Studio rearrange and watercolours in progress.

(12 May ‘26) I miss you so much!! I wanted to just start a letter and have it on the go because so many questions, things are swirling around my head and I wanted to catch them before they floated away.

I have been thinking about “Making Art” a lot this week. I have been listening to a lot of the Creative Kind podcast (which I am loving and can’t believe I am so late to finding) and reading Sally Mann’s new book Art Work - Notes on a Creative Life. And it helps to remind me why I do this thing that sometimes makes a pittance of income, takes so much time and effort. And the answer is I HAVE NO CHOICE! I was born this way!

I’ve been thinking about what Mann writes about in regards to memory and I think my memory is mostly in images (my conversational memory is blank these days). I am constantly translating experience into artworks and translating ideas in my mind into how I would express them as a painting, a print, sculpture, textile work. I only realised I do this as I read her words. Right now I sit at the kitchen table with Miss B home from school and she is talking quietly to herself working on a novel she is writing and I am glancing at the flowers picked from the garden and the long slanted light from the kitchen windows across the Persian rug on the floor. And I start thinking “The feeling in my chest, how does this all translate into the painting”. I will pause to sketch it out. My journal is like another limb that I carry around with me with all these thoughts and ideas as sketches.

I have been thinking again about what we chatted about in the last few letters “contributing to family finances” and a part of me thinks, maybe getting a retail job again is the answer, but honestly I can’t see where it would fit into our busy lives?! Who would pick up the kids from kinder and the bus? Who would do the soccer run?! Because Mr B works in the city many days of the week so the role naturally falls to me. Mostly I don’t mind, I am highly organised and motivated and I can fit a lot into a small amount of time, but it’s soul destroying when you finally find your flow and the alarm sounds to go meet the bus. And I know I am not alone. Reading Sally Mann’s book has been reassuring and clarifying. She did it, as have many others also.

xx

Dear Stacey Monday 25th May 2026

I’m in bed with my period and a sore throat (editing me chiming in here- I have glandular fever it turns out!) I feel a bit miserable, but I’ve set myself up either sketchbook, books to read, knitting and laptop, but I thought I would write an actual letter to you- rather than just typed up.

I think you’ll be flying back from the UK today which is wild to think about! I hope you travel sage and finish knitting on your Matisse inspired socks! I’ve been inspired to pick up my sock knitting again too.

I went into my gallery on Friday to chat with C. She’s keen to get some works on papering which I’m excited to curate a little collection to take in. You know how much I love to make watercolours, oil pastels and drawings on paper. I love the looseness and freshness of works on paper.

I finished reading Art Work by Sally Mann which I think every artist should read because she has so many nuggets of golden advice. It’s things I know, but to have it validated by an artist who is so well respected, who has seen and done it before us, you know?!

Mann writes about about memory in the most interesting way- ( touched on this in the letter I started above). As you know, it’s a topic that I ruminate on a lot especially with a family member suffering from Alzheimer’s and Dementia. I’ve always lamented that I can no longer recall conversation so well but I can remember every details of the setting of a conversation. It’s a visual memory rather than an audible memory. I remember the feeling and sometimes that is jogged by listening to music I had on rotation in my life and space at the time. Mann writes, “my memories are spotty and whimsical, some elements showing up in vivid details, others receding… in which certain colours fade over the years, leaving others- often wrongly- predominant. And within that tapestry are great lacunae, gaps in my part where the threads fray and disappear.” I resonate with this so much. And I love her metaphor of a tapestry, because I not only think in images I also think in textiles as I know you do too!

Mann also writes about letter writing and how her letters to her long time friend Ted Orland were very important. A swelling in my heart leaves me feeling warmed that writing to you about our art practices is super important. One last thing to mention about Sally Mann’s book, is she writes about the juggle of motherhood and her art practice and again it is super validating to hear that, yes I’m in a really difficult phase of balancing being a mother - attentive, holding space, keeping everyone fed and then also being an artist and giving my creative desires, drives needs the full attention it requires also. I know you feel these things too.

Life has been so full the last week with birthdays in our family, sports and other extra curricular activities plus illness. I’m hoping this week ahead is lighter so I can attend my creative pursuits as I now have a date for my solo show next year so the cogs begin to whir and grind imagining what that work will be. I’ve been sketching my little heart out and will continue to do so over the next month and hope the threads of something start to fill in the tapestry (to refer back to the tapestry metaphor here!!)

I love this quote from Art Work also, “Artists really get down to the business of making their art when it is more painful to not make it than to make it.”

Isn’t that the truth?!

Anyway, I’m so glad I bought the book because it wasn’t cheap, but I know I will revisit it time and time again (As I do with Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke). And now to read Martin Gayford’s “How Painting Happens (And Why It Matters)” which I coveted since it came out and B bought me for our wedding anniversary last week!

Oh I forgot to tell you, I almost finished painting the little Garden Studio or as the kids say “Mum’s cubby house” I used a colour called Banksia Leaf Green and then cut a banksia from the garden to put on the makeshift table I set up in there. It’s such a a lovely little space and the birdsong and little square-pane windows opened is so pleasant. I’m sure some paintings and prints will get made out there because you know what they say “change is as good as a holiday!” Which reminds me it’s probably time to rearrange my studio which I often do before a new body of work so that things feel different and new. Maybe I will repaint the back wall. Pink perhaps?!