Struggle in the library

I’ve been finding this new brief really hard which is strange because I always think the figure is my favourite subject matter so this should be ideal. It’s been really difficult to get started though, I’ve been drawing the figure quite a lot thinking that would lead me to where I wanted to be research-wise but it hasn’t really. I’ve been very much stuck in my own head with this one, maybe cos it’s been a shit couple of weeks. Most of the work I do is based on myself and I’ve been having a hard time allowing that to happen again. It seems a bit repetitive or conceited to me at points but why should I force myself to make art ‘outrospectively’ when all I want to do is work introspectively? I’ve been reading through a lot of Tracey Emin’s writings and looking at her work and I find it comforting that her work is so self analytical. The process of looking and thinking about Emin’s work and documenting my thoughts as I go has been an interesting piece of art in itself, my research so far has been about me struggling with myself. Maybe that’s what this project is going to be about. Why do I have to make it about much more than that? Just because it’s difficult to explain in words doesn’t make it any less valid than researching a project about a ‘flowers relationship with its vase’. Here’s a few photo from my struggle in the library–