It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve been in my studio for most of the day, now at 4 pm the heater just isn’t cutting it and there’s a chill in my normally very cosy little shed. I’m cold and frustrated with today’s progress (none) so I’ve headed inside to write to you. I’m back into chai tea, the smell of it brewing takes me straight back to my first share house when I was 19, a big pot of chai was often on the stove, the house filled with the spicy aroma. What is it about smell that makes memory so vivid? Anyway, I digress, but now I’m warm in my woolly shawl, with tea…hello.

So, the day in my studio, hmm, I’m now looking at the paintings I am working on for my next show and wondering if in fact, they need to be sanded off. What happened? Was I too in my head, distracted by other things? I didn’t put my full palette down, or mix my chalk white, or light my calming oil, instead, I just launched in without the usual rituals, sloshing too much medium around the palette, thinking that the faster I went maybe something amazing might happen, but it never does when I’m not giving the work the care in needs. Just like life maybe? How much is our art is reflection of us, of our personalities? Someone told me that my painting was “in my gentle voice”. That made me so happy, that someone should acknowledge that gentle and quiet are qualities to be celebrated. I had an experience once during a parent teacher interview where the rather scary overbearing French teacher said that my eldest daughter was “too quiet”. I knew what she was saying, that my daughter needed to participate more in class, speak more French basically, but all I heard was “too quiet”. Well in a rare display of my not so quiet voice, I went on a teary rant about how it was alright to be quiet, “imagine a world full of extroverts”??, and on and on I went, very much to the horror of my “quiet” daughter. Where am I going with this? Yesterday’s paintings were not handled with care, it was not a gentle voice speaking, it was my head full of panic about deadlines and other commitments, it was inauthentic, and the result is work that I know must go. When you know you know. Maybe when things don’t go so well, it’s an opportunity to remind ourselves about the approach we want to take, how going back to basics and taking things slowly might be better (for some). So, I’ll go back and light my oil burner and lay out my palette and sit in my comfy chair and pick up my knitting while I think about the work, then I’ll start in my sketchbook and then when I start painting, and I’ll go a little easier with the medium and let my quiet voice come through.

It’s been a month since I got home from London. My show in Berlin has finished, it went “ok”, as I keep telling anyone who asks. There were incredibly wonderful moments in Berlin, when I first saw my paintings though the gallery window, an absolute highlight but it’s so hard not to focus on work selling and that then goes hand in hand with feeling unsure about where I stand with the gallery going forward. The days of sell out shows feels very over. On a positive note, three of my paintings are now hanging in a beautiful apartment in Paris, and I am very grateful to a generous collector. So, a mixed experience I guess but as I’m writing to you the gravity of the Parisian collector has finally hit me and for the for the first time since the show finished, I do feel a sense of accomplishment…we are so hard on ourselves.

This letter is getting long, I’m very much looking forward to seeing you in person in a few weeks. I haven’t been reading that much but I’m loving Sally Mann’s book. I have been knitting a lot, The Sheep and Wool Show is approaching and as you know, new knitted garments must be worn! I picked up some really great books in the UK, mostly second hand. Do you know the work of Mary Potter? Another mid-century British painter, her work is so soft and gentle. I have the book open while I’m painting, is it ok to do that, look at other people’s work while we paint? I guess it’s just inspiration and maybe also a reminder of how I want to paint…quietly and gently.

X Stacey

Knitting // MR Gallery // William Scott Book open // Sketchbook

Dear Lizzie (29 June ‘26),

Dear Stacey (25 May ‘26),