Layby: how some of the best art collections in the world have been made.
When I was a child and upset, I’d rub the fabric of a blanket between my finger and thumb. It gave me such comfort. I’d do it if I was sad or scared, sick or in hospital for an operation. I particularly liked the ones with satin edging at the top - the smooth feeling contrasted with the rough of the blanket gave me particular pleasure. Gave me something beautiful to hold on to.
Read MoreWoke up this morning feeling like I was all in pieces on the floor, like I was grieving something I couldn't name.
Today's been an excercise in making like Humpty Dumpty and putting myself together again.
I dig kintsugi, the Japanese art where you take pottery that is fractured and broken and repair it, making it stronger and more beautiful than what it was before.
I'm kintsugi-ing the fck out of myself right now.
Kintsugi : This unique method celebrates each artifact’s unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. In fact, Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with a new look and giving it a second life.
[Kintsugi 2020 is availalbe as a limited edition studioprint]
Been trying so hard to hold on to who I was before. How I did things before. But, in so many ways, “before” no longer matters.
Read MoreReturn to the centre.
At the centre is you.
[Return to the centre, 2020 is available as a limited edition studioprint]
That’s what this lockdown is.
Parentheses.
There’s a life before, a life after, and right now we’re inside the brackets, existing in a slow limbo.
Read MoreIt’s been an excellent and fairly lazy Sunday. Reading. A long and beautiful walk. Excellent food. A couple of hours watching Succession on Netflix. Always in the background though, behind the day-to-day activity, my mind/heart/gut is working on the very necessary re-imagining of what my life, art, business is going to look like now in this suddenly-changed world of ours.
Read MoreI have always loved my bed.
Sleeping is one of my talents.
99% of the time
I find bed to be a place of great comfort,
healing and deep rest.
Lately I've been enjoying our bed just as much.
To wake up in love is joyful.
Today we got up at 1pm.
Why not? It's Saturday.
Books. Coffee. Discussion. Kisses. Cats.
It was delightful.
And slightly wicked.
Because it was sunshine-y in Wellington
and to be in bed
in Wellington-on-a-good-day
is pretty much a sin.
Of course
being slightly wicked
made the morning in bed
even better.
Finding innocuous ways
to transgress
during a time
of such necessary good behaviour
is vital.
Don't you think?
[And so to bed, 2020 is available as a limited edition studio print]
Because right now this is the only thing that matters, eh.
Read MoreThis one’s for all of you not doing okay.
Those of you who are not, right now: doing yoga, making exceptional plans for the future, doing brilliant WFH, home-schooling your child with ease and grace, soaking up the lazy hazy days of this slowed-down, sweet lockdown life.
For some of you, life right now will be brutal. Difficult. Very very dark. For some of you, some of the time, you’ll feel like you’re in a blood tangle on the floor, trapped inside the nightmare box of your spiralling-downward thoughts.
I just wanted to say: I see you. I’ve been there. I understand. And I’m sorry.
Find whatever/whoever it is that pulls you out of the darkness, whatever it is that helps you see the flicker of light when you’re down deep in that fcking well, and hold onto it for dear life.,
and this too will pass.
Read MoreA lovely woman, T, messaged me today, thanking me for these wee daily artworks I’m posting, telling me they’re helping her face each day. Each day in which, at the moment, she has “this consuming feeling of sadness” which she feels like is smothering her.
This - edited -was my response:
“…and it’s so natural that you feel overwhelming sadness - there’s so much global collective grief right now. I think the way forward is to walk the line between acknowledging our grief/trauma/emotions, and not getting lost in it.
Read More