Dear Stacey (27 Feb ‘26)
Dear Stacey,
I’ve been writing you letters at night in my brain as I go to sleep. I have so much to tell you sometimes, and so much to say in general but then when I go to put pen to paper or fingers to keys, nothing flows. But here we are and I’m letting my fingers dance on the keyboard and my brain take over. It is sooooo nice to talk to someone about art in this way. I am so glad we started this blog of letters. I feel like I am calling across a bridge to you which is nice and makes art-life seem less lonely. I so enjoyed reading your letter from this morning and rereading it as I uploaded it just now. I am slightly procrastinating from painting time, but sometimes it is good to stop and look at what I’ve worked on this week in the studio.
I have been working on some smaller pieces, studies also (how I resonate with wanting to do huge things but feeling constrained by costs etc) I have been continuing my weaving, and making surfaces to then paint onto. I have a few at the framer’s and I can’t wait to see the vision come to life. I started a new little series of them. Trying to make them all roughly the same size, using old sheets as the weft and warped with red cotton yarn that I thrifted a while ago. I am the bowerbird, always collecting pretty materials to work with or to paint. I have a lovely tray that I recently found and the pattern that is woven on it is seeping into my work. I love the process of working with a new object, I repeat and repeat drawing and painting it until I can see it in my minds eye.
I went for a beautiful swim last week with a group of local girlfriends. We each swim a lot at our local swimming hole but this session all together felt very spiritual and healing, ata least it did for me! Diving in between the reeds and waterlilies in bloom! Shaking off the heat of the week (before that deluge of rain! over the weekend, 57mm here!!!) I nicked some lilies to paint. I know they don’t last long out of their watery home so I work quickly drawing them over and over, then painting them also. I was frenzied! Of course they shriveled and died over night, their fleeting beauty gone, but hopefully I was able to capture their essence and by extension the lovely swim with my ladies.
I feel quite burnt out this week. I have done a lot of social things lately and while I love it, I’m not great in larger groups or having late nights. I have been squirreled away in my studio this week tending my heart and keeping my children bouyant and happy, well fed and lots of cuddle times. I have been reading a lot this month too. A beautiful book that I cherished called Bitter Water Opera by Nicolette Polek has stayed with me. It is loose and tight all at once. Poetic and dreamy. It is my kind of book. If I write a book, which I would like to one day soon, it would take on a similar form. Clipped chapters like snapshots. A more dreamy version of a Helen Garner journal entry would be my comparison…maybe? The book travels to a real place called the Amargosa Opera house in Death Vallery, California. My great grandmother was an opera singer from America so it felt like a nice connection. Anyway, look up the Opera house and it’s story which I don’t want to spoil by giving a brief account of it here because it’s an amazing story!! I mean, anything that exists in a place called Death Valley, California is going to be a treat right?!
I’m starting a book called Graft by Maggie MacKellar tonight with themes a little closer to home. Can’t wait!
Well my dear Stacey, back to the easel for me and a larger piece I am working on. It isn’t working out yet. Feel like I got off on the wrong foot with it and I need it save it!
Big love, Lizzie x
