Self-Assessing While Self-Expressing: How Can Vulnerability Impact the Self-Expressive Artmaking Process?

Knowing that vulnerability and risk-taking are both necessary to the educational experience (Willcox, 2017), the author became curious to know what role vulnerability plays in the self-expressive artmaking process, and what could be learned from the uncomfortable feelings that emerge when an artist feels vulnerable. The author also wondered what could motivate an artist to embrace vulnerability as necessary to self-expressive artmaking. The goal was to see if the author could find some answers to these questions through an arts-based research project. This study utilized a blend of methodologies, including autoethnography, which studies the researcher's personal experience (Leavy, 2017), and a/r/tography, in which data emerge through artmaking (Bourgault et al., 2022; Irwin et al., 2006). While creating the first body of self-expressive art, the author journaled her personal experiences to explore connections with the larger phenomenon of vulnerability in self-expressive artwork. Through the a/r/tographical process, she used her artmaking as a vehicle of inquiry for her emerging thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The author sought to discover how her findings could inform her work as an artist, researcher, and future art educator.