Does anyone else out there ever feel like there are just not enough days in a week for studio time and artistic admin, let alone family time and normal domestic chores?
Last spring I wrapped up work at my husband’s business in order to devote myself to my artistic practice wholly. In Axisweb’s December Artist of the Month feature, abstract painter Julie Umerle talks about being in the studio at least four days a week plus one day a week spent at home doing admin. I have been trying to maintain this 1:4 admin to studio day ratio since September (after a holiday in Canada). I am now spending five days a week in the studio, either at home or in residence at Ruthin Craft Centre. I have hit a fantastic studio groove and feel like I am really making strides. This means I am already failing at my 1:4 ratio; I am doing admin at night and trying to fit more in, along with extra artist facilitator work and normal household chores, on my “days off”. I am starting to worry that this is not sustainable; I have worked three jobs before and ended up so exhausted, I made myself nauseous and completely crashed.
So something has to give. My house is not as tidy as it could be, the laundry pile is growing beyond the confines of its basket and I can’t remember the last time I mopped the floor. I was fighting guilt over this when I heard a radio programme recently about composers working on a commission. The lone female interviewee fixated on her guilt over the state of her house during the intense period of work, whereas the men brushed it off and flippantly admitted the washing-up wasn’t done in their homes. This really stood out to me and I started to consider my own guilt in a fresh light. I spoke to my husband about my worries and he laughed, he was unconcerned about any household deterioration and would rather spend time together relaxing. I am consciously trying to release this guilt and have decided my friends and family are more important to me than the dust-bunnies under my bed.
But then there is the problem that intensive time in the studio can really disconnect me from others as I retreat into making and my own headspace. I was really fretting about this until I read a super helpful correspondence between two artists, Kay Lawrence and Lindsay Obermeyer, in which they discussed the difficulty of finding a work/life balance(1). Lawrence advised her friend that it is not necessary to choose one or the other and that it is important to “acknowledge the inter-relatedness of all aspects life.” It is a complex balance and at times artistic practice will take precedence. Additionally, when ones priority becomes other matters in life it does not mean that your practice has been abandoned. This relaxed me so much, at the moment my practice is very heavily taking precedence, I don’t need to feel guilty about this (or the opposite, that this will not always be possible). It is not a choice of one or the other but of balance.
I don’t have all the solutions but I am hopeful balancing will become easier with experience. I can see that guilt does not help the matter and I am determined to not let it take up any of my already stretched time. Writing about it here has helped me to gain a bit of perspective and I hope that equally it is helpful to others.
- Lawrence, Kay and Obermeyer, Lindsay, ‘Voyage: Home is Where We Start From’, in Jefferies, J. (ed), Reinventing Textiles: Volume Two, Gender and Identity (Winchester: Telos Art Publishing, 2001).
