The good and the bad of being an artist

 

The good and the bad of being an artist is all the running around.  I met up with E this week, an artist I’ve regularly collaborated with at TATE and the NPG.  We were filling in details for a series of drawing projects and working out new sites to develop this work.  It was a perfect chat over coffee where we both seemed to fire each other up and talk over each other as we got more excited. 
On the same day I met with three artists who I’m making a piece of work with for the Whitechapel in June.  We recently spent one week working together on this project, a time which has been one of the most stimulating experiences of the last year but this evening was flat and the dialogue was slow moving and picky.  We were pulling apart the audio that will form the sound piece for our exhibition from 4 hours to 18 minutes.
It could be that I was tired having sandwiched this meeting between two lectures and the aforementioned meeting but actually I think it has more to do with the difference between talking about art and making it.