"There is always a constant demand to produce something and often in that push to create you miss out on your time to develop something or possibly even to discover something else. The biggest fear in being any sort of artist is becoming dull, predictable- ignored. This is the constant hell in the mind of someone who creates- inner conflict to do what is expected and doing the unexpected."

Broadcasting

After living without a television for almost five years, I finally broke down one afternoon and bought one. I picked it up from the Salvation Army for ten bucks and along with it a basic analog cable package. I had discovered very quickly after the first minute I had turned on the TV that I had forgotten how to watch. I thought it would be quite easy, like watching the lights flicker in patterns off the wall, or watching the paint dry off the canvas, but I found that watching TV again it is very different. I watch teams toil away behind the screen as I feel my attention sucked into heavy dramatics, pointless situation comedies, and unmoving electric light game shows in their bold flash images. Often I find myself repeating the only constant childhood memory of mine that I can find iconic of my life and that is constantly watching the news. CBC news feed channel to be exact.
Growing up in the developments, we had a house that was always playing. Playing something, if I would stop being so cryptic for a moment. Mom always had the radio on the CBC and you learned to tell time by it. The radio was always going, even when the TV was on, or music playing in another room. When you flipped the radio on at 6am in the morning until it was turned off at 10pm you were in a constant connection of produced information. If you missed the news, it would come back again in an hour.
Dad started coming home with this newspaper as well. He liked it because he could read it in the lunch room and it didn’t fall out in your lap or corner off into your coffee. He said it was the best around for sports, but how he knew that was confusing since Dad never played sports, or watched them for that matter. Dad just liked to do what everyone else was saying when it came to things he knew nothing of and he still does that. Can’t blame dad for being so-called every now and then.
I liked the newspaper because I could hold it and I could read it. I spent my time in other rooms away from people reading the gruesome headlines one by one. Often it was in the kitchen next to the radio waiting for the beep,beep,beep of the announcement of “lunch”.
TV has always scared me from a very young age. When I was three, my mother showed me the air-siren in the center of town and told me what it was for when I asked why we still had such things. Mom never guessed at how I would know things like that- she was just good at reacting to them simply. Even at that age I had a pretty good idea at what dwelled in the world around me and that’s why TV’s scared me. At any given moment the alarm could go off in either a series of warning images, noises, or in a total and absolute pause while tiny meticulous people rushed to inform you that it’s coming to an end.
Did I also put in here we enjoyed watching classic sci-fi movies as a family? There was this one dad and I really liked, “When Worlds Collide” and in the movie the news broadcaster is in such a rush to update the world of its pending doom he never takes off his fedora. Wait- back with the story…
Those “alarm” messages would always come when you would least suspect it. They could be inserted cryptically in the credits of TV shows, when the program would suddenly and without warning freeze and go to black, or when the sound would pierce high pitch beeeeeeeeps or snake like hissing in the middle of a show. I would scream my head off and dig my head in the chesterfield until I resorted to just freezing in total terror as I waited for the heartbeat of connection to start again.
I refused to watch horror movies because of this. I refused to watch disturbing scenes and even news stories because of the emotional impact and fear they had. This never worked out as I had planned so perfectly because somehow I would expose myself to it and find later obsessed in discovering the reason and answer behind these broadcasted warning signs. It wasn’t until I had bought a computer that I started to discover the underside to media where my option to pick and choose what I was connecting to that I turned my back from the “main line” of information. This was me simply hiding from the “alarms”.
No, wait- this is the best part!

TV is back in my life, mainly the CBC. I call them “The red suits” and they play against other red suits of different shapes to other broadcasters in black suits. Other red suits will do tricky things such as bring images of high drama and emotion to dance in the electric pulse of connection. Black suits, on the other hand, have this way of just shouting at you until your ears and eyes bleed with information overload, “THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE- THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE, THE MEDIUM IS COMPLEATE FACT UNLESS WE SAY SO” and so on if I was to put my black suit on. Constant connection of a broadcast can have a serious affect on your body.

I find it highly amusing that I am a form of the connection and the media in my own right, not only acting out as an artist. Call it reacting off the connection broadcast or simply mimicking my own compulsion, I find that even surviving as a journalist is just like surviving as an artist. The medium is the message and constantly I find the message is all around me. Its in the community I thrive off, it’s from the scenes of the environment of where I live, it’s the people who buzz around from one point to another as they fill their day. In one way, the body of work I have done in the past few months has been this longer pause of where and how my media broadcasts in the images I paint.

I live in a society that is driven by keeping the connection fresh, interesting, and consistent. Today if needed you can stay in touch through text messages, TV screens, fiber optic wires, radio waves, cell phones and telephone wires. The message is always changing, it is always growing and it is always coming. There is no on or off switch for this device and it is always on even in the most private of moments. We are now taught that to survive the broadcast of this connection that we have to keep producing to a large scale consumption of receivers just to get the message out.

May I say what a total drain this collection was to make? I think I will. This collection was a horrible drain to produce from the first collection. There. I said it. Last year I would relax by the open bay windows and nap on the canvas as if it was the choice of bed for the month. I would often fall asleep on the in progress pieces “Quality Intersection” and “The Mill Pond” only to wake up with paint in my hair and face to the charming sounds of birds in the distance. I also had immature feelings of desire and freedom during that thought process which I poured into every scene. (Maybe immature is the wrong word? Maybe, maybe not)
This time around was different because I jammed everything I owned into one room combining office, studio, media center, and bedroom all in one box where the electricity bled into one area of focus. Often the lights in my room would dim lower when Justin would use the microwave since it’s on the same wires in the wall. I also got rid of the bed for a pseudo chesterfield. The floor is covered in paintings on top of unpaid bills, on top of press releases and memos. I also cannot keep the place clean, but how often do I allow anyone but myself in this room?

NOW IT’S TIME FOR WHAT YOU ALL CAME OUT TO SEE
Being cryptic and never giving a straight answer simply because I encourage others to react on what I am doing, here are the facts all in classic AnnK style. If you are simply reacting off the constant blear of media, react off the march of the broadcast, what sort of work will you get?
(HA! I answered you with a fool question!)

It was 3 in the afternoon that day and I could remember sitting by her as the room flooded with a pale bright light. In the background, the radio was on softly. It was tuned to the CBC. The CBC had found me like it always had in the background soundtrack of those awkward quiet and personal moments. It was a Sunday afternoon show to Sunday afternoon show interpreted lightly with news updates. She laid, I sat. We were together with no one else. She had no power or will to refuse the broadcast and I accepted it since it didn’t seem fair to let her be the only one, so I kept it on so we could share at least one thing. At moments, she would lie very quietly and I would examine how different she looked and in others I would see sudden impulses of a murmur break from her face. I absorbed it in as calmly as I could. I counted, as she taught me to do as you walk down a flight of stairs as to not fall and tumble down them from missing a step. One, two, three… the light through the window, ten, eleven, twelve, the CBC broadcasting in the background, twenty, ninety six, she slipped away slowly right for anyone to see if they would take a moment to examine that will in her murmurs.

This collection also challenged me to be connected in a time when working so hard to produce makes you disconnected. I find that as an artist or a writer if you spend too much time on one thing that you lose your ability to try new things or to challenge yourself. It is like doing an online comic every week for twelve years of your life and struggling to keep it fresh. You allow people to associate you with one thing and one thing only and soon that is your trap and your demise of all creative inspiration as you simply forget why you are drawing silly unfunny cartoons to begin with. Needless to say, I paint a lot of what is familiar in my community because I am enchanted by it and already I get the teases from my Digital Inkz friends that I am just switching from unfunny cartoons to buildings, buildings and more buildings. What is so wrong with buildings? Alright- get away from the buildings and look a little closer. Find that connection in the buildings, find their broadcast connection to everything around them. Ah- you have the makings for a new and exciting art show.

That is it. Kinda long I think, but if you made it thru the entire explanation then the only reward I can offer you is that it was an amusing story. Maybe a story they read off the CBC on a Sunday radio broadcast or maybe just something you get when you stumble across the blog or you get my emails.

Did I mention that I am horrible at returning your emails? You’d think I would be more connected with the way I live… hehehe…
~AnnK