Reflections On My Third 1-2-1.
The third 1-2-1 comes as we near the end of the first academic year, with the summer break just around the corner in late June. It’s astounding to look back at how much we’ve done and how much I’ve grown over the past seven months since starting this course. I’ve grown in confidence and am beginning to find my voice, feeling more comfortable in who I am, both artistically and more broadly. This course has pushed me to confront things I’d either forgotten or tried to forget about my past - from old misconceptions at school around my writing and art practice, to a deeper fear of being perceived. That fear was rooted in hiding the truest version of myself, more out of survival than choice.
It’s also helped me begin a dialogue with my illness, giving me the language and space to understand what it is and where it sits in my life.
One of the things we touched on during the 1-2-1 was how I’ve found making time for my practice and the course since we began, and how this has shifted across the past several months. I’ll admit that at the start, I had a plan in mind - what I’d do each week, how much time each day I’d dedicate to my practice. But, as with all best laid plans, life got in the way. What I’ve found, though, is the importance of being kinder to myself - doing what I can, when I can. I don’t need to finish a full painting every week. Even a sketch or a few brushstrokes helps me maintain momentum and keep moving forward.
More recently, I’ve been trying to reprioritise my practice. Rather than being the first thing to fall off the list, I’m placing it much closer to the top. With fibromyalgia, I know how important it is to manage my energy carefully. If I leave my art practice until the end of the day, the chances of having anything energy left is slim. But if I give it space before the dishes or something else, not only am I creating, but I’m giving myself something back - a moment that belongs to me.
We also spoke about how my practice has been going recently and the direction it seems to be taking. After the interim show in March, I hit a bit of a slump. I wasn’t sure what to create next, and honestly, I didn’t have the energy either - there was a lot going on with doctors’ appointments and trying to get things sorted out. But in May, I started using my sketchbook again - small, quick sketches, playing with ideas and revisiting old photos I’d taken in different places. Lately I’ve been focusing on snags and altered trees, which ties into the research I’m doing for my paper. It’s been a good reminder that even something small each day can build into something meaningful, even if you don’t know what that is at the start.
I want to keep going with these daily(ish) sketches because they’ve really helped me get unstuck. I’ve even started my first painting since March, returning to my old canvas boards to try and get back into that flow. As a next step, I’ve been thinking more seriously about trying out plywood or some kind of wooden sheet material as a canvas - which we talked about in the 1-2-1 - and doing a series with different levels of primer to see how the ink interacts with the surface, from raw wood to fully primed.
I also want to keep working at a larger scale, as much as my space allows. It’s in the larger pieces that I feel the ethereal, dreamlike memoryscapes really come to life. While the smaller paintings carry a certain intensity and immediacy, the larger ones hold a different kind of energy - one I want to explore further.
We also discussed experimenting with sanding the plywood to create ripples or textures in the surface and seeing how the ink reacts to that. I’m really keen to make a series of these wooden pieces soon. The wallpaper has been great - a way to experiment with scale while reducing the fear and risk - but I feel ready to take it to the next level now.
