artist note #10

starting a new series (makes me feel reckless)

So good to have new work to share today! So good to actually be painting properly for the first time since starting this newsletter. As I mentioned on Thursday, the time feels right for a change in direction, even though it's scary. And with it, I’ve been trying a new way of working.

As well as in my sketchbooks, I’ve been making initial experiments on individual sheets of A5 (this stuff, to be precise, which I really like). Each one was done super quickly, probably 20 minutes on average. No overthinking, zero pressure. So. Much. Fun! I had a bunch of stuff in mind before I started but no clear plan; I simply took one element, be it a colour, a shape or even a style of brushstroke and then proceeded to do whatever entered my head. It was so freeing, completely liberating. It was, honestly, so much fun.

The main jumping-off points for this body of work were loose, visible brush strokes, soft organic shapes, stripes, and a palette that revolved around black, off-white, purples, olive green and burnt sienna. Over the course of two days and probably around 9-ish hours, I produced a stack of mini abstracts, of which these nine are among my favourites:

Something I've been thinking about for ages is reducing images to their simplest, most abstract forms. In fact, more than thinking about it, it's something I just do, like an automatic reflex. You know how, if you've been playing a computer game too long, when you close your eyes you can still see the characters running around on the inside of your eyelids? Or when you've been riding a bike, your legs sometimes feel like they're still going round and round when you get into bed at night? It feels something akin to this for me, the way I now automatically look at things and see them as blocks of colour and outlines of shapes, abstracted, simplified and transposed onto a canvas. Most commonly, and probably interestingly, I do this with scenes in films, but also it happened to me the other day with a light shade hanging from the ceiling. It's kind of fascinating to me how my brain has trained itself to do this, and I'd love to know of others who do it too.

Here is an extremely quick and simple, unfinished, example of putting this into practice from last week.

a mask at powell cotton museum in birchington, a place both creepy and fascinating

And this is another one of my favourites, inspired by a chair back.

Some didn't turn out so well, but most have at least the tiniest pleasing detail, which makes them worthwhile, and I could happily continue working in this way for ages. Or at least I could if I wasn't always so frustratingly eager to move on. I think A LOT about this Self Esteem line

… My hunger times my impatience

Makes me feel reckless

I don't think I've ever related to a song lyric more (which was one of the main reasons my dating years were such a shitshow hahahah).

I could feel this on Thursday, when I decided to try transposing some of my most successful pieces onto larger sheets of paper, working them into their finished forms. Immediately, everything started to go wrong: colours didn't mix up how I wanted, I smudged things, took ideas too far, and time and again kept adding to paintings when I knew I should step away and take a break. It really took me out of that wonderful flow state, which, I realise epiphany-like as I write this, wasn't dependent on everything going perfectly or producing the best work - what it took was a lack of pressure, a feeling of spontaneity and curiosity. Also, I think, seeking fresh ways of expressing myself and pushing myself to evolve. That's where my creativity and my happiness thrived. So, how to carry that over from the experimental stage to the more formal one of making a finished piece for an audience? The difference in the process and the outcome was dramatic as I moved from one stage to the other. I'm anxious about recreating the smaller pieces when I know I'll be in a different mental space. I need to trick myself somehow, I guess…?!? I'm really quite stressed out about it, not gonna lie. An option I'm considering is…. maybe I don’t. Maybe these small works are finished and whole as they are, not meant to be replicated or reworked. Maybe it goes against the whole spirit of what they are - free, honest expressions, executed quickly but the result of actual years of absorbing and experimenting.

an example of a painting i much preferred in my sketchbook, even though it’s a matter of details. photographed in my studio (on my bed)

When I did eventually put the paintings away, I could come back in just an hour or two and see them so much more clearly; in some instances, more favourably. But I had to force myself to give the work that space, that absolutely crucial space.

It takes me ages to start and then I can't stop. But both are so important and teach us so much.

I find it almost impossible to switch off when I'm like this (which is why I'm writing most of this in bed at 11 pm). But I am delighted with the progress I've made this week, determined to remember that the shitty paintings are every bit as much a part of that progress as the good ones, happy for the good days and full of relief and excitement that I am finally, hooray, painting again.