Notes for the Artist

I am in the studio today, moving things around. Unrolling canvases and packing them away again, wondering what to make of all of it.

Projects sometimes speak in their own way, asking to be worked on or abandoned, needing attention and light or darkness and cover. The projects on the walls are naturally my favourites. They like the exposure and come alive under light. And there are no less precious projects, scattered around the studio, waiting to be made.

I find clarity in moving things around, in organising and tidying, in throwing everything we harvested from the garden this morning into a large pot of soup. I feel like a witch at a delightful smelling cauldron. I walk back and forth from the kitchen to the studio. I make notes and throw old ones away. I rearrange things, bringing reminders of the important and unmade closer, bringing the projects nearest completion to a prominent place on my desk. I tend to the order of things and taunt myself on towards the finish.

I listen, also, to voice notes from a friend working in her own studio and garden. We work in parallel, sending each other encouragement and understanding, as we grapple with similar obstacles and find comfort is similar epiphanies. When I listen to her voice, which doubles and amplifies and enriches mine, I grow. Today, I feel I have everything I could ever need.

The photo above is from the summer (end of January). I packed that painting away and unrolled it today for the first time in six months. When I packed it away, I didn’t like it. Now I see, having unrolled it and liked it today, that I just didn’t like what had happened to me. (From Miranda July’s All Fours: I can’t believe this happened.)

While rearranging, I looked casually through two journals I left open months ago and found a conversation I had with myself from May of 2023, which you can read below.

Sometimes I write in a voice that I later read with awe. The words are inked in my hand but are strange on the tongue. I recognise their source only because I’ve encountered it before, in times of need.

The final paragraph is somewhat premonitory. In July of 2023 and January of 2024, I underwent miscarriages. It is fascinating to go back and see what I was thinking about and grappling with. I think that all the while, we are really the art that is being made.

Happy Saturday ox

Notes for the artist —

How do you make a big thing small?

Listen, for I am well-practiced in this. Pretend not to see or hear or feel it. Deny its connection to you or any involvement with it on your behalf. Call anyone who speaks of it heretic. Scorn, deny, ignore. Listen, the big thing may be made of you, may be you. Your involvement may be indisputable. But these aspects can and will be ignored.

How to make a small thing big?

Bottle it, distil it, harness it, deny it. Yes, the recipes for the two things are similar. No matter what you do, the thing will increase or decrease according to its nature. Our years and powers are limited.

Then, a quote: “I never saved anything for the swim back.” From the film Gattaca by Andrew Niccol.

Let’s be more specific: How do you make a big painting small?

How do you take years of work unmade and harness it into a small piece of plywood? Look, it is not a new question or endeavour. You are in good company. In the company of many.

You must experiment, go big, and fail, in the same small space. You must bring every failure, every experiment, crowd them together until one idea rises above the others. When people say I have no idea, what they mean is, I have many ideas, but I do not know where to begin. You must begin any way, despite the failure and the crowd.

What would you do today if you were not afraid?

What will not be done today, or in a day, so do not try: your problems will not all be solved. You must continue working within this imperfect framework of not enough time and not enough money. But more has been done with less.

Why do you paint?

I like to paint to express something that needs to be outside of my body.

A note from the same day: Today is pre period foggy. I am no good to my practice today except to maybe uncover deeper motivations and problems and see ways through. (In hindsight, this seems like quite significant work that would do a lot of good for a practice). There’s a heaviness begging expression. It could be painted in purples, blacks, reds, maybe a sage green as balm. Heaviness, worry distilling down into blood, in preparation of leaving the body.