Newsletter June 2023

Last week I finished a new painting. It has been a while in the making, and I thought the newsletter could function as a place to go a bit more in depth about the thoughts, ups and downs and overall process behind the work. 

THE SEED

The initial idea came from another painting that I made in November last year. It was for an exhibition in London, at Gillian Jason Gallery. The name and theme of the exhibition was “Hysteria”. I was quite intrigued by the theme and the historic elements to it. How hysteria throughout history has been considered a “Womans disease” closely linked to the condition of the uterus, with some quite creative and disturbing connections between moodswings and the female anatomy. 

I wanted to convey the feeling of being a vessel for erratic and uncomfortable emotions. After some drafting and brainstorming, the idea of a woman holding a small glass vase containing uncontrollable thistles came up.

Unfortunately, the painting was shipped off during christmas time, and something went wrong with the UPS delivery, so it never arrived at the exhibition.

THE SPROUT

While painting the Hysteria painting, something magical happened. I got pregnant. A new type of seed was planted and an unknown plant was growing inside.

Thistles turned into big pillowy flowers, spring arrived and everything felt light and sweet. Like a long blissful wait for something to bloom.

With watercolour already being a very ethereal and delicate medium to work with, painting a subject which was also so soft and feminine almost felt like too much. Like eating cotton-candy while being hugged by a fairytale unicorn. Like a slightly too one-dimensional way of depicting something as multi-facetted as pregnancy. This was one of the constant doubts that kept coming up until I reached some kind of acceptance that this is just how it is now, and the more brutal aspects can be saved for other paintings.

After a couple of weeks, I had been working so much on the painting that I was becoming blind to it. I did not see that something was wrong with the figure's head, until my boyfriend pointed it out to me. At this point I gave up and left the painting with no desire to ever look at it again. maybe hormones, maybe hysteria, maybe just the compulsory lowpoint of the creative process.

It took a month's worth of other failed projects, before I decided that maybe it wasn’t that bad, and tried again.I decided to turn the head around to make the figure feel more present. Finally things started coming together, the way that they often do in the end. I watched a youtube video by Miles Johnston talking about the power of not rushing, which I can only recommend to all artists struggling with keeping up with the pace of society while trying to make quality work and enjoying the process. 

So that's that. The painting is done and it's on to the next one. And in a few months, on to unknown territories of being a parent with joys and worries that I know nothing about, but am told are never-ending. Hopefully there will also be time for painting. Maybe it will be all flowers and kids' paintings from then on. I hope not, but who knows?

If you made it all the way to the end - Thank you for reading and have a great June!

 

All the best,

Esther