The excellent book, Advice To Young Artists In A Postmodern Era by William V. Dunning is one that I think every artist should own. At one point, Dunning talks about the value of immersing oneself in art. This is what I'm doing at the moment. With the exception of a little bit of knitting and gardening to keep me grounded, I've spent the last few days immersing myself in thinking, reading, viewing and writing about contemporary art.

And I've come to a conclusion.

The denizens of the contemporary art world desperately need to drop what I refer to as 'art wank'.

Enough already. Enough dull academic shows that no one but a tiny elite care about. Enough 'clever' critical writing that says nothing. Enough postering. Enough big words. Enough drowning art in philosophy. Enough bullshit.

I know that art is often hard to write about - I'm currently trying to bash my artists' statement into shape and it's resisting furiously! - but the way most critics talk about art is just ridiculous.

I am tired of it. I am tired of feeling like an idiot when I try to plough my way through it. I've been making, looking at and reading about art for years. I studied it intensively in college and wrote essays on it. I still read about art constantly.

So if I can't understand what most art writers are on about, what chance does someone whose art education ended in high school have? On Friday I read an 'explanatory' pamphlet at the Arnolfini gallery that managed to make an already boring show even more dry, academic and obscure. I left the gallery wondering what the point of my visit had been. If I'd been visiting a contemporary gallery for the first time, I certainly would have felt no desire to go back. After this sort of experience it's easy to see why people think that modern art is rubbish.

In my 30's, I returned to art college after a break of about six years spent raising my son. It was my third shot at getting my degree. Having been thrown out of an English course at the age of 18 and then having left a Fine Art degree when I accidentally got pregnant at the end of my first year, I was understandably quite nervous about my ability to do the work.

I vividly remember being set a reading list that included the art historian, Rosalind Krauss. All summer I struggled valiantly with it, trying to comprehend her points and getting more and more disheartened. Her words seemed to have nothing at all to do with my own experience of being an artist and the concerns and ideas that were floating around my head when I was making sculpture. I ended up wondering how I was going to cope at art college? If I couldn't understand this set text, surely I was FAR too stupid to go.

On the first day, we sat in a large circle and the tutors asked us how we'd got on with the reading list. Someone confessed to finding Krauss impenetrable. 'Ah yes,' said the Head of Sculpture, "she is very difficult, isn't she. I don't really understand her myself, to be honest." The entire group let out an audible sigh of relief and I sat there thinking, "well if YOU don't even understand it, why the hell did you assign it?"

I never had to refer to Krauss again and at the end of my degree, I took great joy in turfing the damn woman off my bookshelves.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying, 'don't read'. I love to read and always have. I especially love non-fiction and I read widely and voraciously both inside and outside my field. A lot of my ideas come from my reading. What I'm saying is, when we write about art, can we try to sound as if it matters, as if it's alive, vibrant and important and as if the writer is actually interested in what they're discussing.

I do understand that art historians and those who analyse art, experience it in a very different way to those who actually make it. And I also know that every artist needs to find a way to talk about their work. Many artists look at it as a necessary evil but I've always found it both helpful and vital to define my practice in the right words.

What I don't think is helpful and vital is when the convoluted language of the historians, critics and philosophers infects the language of artists. I don't think we're doing our work any favours if we cloak it in fancy buzz words and arcane concepts. I know that every profession has its jargon and I know that some concepts are very difficult to explain but the art world needs to stop pretending to be smarter than it is because really, I don't think we're fooling anyone!

Still, on the plus side, 'art wank' is an excellent cure for insomnia...

I am lazy.

"What's that?', I hear you cry, 'you spend months patiently tying knots in string, sticking pins through fabric or drawing every day for a year, how can you possibly call yourself lazy?'

Ah, but it's a very specific kind of laziness and over the years - as I have come to understand it - I have adjusted my art practice to accommodate it.

I know myself and if I worked with the sort of materials that needed a specialist working environment like a forge or a foundry, I wouldn't get much art made. If I undertook huge expensive projects that involved lots of paperwork, funding bids and meetings with planners and architects, I would never get any art made.

Heck, even if my studio was in another building, I would struggle. When I graduated, I hired a studio space on the other side of town because I thought that's what you were meant to do. I kept it for a couple of months before recognising that I was working extra hours to pay for it but was hardly ever there and even when I was, I found it an uninviting place to work.

Eventually I realised that when I'd been a student, I used to make most of my work at home and then take it into college when it was finished. I tended to use my studio in college as an experimental installation space or somewhere to think, rather than somewhere to physically make work. I'm sure this is partly because I'd grown accustomed to fitting my art around parenting when my son was young. Having evolved as an artist whilst making work in the evenings on the kitchen table, a separate studio space felt like a barren and alien environment to me.

So now my studio is on the top floor of my house. Yet even that is not close enough and I tend to make my art in my study, my bedroom, my living room, my garden, on the dining room table and only occasionally in my studio.

I do enjoy the quiet and contemplative space of my studio, especially when I need to think, draw or make more mess than usual. But I also need my art to be part of my daily life; something I can pick up and put down as easily as the morning paper or my cup of tea. So art, for me, is largely a domestic affair and you'll often find me making my more repetitive pieces in front of the TV or while listening to a podcast on my computer.

In addition, the sort of materials I use in my art - small, unregarded things like matches, pins, sequins or envelopes - are easily available, safe to use and relatively cheap. This is a deliberate choice on my behalf. Partly because I'm very interested in everyday objects that are so commonplace that they become effectively invisible but also because I am passionate about 'owning the means of production'. I hate to be dependant on other people before I can even start to make my art.

I've never done well if I have to go through multiple steps to get something done and so wherever possible, my practice is organised to minimise that. For example, when I graduated I took out a loan so that I could upgrade my computer equipment and digital camera because I wanted access to the technology I'd used at college without having to go off to a library or rent out office premises.

My materials are a continuation of that desire for independence. I don't need to work a day job to buy the sort of materials I use. Nor do I need to scrabble around for grants or sponsorship or jump through anyone else's hoops before my work can come into being. I've learnt from experience that projects that do need access to specialist knowledge or equipment or more funding than I can provide myself are the ones that invariably end up on on the backburner.

Again, I'm sure my formative years of trying to combine art with parenting also informed my preference for cheap, readily available materials. Although I always bought the best I could afford, I was on a low income and got used to making do with what I had. And I found that I actually preferred it because it was easier to be loose and experimental with thousands of cheap, everyday things than with very rare or precious materials.

Some artists need the heroic struggle; it motivates and inspires them and forms a vital part of their practice. Others find that getting out of the house and into a separate studio space makes them more focused and dedicated. Yet others relish the challenge of working in very expensive materials.

But for me that stuff just gets in the way.

I need the path of least resistance because I find making good, meaningful art quite difficult enough without adding extra obstacles. I am perfectly capable of putting mental road blocks in the way of my own art practice and I realised early on that it would be disastrous if I added further restrictions such as the need for funding, planning permission, specialist studio requirements or expensive materials. So I have consciously set up my practice so that the only thing standing in the way of my art is myself - and believe me, that's usually more than enough!

It's vital as an artist to recognise your strengths and weakness and to play to both of them. Don't make it any harder than it needs to be.