studio, august
Earlier in the summer I took down all the drawings that didn’t feel right anymore. I left up all the drawings that I still wanted to learn from. Sometimes I would walk in and hate them all, but I tried to stick with my original editing choices. Many days I didn’t come in because I didn’t want to look at any of them anymore. I did my work at home. I went from a visually inspired winter and early spring to being frozen just as the ground thawed.
Lately I’ve forced myself to start coming back to the studio daily instead of hiding out writing on my porch. I have a writing desk here, up in a sort-of loft surrounded by three windows, and that’s where I spend most of my non-family time. At first none of the drawings spoke to me. I brought curtains from home, considering separating the two spaces, maybe painting the writing space a different color, but I never hung the curtains. I did turn my writing desk away from the room.
But slowly the drawings have been opening up. I see moments that I love to look at and line qualities that teach me. I see where I want to move forward, and I see what is not currently necessary. The moments that excite me are usually more mysterious, less directly derivitive of the object I’ve drawn. Most of the color is stripped, though there are moments of color that I love. There’s one drawing of circles with different shades of blue, and probably no one else would look at it twice. It is easier to love tons of other things in this world. But that blue one I don’t want to take off my wall.
Yesterday I brought small pieces of drawing paper and ink up to my writing desk. Just to see what my hands learn in late summer.
