Consulting the oracles

conversation with self

It's been a hard month - Loss, illness, and unease

It's been a beautiful month - Conversations, understanding, and alchemy

A creative return 

Consulting the oracles

My hands have moved

Reclaiming stolen property

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

For Brian with gratitude always.

I still shake

Above the old studio sink

Hello Dear Readers, Friday finds us again.

Thank you for spending some time with me in a world that is always pulling at your attention and lifeforce. Last week's post seemed to be a popular one, and I am glad it resonated. 

This hasn't been a great week, but there have still been moments of beauty and laughter, as well as tears. I took time for it all.

I have decided that I must approach things differently. It's once again time to reframe, change, embrace, and accept. Of course, it is always this time unless one is fighting against the very nature of life. I am actually pretty good at doing this - I can be pretty stubborn. I am a fixer and an optimist, a hard worker and much of the time, a black and white thinker. These qualities can serve me well to a point and these traits can also make things harder than necessary. I embrace my hardwired tendencies and breathe into what I can soften and release. 

This week, I walked more and listened to nature's lessons. 

As I think many of you have gathered, my art "career" is not the same as it once was, my feelings and motivations towards it have changed a lot since the pandemic as well as from all I have learned through my involvement with the Scottish Artists Union. I no longer work the same way as I did. Some of this is okay with me and some of it, is not. 

The arts (in all of its forms) was such a huge part of who I was as a child, how I was raised, what I valued and how I perceived my value. I credit art with "rewiring" my brain, giving me a purpose, and helping me make sense of the world and my place in it. Art built my confidence and gave me a shorthand language to help me find others that I could understand and who would understand me. Art supported me emotionally, spiritually, sometimes financially, and gave me a sense of community. 

Most of my friends are artists or in creative fields of practice and many of them have also changed the way they work. We talk about it differently now, in a wistful way. Longing for something that was lost. Back before algorithms, likes, and shares - or back to when likes and shares still equaled opportunities and income. Back before we realised how much all the open calls were costing us, before we realised the labour involved in pursuing speculative opportunities that seemed to generate income for everyone but the artists. Back when we had that hungry energy when we were younger. 

How do we peel it all back and begin again? What systems need creating to make it work? What is the goal now? How do you keep expressing and creating when you are the only audience for your work and your storage space and finances are limited? How do you remain committed to the creative practice when the world seems committed to misunderstanding it and you? 

How do you ignore the pressures of society to protect the tiny flame within?

I think you tell the truth. I think you keep showing up, even if showing up looks different now. I think you keep walking in nature, and realising the value of all things that feed the creative work. I think you get quiet and maybe a little angry. 

And you create to please yourself, to calm, soothe, explore, excavate and exorcise. I think you meditate and cry and limit the bullshit from taking root. 

Why would the path look the same as it did five, ten, or twenty five years ago? It wouldn't. We've changed, the world has changed, the internet has changed, galleries have changed, motivations have changed and this is simply the nature of things. 

Art is the constant, even in fits and starts. From youth to now, I think about it, write about it, talk about it, work around it, create it, cry and worry over it, and feel its exaltation.

I let go of what was, accept what is, and do not fear the future, but I still shake.

A shift in the weather

One day I will dive deeper

It's Friday and here I am. I caught up the past two weeks here on my blog and updated some supporters only images and words over on my Ko-Fi page. I sold some art this week, packed, and happily posted it. I will be doing just a bit more of that tomorrow as one piece needs a special box. I am thankful for my patron's support now more than ever. 

Oh, but the big news from America is that Biden and Harris won the election!!! The results were finally called on Saturday with more votes being counted still to this day. I am relieved and exhausted. I think most of us needed that win more than we realised. 

I looked back on my work over the last several years and more of the work than you might imagine is about number 45 and living under his reign. Art always tells the truth, it's veiled and strange but often more honest and more immediate in exposing my feelings and the feelings of the world than I can comfortably be. One day on here I will dive deeper and we can discuss how his presidency filtered into the work I made. 

In other news, I continue my walking and watch the seasons change. There is a vegan pot pie in the oven for dinner and I am looking forward to catching up with a show I have been enjoying. Everything is slowing down a bit again with the darkness. It was just about to be spring and here we are again. Covid has changed a lot (understatement of the year). I feel I have lost some habits and anchors but I have gained some new ones along with some new dreams, hopefully to be realised soon. I am out of practice in writing and talking about my work just now. That is why this blog and my Tuesday Videos are so important and that is why if I lose step with the routine it is harder to get it back. The rules are different just now, our expectations for ourselves and each other need to be different too. It's still good to remember what is important and what I want to continue to do or return to doing.

I hope soon to be writing deeply about my work but right now I can just show up and say thank you. 

Until next week, take good care. 

Exercises to remember

I got out nine sheets of A2 sized paper this week and just used gesture, colour, and shape to put the ground down on what will become a new series of works on paper. I worked this way on three A3 sheets of paper as well. 

Just a bit of movement to remember again and hopefully jumpstart myself in action. Hope you are staying well. Thanks for dropping by.

Active exploration

This week I decided that I have found myself in a residency of sorts in my own studio. My studio G23 has currently become an incubator. I spend my time in my windowless room, pacing the floor, reading snippets out of art books and watching video clips and interviews from other artists.



I rummage through my supplies and order a few depleted items. I scrawl across brown paper sacks with charcoal and oil pastel, I collage mixed papers onto small canvases, I layer paint onto larger ones.

I draw across dictionary pages, more papers, and another accidental portrait emerges.

I am firmly in between series and returning to my art practice. I am showing up and putting in the time, my hand is in active exploration as it crashes through the different mediums. My experiments are peppered with research and the gentle quelling of the questioning voices in my head.

Right on.

**************

Do you enjoy my blog, my video visits, the paintings I share, or the other content that I provide for free across social media? Consider buying me a cup of coffee in support of my work. I am a member of Ko-fi.com, A friendly way for creators to get paid! Thank you!

To look at you

Tired but pleased

The sun is shining and I am just home from the studio. I want to go out and explore Edinburgh in the sunshine and celebrate a good week of work. But first, there is the matter of my weekly studio blog. So here we go.

This week was all about finishing up some resting pieces and allowing some resting pieces to tell me they were finished. It was full on and truthfully I am pretty worn out but gratefully so. Last week, I shared the first two of my large works in my new series. This Tuesday, I shared my studio video visit where you can see and learn more about what has happened in the studio since then. Here are the latest paintings in the series (pardon my mobile phone shots, proper photos in the near future).

120x100cm

80x80cm

80x80cm

100x150cm

100x120cm

Honestly, when I woke up this morning, I wasn't sure if I had it in me today and thought about taking the day off but then I bought myself a wee gift of an old album I used to have. It was just the ticket and the work got done.

Thank you to everyone who has had a kind word or shared this latest work. It feels really good to be painting in this way again and your support really helps. Okay, there are about two more hours of proper sunlight left in this day and I aim to get out in it! Until next week, keep fighting and for the love of everything holy, remember that every day you paint is a victory.