The moment I started to become ‘me’ as an artist

How I found an object I made on Art Foundation Course and was reminded of the moment my personal creative journey really sparked into life.

Foundation Course Valentine’s Project

Back in 1985 I started an Art Foundation Course at Kingston Polytechnic (as it was then). The first term was a flurry of different projects and artistic exercises which I remember as being a bewildering but truly exciting time, when I didn’t always know what I was doing, or often why!

Then in the second term, early 1986, we were given a project to design packaging/a product for Valentine’s day. Following in my theme of not quite knowing what on earth I was doing, I spent a day or two feeling all at sea. In an effort to progress from just sitting there, I started to cut up some pieces of white paper, and played about with the resulting triangles until, finally, the germ of an idea to make a ‘hexagonal pyramid’ took root.

The visual symbolism was dictated by the resulting opened hexagonal shape, which, to my eyes, resembled the sun. So accordingly, I illustrated the exterior with various depictions of bad weather. I’m not sure I would illustrate the ‘hellish’ looking flames around the sun now, but you get better at being in control of your imagery as you go along!

It was such a positive creative jolt, realising that I’d made my first leap to answer a brief in my own personal way, and was a creative landmark I’ll never forget. It also taught me that if you have no idea of how to do something, that just doing something usually leads you to at least the start of an answer to the problem. The tutor really loved it and commented that I was the only person that hadn’t used the traditional red and pink colours in my product (though I hear those colours have been quite successful for Valentine’s down the years!)

I now look back and see that trying to find an interesting and not so obvious answer to a problem/brief has been an ongoing characteristic of my way of working; I stand by my early personal decision to go for a more ‘Lisa’ way of doing things.

It’s certainly fitted me well since then :)