Watercolour detail in progress
I have wanted to write straight back to your last letter but my week got away from me between work, kids, mum taxi life and studio time! As I read it over and over I was saying out loud, “yes and yes and yes I agree!” I love reading about your process too. More of that please!
I have been working on some watercolour pieces today. Some were started a month or two ago, some yesterday and some years ago that I ripped down (I thought about how you are often cropping your boards and I used to cut down etching plates) and now an average work on paper, with the right crop and resulting composition is exciting! I have touched up areas to add more depth with my newer and gorgeous Daniel Smith watercolours I have acquired over the years. Most recently I have bought a few new-to-me colours after spending time in my day job at the Art Shop pondering colours as I label, stocktake or help other artists choose colours for their palettes. Gosh, it is some of the best fun being able to help others find their colours that are uniquely them! Maybe that is how people feel about getting their “Colours” done- the soft Autumn, Warm Summer etc business. I haven’t ever done that because I feel like inherently I like what I like and I hate to be told what to do ;) … is that a visual person thing or a Demand avoidance thing?! Anyway, if you want me to do your “Watercolours” let me know lol!
It’s a gorgeous day today and the roses are in full bloom outside my window. It is an absolute joy to live in the Macedon Ranges now that the weather isn’t so cold, I always get that delirium towards the end of the winter season! I went for a beautiful hike up the little mountain next to Mount Macedon the other morning and it was brisk but gorgeous. All the tiny wildflowers are out and you really have to pause and look (and catch your breath because the incline is brutal!) Some tiny orchids and native daisies and violets. Wondrous!
I have been thinking a lot about my art practice lately and planning for next year. 2027 looks like it will be a busier year than this one has been and I am excited for it. I’m kicking off the year with these watercolours to be included in a Works on paper show at FLG. This past year is the longest time I have not had a solo show and I have to admit I have felt a bit adrift, but if I put it in context of a life it has been an intensely creative time and I have developed some work that feels good, I am happy with it how the works converse with each other and within the broader context of contemporary art… I hope.Getting to know colour and its origins and properties more in depth has really levelled up my painting practice. I love the research side of an art practice, not just the making part.
Speaking of, remember the other day when we were chatting about “Playing to your strengths”, “Flow” and “Pushing one’s practice forward”? I really loved that conversation we had over your kitchen table and followed up with text messages after. We were essentially talking about the difference between pushing yourself, getting uncomfortable with the work, almost like the climb of a hill so to speak, to then find something new and exciting on the other side. And then there is doing what you are good at with repetition so that you can move through something too, and this process can invite flow and it is healing. Is this making sense?! I’m trying to capture it in words rather than in our rambling disjointed messages and in person conversation! And I want to make a record of it here to remind myself that there are many ways to make work for when I am in the future feeling stuck!! See, future Lizzie- all is not lost- you have a toolkit for how to make work. Sometimes we have to make the crappy pictures that years later you’ll rip down to a gem of a work! Or you’ll paint the same jar and jug over and over again as flowers bloom and then wilt and then get replaced and that becomes something interesting too when you look back at all the works progressing.
Like, I think about how when I knit I get better by the act of doing it. In and of itself the process is also meditative, but sometimes I want to bend my brain a bit more and have a “crunchy” pattern to get my teeth into and I learn new skills and “level up” as my kids say! Anyway, I think I am doing a bit of both at the moment. I am working through a lot of big feelings to try to get the work to be more interesting and that has needed the time.
I think especially within the genre of still life where there is a lot of work that tends to look similar (I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing but it tends to get a bad wrap I have noticed) it is maybe important to push forward constantly… I am thinking about how the whole genre of still life came to be anyway… It was a playground essentially for artists to work on technique and skills before working on their larger, more complex works. And then it becomes a genre in its own right and equally as important.
Sometimes I ask myself, why still still-life, and the answer is I just can’t seem to tear myself away from the forms, the interesting compositions, the colour, interlocking shapes and complex angles, the repetition, the conversations between each painting with each other. Its like a good novel, I’m in it and I am not done with it and probably won’t be for a long time. But that said I have been drawing a lot outside lately and enjoying my life drawing sessions too. It’s a long life and a beautifully creative one. How lucky we are to get to live this life.
Big love,
Lizzie
And now some knitting time!
Studio rearrange and roses.
In the studio
Wildflowers on Mount Towrong
View from Mount Towrong
Up close on the hiking trail
Dianella
Details work in progress watercolour and pencil on paper
Homegrown strawberries