How to Become a Multidisciplinary Artist
If you’re anything like me, you may find it impossible to settle on one medium or approach to art. Everything comes alive in your hands and sparks new ideas.
There’s a name for this: multidisciplinary art! If this sounds like the type of artistic lifestyle you want to lead, then read on to learn how I became one, and how you can embrace your own journey.
At what point did I become a multidisciplinary artist?
Folding a previously separate career into my art
Overcoming barriers with a creative community
Advice for aspiring multidisciplinary artists
Let your materials surprise you
At what point did I become a multidisciplinary artist?
I think, in my head, I've always been one. Over the years, I've created pieces of work using different mediums, techniques, or materials, but these projects have been quite separate in terms of time. I made them in different chapters of my creative path.
But now I'm seeking to embody multidisciplinary art as a way of operating. My next step is to develop different projects with varied materials around the same time. So, one day, or over a couple of months, I could be on the beach painting and drawing, and soon after I could shift into another medium. I've started making little cardboard sculptures recently, and I also just bought an embroidery hoop, to embroider over some artwork I've printed onto textiles. I’m exploring embroidery textiles, painting onto fabric, and similar techniques.
Previously my work has been quite siloed in specific disciplines or materials. But now I’m being more playful and a bit more fluid in terms of embracing these different techniques in projects simultaneously.
Folding a previously separate career into my art
My architecture and design work and fine art practice have also been very separate throughout my career, and now I’m keen to find out what happens when I bring them together.
I’m fascinated by fine line drawings, but then what happens when I think about that on a more architectural scale? For me, another angle of multidisciplinary art is looking at different scales. Multidisciplinary art isn’t just about materiality, but about scale, and the project's theme or content as well.
And that's why I'm interested in everything to do with shaping environments, whether making something beautiful to place in a space or shaping an environment to influence how you feel as you enter. Thinking about how to design a space to live in, work in, or explore are all angles of art! Weaving these ideas into my fine art has opened the door to my own style of multidisciplinary art.
Overcoming Barriers with a Creative Community
But there's definitely been many times I felt stuck in my approach, and I'm not sure what the answer is to overcoming barriers except just to keep going. And I think it's important to speak to other creative people, to bounce ideas off them, and to get other points of view when you're feeling really stuck. You need a real creative community around you to support you, because it can be really lonely sometimes when you're working on individual projects.
And the other thing I absolutely love, which I is really helpful and makes me feel a lot less stuck, is collaborating with people - collaborating with people who employ other disciplines, whether they're textile designers or illustrators or printmakers or furniture designers. There's something wonderful about sharing that creative energy and flow with someone else and how totally new ideas can emerge that you would not necessarily expect.
Advice for aspiring multidisciplinary artists
I don't know if you can study multidisciplinary art at school or art school. I know you can study mixed media, which can be a good start, but the multidisciplinary approach involves much more than varied materials. It's something that develops over time when you start playing with different materials, scales, cultural ideas, and just seeing what works.
I think the multidisciplinary design approach is all about trial and error and using your intuition to feel what’s right and what flows for you. For example, while working on a specific project, you could be set on creating some kind of drawing and using a certain set of materials. And then, just by playfully exploring with other things, you might find a totally different route.
Let your materials surprise you
For instance, I had an idea for a wall mural art game of the Tour de France for my son to play with. These little cyclists would move along different landscapes. I had a quite clear idea of what that was going to look like in my head and how I was going to make it. But when I started playing with materials - really fine cardboard and Posca pens - it suddenly turned into something totally different, but I'm actually delighted with it.
I love how this surprise project led to many more decorations ideas for the Christmas markets I’m preparing for in a couple of weeks. It seems to have opened up a whole creative flow that I didn't have before. So it's important to make space to test new materials and instruments to see if they spark an idea for something fresh.
Becoming a multidisciplinary artist is a fluid journey - you might not realize the next step until you’ve already reached it. Trust your instincts and passions, as your path may look completely different from mine!