When I listen to my inner voice, I hear judgment.
As I work, as I present myself to the world, I hear the voices of those around me, mockingly tearing it apart, but it is my voice I hear.
And when I am at my lowest, and I’m guilty of the same judgement of others, if I’m able to listen to the voice there, I realise it’s the same voice.
Hey everyone,
Welcome to Substack.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be bringing in some new faces to Hot Girls Like Art.
I hope you enjoy growing with me, and soon with us.
Thanks for your support so far.
-R
Glass
The lens we view reality through shapes our perception more than the material nature of reality itself.
If we want to change reality, it’s much easier to change the lens than it is to change the environment we operate in.
The same goes for how we perceive ourselves. The work starts inside. And although it sounds like fortune-cookie wisdom, there are always layers to unravel.
When I quit my job six years ago to pursue life as an artist full time, there was one burning idea that kept me together.
I was confident but lost, buoyed up by some early success and kind words from close friends, that this was the right move at the right time.
Objectively, it was a ridiculous decision.
I’d been out to Epping Forest with some friends who live relatively outside society’s norms.
We’d spent the day talking to ancient trees, led by a former druid looking to share their world with us normal folk.
During the afternoon, we sat in a circle to discuss the difficulty of dealing with the judgment of passers-by.
The druid offered a simple explanation:
“Everything is a mirror.”
Breadcrumbs
I’ve been following the breadcrumb trail for five years now, slowly, slowly trying to make sense of an idea that reality is, for the most part, all in my head. Progress comes and goes, but it always leads to the same wall.
If everything is a mirror, why are there so many villains in my world?
Living as an artist in a city like London is volatile.
Paydays come infrequently. Costs monthly. Landlords raise rent. The bar for good work is high, and creating anything meaningful takes time.
The material needs of creation demand some focus; they occupy my mind more than I would like.
Remaining focused on the non-material elements of my work that produce the quality I need to grow can be tough.
I’m far from an academic.
And despite my desires to make sure that research is the bedrock of my work, it wouldn’t pass any real scrutiny when it comes to scientific process.
But I know I have to find truth.
Rely on objective reality to shore up an unquestionably shaky world.
And when I fall and begin to stare into the black hole of accounts with my accountant, I am often tempted to chase the cash.
I’ve made that wrong turn a few times.
In Miami, I chased it for a year.
Money came, money went.
But the work began to show what I was becoming: thin, aesthetic, materialistic.
Its surface was beautiful.
But that was it.
I was surrounded by people living in this reality: free, beautiful.
A world that London loves to hate.
A world where it isn’t that deep, beautiful sunrises, beautiful sunsets, beautiful beaches, beautiful buildings, beautiful people, beautiful stuff.
When I spoke to them, there was a simplicity to the lens through which they saw the world.
Maybe it is that beautiful, and that's all there is to it.
I began to see it that way.
To see a world that wasn't full of villains, a world where there is only opportunity.
And for a while, it worked.
I began to grow.
Until I realised that it was just a mask.
And my utility came into question.
The Role of the Artist
If everything is a mirror, what then is my role?
What part do I play beside someone whose ego is so great that I think I can survive the onslaught of city life by myself…
I watched how my work evolved during my time in Miami.
There was a shallowness to how I had to operate.
Commissions focused on decoration.
No long conversations about what I was interested in.
Colour palettes and meetings with interior designers.
The work was meant to match the walls.
To soothe, to flatter, to reflect not the world, but the property value.
It was clear I was adjusting myself to accommodate my environment.
Simply to survive.
We all do it.
Our professions tell us to dress appropriately.
To post our recent promotion to LinkedIn, acting as a mouthpiece for organisations that signal they offer growth.
To document our weddings correctly, so our friends see us in the right light.
But we are not victims of our environments. We are them.
Our environment is a power structure. And we build it around ourselves.
Every email.
Every caption.
Every approval we seek.
Every dinner party anecdote.
Every silence in the face of something we should’ve said.
We all create the cages we live in.
Everything we create holds our fingerprints.
I remember showing some early abstract work to a friend.
They asked me what I was trying to do.
I was young and full of juice.
I offered a long, self-serious narrative.
It was BS.
They offered an alternative process.
“Try less.”
If an artist has any role beyond making beautiful objects for a world obsessed with surface, it is this:
To create honestly.
And in doing so, let their fingerprints shape the mirror.
For me, that means making something that reflects not just you, but the structure you’re caught inside.
It means making something true.
Our output is not just self-expression.
It’s a way to reframe reality.
A way of offering perspective.
Some works refine the current view. Others contest it.
The good ones crack the glass.
And if the mirror is clear, the viewer sees something they haven’t seen before.
Usually, about themselves.
After all
Everything is a mirror.
Truth
The sticking point keeps coming back.
If we create honestly,
whether to survive,
to propel ideas forward,
or to reveal a specific perspective,
Why does this same idea always return?
I clean the glass.
I refine the work.
But every time I try to make something real,
something honest,
I end up seeing the same thing.
Villains.
No matter the lens I try to create through,
the same figures appear.
It’s a hard pill to swallow.
But the reality is:
If I can see it,
I am it.
Reconciling the idea that my work sometimes carries a morally dark nature is difficult.
Am I the darkness?
Is the world inherently good?
and my fingerprints,
my edits,
my distortions,
the reason I see what I see?
Or am I creating honestly,
and what I’m reflecting is a society that is, at its core,
ruthless?
I’ve been working to come to terms with this darkness for about a year now.
When I put out the installations,
I know what to expect.
My only hope is that it doesn’t go too far.
Last year, I put this board out on the street with some construction tools. Passersby only used the screwdrivers.
A few months later, I put out this installation:
I try not to interrogate my work too much.
But if I have any insight into what I’m doing,
It’s that I’m building environments.
And in both of these installations,
I’m engineering a space designed to bring out what we usually suppress:
anger, rage, violence.
It’s not a profound revelation to say that we all carry this inside us.
What troubles me is the next question:
Does it need to be seen?
Does society function better when we bury this part of ourselves?
Or has it survived so long precisely because we’ve become so skilled at hiding it?
Does my work undermine that stability?
Exposing what we’ve managed to contain,
Risking a kind of rupture?
Or is it the opposite?
Maybe society needs someone to play the role.
Without the Joker, do we ever get Batman?
Without critique,
do we ever make progress?
I’m not sure.
Closure
I hoped to reach a natural conclusion.
Some core idea to put the fear to bed.
A neat bow to tie it all up.
Right now, I don’t think I have it.
Maybe that means I’m not ready yet.
But I’ve been staring down the barrel for a year now.
And I’m finally getting comfortable with what I see.
Maybe that’s part of the process.
To accept that once you start to excavate,
Pare away the mask you wear for the world…
What’s left isn’t transcendent.
It’s just an animal.
See you next week,
Nothing but love,
—R