Today marks the return to the studio.
I don't like to feel I have a "September" return because I've found over the years that not coming in regularly inbetween summer travels and trips etc means I lose momentum and struggle to recover lines of enquiry. It takes a good while to feel on top of everything again.
I've tried making notes before I go away of the exact thoughts I'm having before I clean and lock up but it never helps. You'd think it would: some colour notes, an intention that the next step, the next move in a painting is x, and project y needs some sketches and project x needs some photos printing out. But it doesn't help. It seems quite meaningless. I step into the space every single time with a fresh outlook, new eyes on the works in progress and a whole set of brand new decisions to be made.
I can’t begin to decide what to do first, and I waste hours circling boxes of paints and brushes and unpinning resources from the walls and rearranging canvases.
The biggest shock today was walking in and seeing the start of a new piece whose existence was entirely forgotten about. Such a shock. A nice shock, actually. I rather liked what I’d done and managed to forget about. It’s the piece on the right in the photo above. Obviously I haven’t a clue where I planned to take it next: colours, oil stick or brush, wipe out what’s there, obscure areas or move in further…. What was I feeling when the brush took me for a walk across this canvas six weeks ago? Am I the same artist today as I was then?
Time to move forward.
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