mytexturedworld: Receiving feedback

I need to write something here about the experience of receiving feedback from my tutor. Or from anyone whose opinion I respect, in fact. Because I have just had a long period of difficulty getting down to working on this project, and I think the two are related.

I had no trouble at all working in my sketchbook in a constructive and rewarding way when there was no expectation of me doing that, during the 'Researching Artists' part of this course. But somehow, since getting feedback from my tutor about my work on that section, I have been unable to find the time. I think this is something like 'writer's block', and therefore something that I will have to learn to deal with better.

I have also noticed during previous coursework, that the first time I read feedback or assessments, the only bits I see or remember are the parts about how I could improve. I feel useless and that there is little point in carrying on. And I withdraw into the desert to lick my wounds. It is only later, when I pluck up courage to read the thing again, that I find that overall the feedback was positive, appreciative of the good things, and encouraging, and I wonder how I could have so misinterpreted what I read.

This recent episode of this critique-wilt has been worse than the rest, and has resulted in a longer period of desert. I had a different attitude to this academic part of the course, partly because I was confident that I wouldn't have any trouble with it, as I felt good about what I had submitted for the assignment, and because of all my previous higher education being word-based. (All the other assignments have been voyages into the dark for me, so I had hope but few expectations of a good result.) And then I find that, contrary to my expectations, what came back seemed to be a long list of things that I did wrong.

Of course, this kind of writing has its own rules, which I was foolish not to stick to (as much as I was aware of them).

Of course, this is my first ever marked essay about an artist, so what can I really have expected.

Of course, I am still early in my Textile Art education and how else will I learn.

Of course, when I look through the feedback again, it's a different story. I seem to have done OK after all/

I know all these things, but somehow receiving this feedback still made me procrastinate about the next assignment for a long eight weeks. So I will have to extend my deadline again, and I have lost the creative oasis I was in at that time, so there is some work to be done getting back into it.

Sheila Hicks miniature
http://rationalbeauty-jeanette.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/
sheila-hicks-weaving-as-metaphor.html

How? By looking at what I have done already, and try to get myself, if not back into that one, into a creative state of mind.

I wonder whether this rather more painful episode might add some depth to what I make in the end (here's hoping!).

I suspect that, in fact, I have been working on these ideas in a subterranean way all along.

Here are a selection of the pinterest images I have picked up during that 8 weeks, that seem to be related to the work I've been avoiding...