Life is weather, life is meals
Back from a short break // studio updates // thoughts on having an art "style"
I wrote no newsletters last month, partly because I had nothing to show or say, but mostly because I barely had any headspace. My first half of February was written off for family gatherings, and for the latter half I was getting some much needed R&R in Edinburgh. After all that running around my mind needed some time to recalibrate, so it felt appropriate to take a little break — but now I’m back in London and back in business!
I hope that these next few months give space for more painting, more thinking, and most importantly, more calm. I’ve recently moved into a studio, which is already doing me wonders on this front.
I share this studio floor with 3 other wonderful artists, Abi Palmer, Leily Moghtader Mojdehi and Poppy Driver. Here is how my little corner is coming along.
Is it too earnest to say that it feels a little bit emotional to have a studio space of my own? It’s the first one I’ve had outside of an educational setting and my inner child feels giddy that I’ve given myself the gift of getting to sprawl out creatively.
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I’ve been thinking lately that when I paint, some part of me is trying to emulate what I think of as my “style” — and I’ve been wondering if I’m limiting myself by holding my work to a specific visual look. I’m wondering if I should instead be actively exploring new avenues — new subject matter, new ways of laying down paint, new materials. Start a new project afresh, rather than extending my last body of work.
But I think at this stage of my life, it’s more important to me that I work prolifically to build my confidence, than to work experimentally and suffer from the trials. Besides, I know that in small ways I am still developing my work. I’m always making miniscule changes to my practice — to name a few, I’m recently adding new colours to my palette, I’m thinking about using texture paste, wax and tissue paper underneath paint, I’m thinking about scaling up — in time these will all compound into a more noticeable shift.
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Things I’m exploring this month:
Pulling narratives from accidental charcoal marks
Today I discovered the word pareidolia, meaning ‘the psychological phenomenon where we see recognizable shapes in clouds, rock formations, or otherwise unrelated objects or data.’
It’s a word that really rings true for my painting process — I’m always searching speculatively for answers in the work, pulling out shapes and making meaning out of them. I’ve recently started extending this approach with charcoal drawings too, glimpsing figures and plants and animals from smudges, like a cloud watcher forms stories from the sky.
Painting with lines
I’ve been trying to use my paintbrush like a pencil, focusing more on making marks than blocking in big shapes.
Letting reading inspire ideas
I am currently loving Light Years by James Salter. I have never encountered a writer that strikes at the core of a feeling as precisely as Salter does. He doesn’t make very obvious choices with his descriptions; I’m often caught off guard by the specificity of his imagery. It’s very painterly (!!)
It was only after reading this comment by The Biblioracle Recommends that I registered that the plot of Light Years is actually quite boring — but the writing is everything.
You can read a collection of my favourite quotes I’ve read so far below. They’ve been sparking ideas for new works:
“WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back.”
“Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.
And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.”
“DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was like a cathedral where, amid the serenity, something is false, the saints are made of florist’s wax, the organ has been gutted.”
“LIFE IS WEATHER. LIFE IS MEALS.”
That last one — ‘Life is weather. Life is meals’ — has been running through my mind non-stop; London’s mercurial weather and cooking good food are two things that have been making me feel very grounded as of late. It’s been a good start to March.