Hands-on versus hands-off making

I became an artist because I liked making stuff. And for a long time after I graduated that's exactly what I did. I drew, I painted, I assembled things. I made photographs and videos. I brought together exhibitions and even studio spaces. 

So it's a bit disconcerting to look back at the past 12 months and realise I have mostly been initiating and project-managing the making of stuff by other people. I have taken data collected by a glider pilot and a bird biologist and asked a programmer to help me visualise it. Worked with engineers to fabricate sculptures out of virtual models using a high-tech process I only just understand. And collected environmental data using  expertise and technology borrowed from Plymouth University. Even my recent publication about bananas was made partly from appropriated imagery and actually printed by another artist.

It's a perfectly respectable mode of operating  for a professional contemporary artist, so why do I occasionally feel like a fraud? After all, I've brought about number of new things that wouldn't have existed without me. What's more, the collaborative networks of expertise and ideas that came into being to serve these projects undoubtedly make a far bigger impact on the world than any of my paintings.

I suppose I'm very conscious that, in the popular imagination, hands-off artists are often seen as 'not real artists'. Like many people, I admire the time, commitment and talent that goes into the mastery of a skill such as printmaking or casting. So sometimes I'm a bit embarrassed to have to say, "no I didn't make that with my own two hands".

However, I know that unless I'm prepared to restrict my ideas to the craft skills I do have, I'll sometimes have to accept the role of commissioner or collaborator instead of maker. That said, I badly miss making stuff. Perhaps it's time for a new hobby - one that involves canvas and paint?