Favourite quotes from this reading:
“My ethnicity does not matter to me. Being Chinese or Canadian is irrelevant. I only know that I am an individual living in this world.”
“Nostalgia defeats people. It destroys achievement and makes people lose sight of a better future.”
“If you want to change your life in some way, the path can be a difficult one. But you have no choice but to face such difficulty directly. By doing so you will become a better person.”
“…in this process my ideas are born. None of this, however, can be expressed artistically until the artist has developed technique.”
“Life provides me with experience; art provides me with a way to find my inner self.”
How will identity affect my work?
I put myself … my ‘self’ back together after struggling through 7 years of depression. So much of my art centres around flawed worthiness and I depict it through beautiful, broken things. My struggle with perfectionism competes with this. “The conflict should generate some powerful work,” she muttered in a voice laced with irony.
Gu, X., (2008). “In My Own Words,” In Creative Expression Creative Education (pp. 65-75) Edited by Robert Kelly and Carl Leggo, Calgary: Detselig Enterprise Ltd.
