i was listening to bob ross’s ‘happy little zzzs’ last night to get to sleep. it’s a strange new asmr thing on calm’s app to help you drift off. anyway, as i was drifting off, i thought there should be more of my writing in the world again (even if it’s not as good as samantha irby’s judge mathis newsletter) so here we are. thanks bob.

my dream is to see these little snippets of me talking to myself as a conversation starter pack for those wanting small talk at the pub. or those in a GP’s waiting room. unfortunately, we probably won’t hear conversations around contemporary art whilst bumping into mates at the new big tesco on the isle of man, but a girl can dream.

anyway, i thought i’d reflect a little bit on my recent residency at studio umami and chat through some of the pieces that came out of it. this baby here is one of them:

*yet only just above,* 120cm x 120cm, oil and charcoal on canvas, 2024

that’s her finished, final form, she’s done, and i don’t want to work on her any more. there was a point in the residency where a completely wonderful woman (let’s call her jane) would come in (almost) each weekend i was there and say how she felt about what was going on. sensing that she was slightly nervous to chat to me about them, i tried to be as honest and as open as possible. i could tell from the outset that she was excited and very well educated around the arts, and each time she came in, she gave incredibly insightful feedback.

this painting has been through various reiterations, constantly changing because i was never particularly happy with it. i found the movement from bottom right to top left slightly intimidating, and because the canvas was square, it seemed to have the opposite effect and just make it static.

it was a painting around persephone and demeter. they were mother and daughter. being the ancient greek goddess of the harvest, naturally, whenever demeter’s mood changed, usually the weather or seasons did. one day her daughter persephone was dilly-dallying around a field pickin’ flowers an that when she was captured/kidnapped/raped by the god of the underworld - hades. demeter was so sad that her daughter was completely gone that the world plunged into unfruitful and winter-y times. zeus eventually persuaded hades that for the sake of mankind, persephone needed to be let back into the real world with her mother. unfortunately, for some weird underworld/death rule, because persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds whilst captured, she had to spend six months in the underworld, and the remainder with her mother. a compromise! for a kidnapper etc.! that’s how the seasons came to be. winter and autumn = without persephone. spring and summer = with persephone.

anyway, this was my idea when it came to composing this painting. most of my work is very instinctive and reactionary. i’m trying to keep things fresh, raw and responsive. it’s not easy, especially as i’m not really painting the narrative, but embodying it, weaving, threading, building on these women and their stories.

the wonderful woman jane i mentioned earlier grew attached to this piece and when i told her about the story i was working through. she was fascinated as had recently read about it in her book club. so she would come in and look at the state of this painting every so often on my residency, slowly becoming more attached to it. she mentioned that she was peering through the window on a weekday i wasn’t in and saw it had taken a dark turn, and that she got slightly worried about me. she even said that next time she saw me. mood reflects in your work apparently.

to be honest i was struggling with the piece and it had lost a lot of its direction i had initially found. however jane was distraught. she preferred its earlier iteration of itself and was now passionately telling me she needed to be careful about which pieces she liked for fear they may change. distraught may be an understatement. anyway, whilst addressing this with me, i replied by saying i was totally fine, but it was more frustration. it will get better, i reassured her. i talked about a snippet of a poem i had written about the scene, of the relationship between a mother and her daughter, and what that might mean in the reflection of myth, and i couldn’t find a way to work some lettering in the piece. she eventually replied ‘gosh, i really wonder what it’s like to be your mother’.

anyway, it was a bit of a workout piece, this one. eventually i got there, but i do go through various iterations of hating myself for not getting it right.

hope you like it. or don’t (!!). you should tell me!

yet only just above