{"id":355,"date":"2015-06-14T10:07:10","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T10:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk:\/studiodiary\/?p=355"},"modified":"2015-06-14T10:07:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T10:07:10","slug":"words-of-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/?p=355","title":{"rendered":"Words of Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a solo show<\/a> coming up soon I\u2019ve been asked to fill in a questionnaire to help the gallery with their efforts to promote me on social media. One of the questions was \u2018What\u2019s the best advice you have ever been given?\u2019<\/p>\n

Great question, but a tough one to answer. In the end I went for a flip answer: \u2018Don\u2019t bleed on the artwork\u2019 which wasn\u2019t so much offered as a piece of advice as hurled as an imperative in a graphic design practice I used to visit. Valid if, like me, you are surrounded by razor sharp tools and spend your days digging out bits of wood. In fairness I tend to get more paper cuts than anything else these days. I did manage to nick myself on a piece of toast the other day, quite how I\u2019m not sure, but rose to the double challenge of no blood or cherry jam on the artwork.<\/p>\n

To come clean, the one piece of advice that changed my life was given when I was dithering about whether I wanted to print at all. After leaving a career in the photo industry I was in the extraordinary position of having friends urging me to take and use their Albion press. I had the room and the time to do it and yet I refused. Trouble was that I hadn\u2019t printed in sixteen years and I was two years into recovering from a savage fight with depression. It was far too easy to say I was still too ill, couldn\u2019t concentrate, not good enough anymore, I hadn\u2019t even been drawing since I left art school, etc etc. Oh, so easy to give up.<\/p>\n

I was reciting this litany to a much older friend who listed patiently and then said \u2018Stop making excuses and get on with it. It\u2019s fine if you fail, but hopeless if you never try\u2019*. Not what I wanted to hear at all: she was supposed to tell me how brave I was and how she understood. I\u2019d like to say I was transformed into the artist I am today on the very spot as a result, but actually her words just niggled away to the point that I belatedly agreed to accept the Albion and rather grudgingly started printing.<\/p>\n

The rest, as they say, is history. But I have never forgotten that, without her unappealing words, I would never have tried. Tough love indeed, but for me, the best advice I have ever had\u2026<\/p>\n

*I need to say that she said this at a time when I was a long way into recovering from depression. I would never, ever, recommend saying anything like this to someone ill with depression. Giving any advice in those circumstances is a mistake in my opinion; a hug and just being there is far more valuable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a solo show coming up soon I\u2019ve been asked to fill in a questionnaire to help the gallery with their efforts to promote me on social media. One of the questions was \u2018What\u2019s the best advice you have ever been given?\u2019 Great question, but a tough one to answer. In the end I went … Continue reading “Words of Wisdom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lauraboswell.co.uk\/studiodiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}