How Covid 19 is changing my life.

I’m sure Covid has given thousands of people in all walks of life, in all job sectors time to think about what they really want in life, what is important to themselves and their families, time to pause, take stock and realise they perhaps aren’t living their ‘Best Life’. We have ALL had the most horrendous 18 months of our lives and been affected by this pandemic in one way or another or perhaps even several ways. We may have had our eyes opened to the job that has never satisfied, the partner you no longer connect to, the home you never liked, to the life you feel very dissatisfied with and while the pandemic rages around us we find in the quiet of lockdown that we can do something about it, right now while the world battles this horrible disease.

If you have read back into my blog you will know that i have been a carer for a very long time. That i have been the dutiful eldest daughter and looked after my mum from the time my dad died, through her diagnosis of Multiple Myaloma Cancer and ultimately her death. When my mum passed away quietly holding my hand i felt, grief yes but also relief. Relief that finally i was going to get my life back, relief that my husband and family would finally be a ‘normal’ family and the relief that finally i could be who i wanted to be, not who i had become.

Four months is all i got then Covid struck us all. Then i became a struggling artist just like so many others. Our ‘amazing’ government did step up to save our economy, they gave millions of pounds to the big corporations to ‘keep them going’, PPE contracts to their best buddies and family members, they helped businesses furlough staff and financed small businesses but they did nothing for artists! I fell through the cracks, literally, i don’t pay tax as i don’t earn enough so don’t qualify for any help as im not a real business. My husband is self employed but pays no tax as he is quite early in his career as a writer, so no help there. We have been living on Social Security benefits which is basically hand to mouth poverty.

Yes i have a car, its a disability car as i have Fibromyalgia, yes we own our own home with a small mortgage but we haven’t been able to pay our mortgage for months, all this on top of GRIEF, well damn something’s got to give………. Try creating Art when you have energy companies, credit card companies, mortgage companies etc literally knocking at the door, IT JUST DOESN’T WORK.

At first i tried going down the learn it all route and as a member of the Visual Artists Society i have learnt a lot but nothing is helping my creativity. I’ve tried creating with Polaroid film, got a few images out of it, ran out of film, have no money to buy more, that stopped. Tried to be enthusiastic about photographing my local landscapes, been there done that so many times, i’ve approached other photographers for mentoring, they wanted me to PAY! for something i would have done for free given the circumstances. And all the time at the back of my mind i’ve had this voice getting louder and louder yelling ‘I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE’ and a quieter one asking me what do i want and i’ve come to realise its just NOT this!……………………TBC

The Challenges of being an Artist Today

There are a lot of ‘Challenges’ going around on social media at the moment, #30daysofart #atistsupportpledge drawing challenges etc. Some designed to help with online sales others to explore your talent. These are all great BUT does it take away the time you need for creating your work? I’m finding it incredibly difficult making art, as a photographer you would think it easy, just go outside with your camera and take photos right, WRONG! I’ve tried the drawing to get inspiration, got bored, tried setting up my lightbox and getting wildflowers to photograph, bored! Thought about photographing the sunsets as they seem to be wonderful at the moment, no inspiration. I think im broken.

I’m not sure if it is depression, after all i am in morning for my mum, we are living in strange times closed off from everyone, i can’t make money selling my work the normal way and online is certainly not working for me at the moment. Online social media course being taken. I need gallery space, i love gallery space, i’d love to sell during the Chester Art Fair but as I’ve made no money recently the £700.00 fee is just too much, so just what am i going to do?

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Any suggestions? They are all welcome but PLEASE, be nice! There is one thing that is calling to me. I was bought a Polaroid Lab for my birthday in May, I’ve used it once and IT IS SO GOOD! The down side is the film, its so damn expensive, you only get 8, yes 8, images out of a box and its around £15.00 for a box, three boxes for £55.00 with shipping, so i really don’t want to use it but i do but i dont, HELP! I could experiment till the cows come home but i only have one and a half packs left and i could use that in a day, then no more, then i would have to find a way to sell them to buy more film, see the vicious circle i’m in? Oh how i wish i was a painter or felt artist, anything that is easier than being a photographer!

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But a photographer i am and that is not going to change, so i need to get my act together, make a plan, keep to it. Go for it with the #artistsupportpledge and get my work out on Instagram (@spikeymousephotography) It works i’ve seen the SOLD by peoples art, i want it to work for me too. SO this is what im going to do, sit at my computer and make multiple posts to use over the week of the art i want to sell, post it, do the social media thing and comment on my favorite artists and friends posts, try to get myself seen by more people. Im going to create! Im going to use that Polaroid Lab and all of the film and enjoy myself while it lasts, then im going to look for galleries that are open and talk to them about showing or just stocking my art. Oh and shops, those too and i am going to DO IT and enjoy myself too. Isn’t that why we make art?

So that’s my plan. If you have been patient enough to read down to the bottom here this is where i have the big ask. PLEASE go onto my instagram account @spikeymousephotography and have a look at the work i have posted, the work for sale through #artistsupportpledge and think about buying a little something, my work starts at £25.00, all of the Polaroids are original one of a kind and will never be reprinted so your getting a great deal on them! And they really are beautiful, eye catching and very collectible. You will be kindly helping an artist who in turn will help another artist and the support goes on.

A late start to 2015

A late start to 2015……. who am i kidding we are well into the year and i have been very remiss in not posting anything other than someone else’s posts, things i want to remember etc. It’s not that i haven’t wanted to post just that i haven’t had the time. At the end of last year things really took off, i was selling at craft fairs and artisan markets every weekend, going out taking photos and working on my computer. Looking after family and myself and i kind of lost the time to post anything.

I decided that i am going to start my own business and i have been working extremely hard finding bigger markets and more prestigious exhibitions and basically asking to be included in magazines, papers and any kind of of art thing going. Some i was turned down for and some i was snapped up for, so this month i have a feature in the ‘Lake’ magazine, have booked some great artisan markets in Liverpool and best of all and by sheer chance i have a booth in the Liverpool contemporary Art fair, http://www.liverpoolcontemporary.com/ it’s held at the Royal Liver Building from the 26th to the 28th June and i will be among some pretty amazing artists.
Now is the time i really could do with a patron, someone to help me start up, pay for my work to be printed and framed but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so i am furiously hording money to pay for printing on archive papers and framing. All that adds costs onto my work which then brings me to how much i need to charge and really it goes into large amounts, i just hope i have the equations right and i’m not pricing myself too cheaply.
I have also been looking through my work, right from the beginning and the ghastly HDR stuff to the really nice stuff and you can see the leap in experience and technique and i am really pleased with how much better my work is now.

I have been working on some photos of the River Mersey and the ferry recently, the Three Queens are coming into Liverpool and i have the chance to sell when they are here so i am stock pilling images of Liverpool 😀 http://www.cunard.co.uk/cruise-types/anniversary-cruises-2015/ I am going to try something a little different and have coloured some of my images red or blue to play on the Liverpool and Everton football theme, it will be interesting to see how they go. I am going to try and post more as i am going to need to advertise myself to a wider audience so be prepared, i’m not lol but i will try harder, i promise.

Can’t sleep………………………………………………..

I can’t sleep.  Not quite an unusual occurrence as it may seem. My daughter brought it on tonight, she is 11 years old and has hit puberty with a wallop, i don’t like her at the moment sad to say, she is nasty, foul mouthed, contrary, if i say it’s black she say’s it’s white, parents every where will understand. She also has problems sleeping, it all stems from her having to sleep in our room until she was 6, our house is on the small side, 3 adults and 3 kids and only 3 bedrooms, until we went up into the loft. The boys are up there and she now has the box room, read ‘cant swing a cat room’ and she has tried! I think she misses the company, tonight she went to bed at 9pm and was still not settled at 11.30 so now i can’t sleep because of worrying about her, it’s school next week, big school, that doesn’t help. I worry she is going to be sleep deprived in senior school like she was all through year 6, it affects her work and now she is going into serious study she needs her whits about her, it’s not time to be messing up, so i worry and i cant sleep. I have fibromyalgia and one of the awful components to it, for me, is not having the greatest sleep patterns, so i have to be careful of stress at bedtime, so tonight i cant sleep. I am stressed because my mum has cancer, my aunt has just passed away, my husband is not well, my kids are, well kids, so i cant sleep. Grrrrrrr it’s 3.40am and i cant sleep! So, i write. ………….. I went for a ‘wander with Chris’ on Tuesday evening, we went down to the beach and had a walk around the marine lake, well a bit of it as i got cold. We went so i could take some photo’s of the sunset, we have great sunset’s here, legendary, and Tuesday’s was golden!

Funny how a good sunset bring’s out the photographer’s, i want to consider myself a promising and talented photographer, i think i am right in saying it, I’ve sold stuff, been in magazines etc and i have put together quite a good kit and know how to use it 🙂 and when i go out, camera slung around my neck, i laugh like a loon inside as i walk around, past other camera slung people and we are all trying hard not to scope each others kit out, is their’s better than mine, look mine is more sophisticated, wish my lens was that big and you can see them out of the corner of your eye doing the same to you as they walk nonchalantly past you. I’d love to see what their photo’s look like, are they better or worse? Who know’s because no one ever stop’s to chat, they just scuttle on past with a quick glance to make sure their camera is better than your’s. sigh………………… Wednesday Chris and i wandered over to Hilbre Island, i haven’t been there in year’s, it was a killer walk it really hurt but it was worth the pain,

i am processing the photo’s and i think i have some good one’s, one’s that please me, finger’s crossed. So really i should be able to sleep, now i can guarantee i will loose half the day catching up, vicious is this circle.