One of the best things about the summer holidays is that they give you a good chunk of time to unwind and slow down. It is not a pause, it is a committed untangling.

So here, at the end of them, I am feeling (for now) very un-crumpled (although I’m back at school this week…so am fully aware of the precarious transience of this momentary un-crumpled experience…)

Another great thing about the holidays is they provide some glorious stretches of time in the studio.

I had some ideas (going in) of what I would be doing in the studio over the break.

However, what I imagined would be happening in my studio was not exactly what ended up happening.

I love surprises…(sarcasm: I do not love surprises…)

I imagined I had almost finished all the artwork for my upcoming exhibition Sun Path at Five Walls Projects.

(My exhibition opens on Friday 10th April! Save the date! More details to come soon…)

I imagined that I would spend the holidays PLAYING in the studio, beginning new explorations, tinkering with new ideas, colours, patterns and materials.

I imagined I would be an intrepid studio explorer, dancing in the fields of creativity, twirling around in wild abandon like some manic pixie artist…

All I needed to do was finish off that last, big painting. Just a few more layers and tweaks…
Oh, hang on. A few more tweaks. If I just change this colour. Or do this.

Just about to come together now…

Nope.

So…turns out my imagination got ahead of me…

After much frustration and futile wrestling, that big painting has been sent to the naughty corner to ponder its (my) failings.

But…BUT.

After finally giving up on that one (for a while at least) I have started a new one.

Slowly. Gradually. Deliberately.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

In hindsight, the failure of that big work has really helped to highlight (read: bash me over the head until I can’t ignore) some clunky tensions between my working process and some of the techniques I’ve been using. Failure at this scale has forced me to rewind back a little, return to first principles (in a sense), and to rethink my systems of working.

The need to overhaul my working process has been gathering for a while. It has been niggling at me since I started exploring textiles and embroidery. My painting systems don’t align with my textiles systems. Do they need to? I don’t know yet. However, I do feel like I’ve used this series of works as a bit of a crucible to test some of these systems and get them in better shape.

So, at the end of these holidays, I’m starting fresh. All the rest of the work for the show IS done and framed and (almost) documented.

I just need to nail this last one. Watch this space…

Despite getting sucked into the vortex of a failing painting, I did do a lot of exploring over the break.

However, the terrain of these explorations has been cognitive and conceptual, not material.

One of the things I keenly lack during the teaching term is mental space and energy. I have physical energy, I can work, I can do manual labour. But my brain is SO FULL. Carving out space for mental play is not impossible, but much more limited.

When this load is removed (as it is at the start of the holidays) I can almost feel my brain, and imagination, expanding, and switching gears. My capacity for thinking, for reading, for linking new ideas, for casting my little cognitive nets into new thought-waters increases tenfold.

So, during the holidays I have been reading (and thinking) ALOT. Not (always) finishing books, but reading across different books as much as straight through them, cross-pollinating and discovering connections between authors and ideas.

It has been FUN.

And now I am chock-full of juicy and interesting ideas to poke around for the next good while.

Notes from the studio

The Grumpy Struggle (and Luminous Solution)