Hi, it's Thursday again! Hope you're having a good week so far! The stuff I was originally going to tell you about today, I realised would be better suited to Sunday’s longer ‘artist note’ (it's a continuation of last week's piece about the ideas in Art Monsters; specifically, how it's borne out in practice in my work this week). So, instead, I thought I would share some things by other people, in the form of links, quotes and recs (and maybe make this a regular-ish feature).
"Smooth as butter.” In the latest edition of Subtle Manoeuvres,
talked about mantras. Like Currey, I am a mantra-sceptic, but I did find this interesting. But then, his newsletter is a winner every time. Like Currey’s Daily Rituals books, it’s concerned with creative routines, which I’m always up for reading about.“If you scratch any interesting artist, you’ll hear that one of the key components to how they do it is that they don’t really know what they’re doing.” Paul McCartney on his songwriting process.
Annoyingly, I didn't record where I read this quote and in the normal run of things I couldn't care less about Paul McCartney, but I do always love to hear about it when other people don't know what they're doing either. I think the word “interesting” is really important in that quote.
The Instagram feed of art critic and writer, Hettie Judah - a recent follow of mine that has led me to some fascinating art and artists.
This review of Laura Cumming’s new book, Thunderclap, about the Dutch golden age of art, which made me immediately reserve it at the library.
Wanna show you my new storage box!
It's this one. Having all of my tubes of gouache laid out like this is soooo nice. It's not like it comes as a surprise to me that having your materials stored properly, so they're organised and accessible, is a good idea, but… I definitely should have done it sooner.
I am very, very drawn to monochrome artworks at the moment. Three favourites:
One of my favourite writers,
was interviewed for The Creative Independent a while back, and I particularly loved this part about life's ebbs and flows:You’ll have times when your career’s going really well and this goes for friendships or relationships, your social world, your hobbies, your sense of self. Any pillar of your life will just constantly be cycling through ebbs and flows. Comparing yourself with your peers is often futile because you’re bound to be in different parts of the cycle at different times. And so when you are down and your friend is up, inevitably that will invert at some point. And so focusing on getting through your own process is much more useful. It helped me appreciate that there wasn’t sort of a goal, it was more just like, “How do I learn to breathe through the ebbs and flows of my life? How do I appreciate the cyclical process of feeling grounded and certain in where I am and then feeling ungrounded and uncertain about what I want?” And then finding it again and figuring out who I am through that repetitive process
Applies to creative projects specifically as much as the whole of life generally.
This piece is also not brand new but very good - Katy Hessel’s essay for her The Great Women Artists Substack, on sitting for Chantal Joffe.
I'm passionate about abstract art, but I do wish I had more of an aptitude for figurative painting. Decided to stop being a coward about it and try and, you know, learn. There are lots of books like the following out there, but a lot of them look dated and the examples are ugly. I was lucky to come across this, and its predecessor, in the library.
The instructions are super clear and there are some fetching exercises - stuff I actually want to paint. These two didn't take me long at all, and I can't tell you how clever I felt! 🤣
Although, I have just realised I need to make the pawn's neck thicker. I also painted a pop tart (!) but that didn't turn out so well. Gonna retry it and then do a fried egg on toast.
This quote from Vincent Van Gogh was sent to me by an IG friend after I was sulking about how much painting sucked / I sucked at painting last week 🙃
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
I think sometimes you need to paint on through and other times you need to step away and take a break, but it’s true that there's only one way you're going to convince yourself, however briefly lol, that you can produce good work. As Sol LeWitt said… just DO
Have you read / seen / heard any thing art-related (or otherwise!) that you'd like to share? Would love to hear about it!
Otherwise, see you on Sunday for ‘artist note’ #11 - as mentioned above, it's about how I've been using what I took away from Art Monsters, and that glorious Sol LeWitt letter, in my current work.