Recurring themes …
In the midst of change, when no actual physical work is being made, it’s sometimes hard to hold onto feeling like an artist (whatever that is!). That whole art v life/life v art dilemma – it’s so easy to feel deflated about not making work. I’ve used a quote here before from Anne Truitt’s ‘Daybook.’ Her words resonate every time I read them:
‘Experience tells me that it’s best to just give into things –-give up on plans to make any work until the proverbial storm has passed. But that’s all much more easily said than done, as so many artists know – that perpetual nagging feeling about wanting to be making work, versus the feeling that you ought to be somewhere else – a tension around what we should be doing, as opposed to what we want to do.’
Anne Truitt speaks for many artists, women artists and mothers, particularly – telling it like it is in all things associated with life and art – the effort required to find a balance between the two – to excel at both, even.
I went to make a couple of small adjustments to my website yesterday and noticed that it’s a while since I put up any ‘new’ work. I had one of those ‘moments’ – feeling a bit useless, frustrated with myself for not being more productive and so on. But then I reminded myself that emptying out my studio at the end of 2024 and finally making the break to bring my studio space into my home, was a HUGE task. And that’s without mentioning the subsequent cataloguing I undertook, compiling the most up to date record ever of just about every item I now have stored away in a garden shed – over one hundred 30 litre boxes at that!
I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to easily access and pull out just about any item out of thousands. This theory was tested just this past week when I referred to my ‘stuff in boxes’ list, all neatly typed, and was able to easily locate a bunch of powder puffs. Well, I say easily – it still involved a lot of shunting around of boxes to get to them, but I knew where they were, which box they were in and that’s a very good start!
Now that I’m back on track and working hard on another configuration of ‘Fabric of Life’ for an upcoming show – and consequently, distracted from overthinking – l’m looking back at the sheer volume of stuff I’ve moved and reorganised and am feeling inclined to be a little less harsh on myself, cutting myself some slack and commending myself for a lot of hard, physical work. It was indeed, a momentous task – all a necessary part of my working process – and I’m finally starting to reap the rewards and feel the benefit.
