On top of the work I am making for myself for the Art Gallery newsletter (of which I'm not sure how inspired I am by the name I think I need to change it) I have decided to start a more personal newsletter. I went back through my notes app which is always fun as an ex-stoner with ADHD, and found my original brain storming for before the birth of my Substack. Along with listicles of ideas and how I would execute them, I spotted a small 'Personal Artistic Practice, and remembered, again ex-stoner, ADHD, that I intended to lay out a journal formatted messy update to my practice. Why is this interesting to the viewer/reader? Perhaps it isn't, but since my new obsessions closely follow her predecessor, a record of where I have been might be at least beneficial to me and by writing it out it may even assist the development of it all further.
Enough fluff for now, this year I took on the mindset that my day job is, in-fact, my 'side gig'. In reality it makes all the money, it exposes me to training, development, a career that can give me some kind of longevity so that I may work to live forever, anyway! And this has brought to to apply myself a bit more seriously, attend shows, forums, workshops, write reviews and workshops and realise just how consistent and outgoing you need to be to be seen. I'm off topic but this segue was meant to bring me to my competition piece that was highly experimental for me. Initially it brought about working through narrative, the process looked like this- paint, write what you do or don’t see, paint, write and so on and see what comes of it. This left me in a meditative state staring at my 1 metre by 1 metre canvas and wishing I could tear it open and crawl inside, visceral. But the content (and I don't quite mean YouTube and social media, but books, poems and theology) I was consuming (relevant) was about hell (theologically speaking)! Nevertheless the ground I built up was muddy, highly textured, I used paint brushes and palette knives and my bare hands. I'll insert the first piece of writing that came from this process here:
Day One_
Devastatingly far from the wet in which you lay, structures of rigid make inhabit the horizon. Pain danced through your eyes and your head as you try to blink away the vertigo pulling you back into the muck. Thick, slick like oil reflected colours of red-brown and brackish-grey of the expanse that looms above. You crane your neck, akin to the creaky hinges of a door to an old house. Your vision is still blurry, blinking…
Anyway this is a process I want to revisit particularly on a collaborative basis with a writer, or artist!
Thank you for your curiousity dear reader_
Loved reading this 😍👏