Sketchbook Practice.

I have been keeping up a regular sketchbook practice recently, and I have been finding it really helpful in maintaining a sense of momentum and flow within my practice. It has also made my work feel a bit more accessible to me on a day-to-day basis. This became particularly apparent in February when I fell ill with the flu that seems to have been making the rounds recently. It triggered a flare-up with my fibromyalgia that I am still just at the tail end of. Being able to reach for my sketchbook and allow myself a sense of freedom and less pressure with it helped me maintain a connection to my practice. It gave me a way to escape into something I love while also giving myself the space I needed to recover.

It has also been interesting, and revealing, to look at my sketches in light of what I have been learning about art and alexithymia. Research suggests that artists with alexithymia can sometimes feel a strong need to fill the entire canvas or working space. It has been proposed that this may act as a way of regaining a sense of control over feelings, or perhaps as a physical process through which the body works through them.

Across all of my sketches, and in many of my paintings, one constant characteristic is this same urge to completely fill the space. It often feels as though my hand cannot move fast enough for what I am trying to get out. This is an interesting contrast, given that I would also describe my practice as relatively slow. A single painting can often take upwards of thirty hours to complete, even on a medium-sized canvas.

In these sketches I have also been trying to lean more into the intuitive mark-making side of my practice to see how it affects the drawings. I find myself drawn to the energy that this creates. The more abstract and overlapping the marks become, the more energetic the piece begins to feel. It loses a sense of control or confinement, almost as though the elements are clambering over each other and fighting for space.

I am hoping to keep up this habit, as it is proving to be both helpful and generative. The act of sketching often gives me a small pocket of space to think and process things. That has been particularly valuable as we begin to move towards the final stretch of the masters, when the sense of time, and the personal pressure that comes with it, starts to grow.