‘Are You Listening?’ Submission Complete

100 Day Project Day 12

Today I was working on my affa muckle lug, which is a very large ear in English. I had to ride roughshod over a LOT of negative thinking, and my inner critic was very intent on trying to stop me from finishing this painting. The internal dialogues were going wild, but I decided I was going to meet my self-imposed deadline, take up space, do the thing, and I succeeded.

I am really pleased with myself, because I finished a whole day before the actual deadline, which is noon tomorrow. The deadline is the submissions deadline for the Jackson’s Art Prize, and I am now entered.

So that’s a mini goal that I had set myself this year to put myself forward for at least one artist call, prize or whatever, and just get comfortable with putting myself out there.

The disembodied ear is painted with a limited palette comprising caput mortuum, yellow ochre, ultramarine, buff titanium and raw umber. Nestled in the ear canal opening is a slice of watermelon, and the title I came up with yesterday morphed to “Are you listening?”

The watermelon is a very specific symbol representing the oppression of Palestinian people, and is a symbol they adopted when they were prevented from using their own flag. Of course the watermelon is now being used across social media to try and circumvent censorship and suppression of support for Palestinians by social media companies.

The choice of caput mortuum, which is one of my longterm favourite colours, is very specific. The name means ‘head of the dead’, and was so named by the Romans to reference the colour of dried blood. The colour is also known as cardinal purple, and was very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries for painting the robes of important people.

The point of growth here isn’t about accolades, likes, recognition, or anything like that, and I have no investment in winning, or even being selected for the longlist. The point of growth is that I acted on an idea, painted it, met a deadline, and pressed submit. It doesn’t matter if the painting is terrible, it isn’t terrible to me, and it says something about how I feel about the world just now, and whatever anyone else thinks about that is really their business, not mine.

Take up space,

Til the morn,

Suzanne