could be really fun and a useful thing. I would be looking to push my art and to paint better. Yet, the whole lingoistic, conceptual yada yada of how art is talked about and taught (or so I hear) leaves me cold; I don't want to talk like that or think like that. I want to hold to painting and drawing as deep disciplines in themselves. No emperor's new clothes for me.

Given that, here is an interesting thought from an article I am reading: http://hyperallergic.com/172190/penny-arcade-on-the-professionalization-of-performance-art/

PA: a lot of stuff in the galleries falls into two or three elements. This is not the most experimental period I’ve ever lived in, where there’s a lot of innovation going on. There’s a lot of technological use and a lot of emperor’s new clothes stuff going on in the art world....

But the market has invaded so deeply that people are afraid to follow their own hearts. They’re very conscious of what the market will bear or what trends are “in.” You hear it in the way people talk, using buzzwords — “gender” and “social practice.” It’s kind of funny.