Such a relief.
Everything has colluded this Christmas to stop me getting into my new room to start work again.
But here I am in my new studio room at last and I have been working again – all day. Over the last week I had become desperate to find the time to begin work. Partly the panic of knowing I have a gallery to fill in June; working as slowly as I do there are no short cuts, partly I just felt well again and more centred. I can’t work if my head space is somewhere else.
It always takes me by surprise how strange it feels to go back into a project that has been left for a couple of months. It is as if it is someone else’s work entirely..
Concentration not helped by the bitterly cold weather. Two jumpers, two scarves and an old oil filled heater at my feet later I finally settled to working properly for a couple of hours at a time.
Now I will have to work on keeping the social diary free day after day…………….
It has taken me all day to re-learn the skills, recall the colours I was using and re connect with my slow pace of advancement. It is like stepping out of one life into a parallel universe. One that I know by experience will, by the end of the week, no longer seem remarkable.
I have however been having a total crisis of confidence while sitting here working. I have been rehearsing in my head all the work done and planned and suddenly things I thought were good seem trite.
By lunchtime I had convinced myself that I had lost my way………..maybe this is good and will result in stronger work. At the moment it feels scary because I have to eventually deliver, I can’t spend a year finding out.
This could be the moment I have to put into practice the phrase ‘I would rather exhibit just one piece I am proud of in an empty gallery than a gallery full of work that I am not sure of……’ I was even sitting here fantasising about scrapping the work I have done and going back to a painting project I planned at college.
Now I just feel tired and battered, but will carry on working as it seems to allow me the time to think and my mind to run free.
It’s just that where previously I felt secure in my plot I seem to have lost it completely!
