Diary Entries; The Space in Between Painting

2025

A5 cardboard folder, printed text on paper (from studio diaries), sketch reproductions on tracing paper and coloured paper (from sketchbooks), pencil notes and lines, photographs

8 original copies

STATEMENT OF INTENT

This is a text about my process, the space between painting. It collects fragments from my notebooks, documenting the development of bringing a piece into existence.

Birthing can be difficult: stagnant, emotional, frustrating, demanding, draining. Writing this is difficult. So why do it? Does it bring me pleasure?
Because I love the smell of oil paint, the feel of pigments mixing with my fingers. Because of those moments—often brief—when something unlocks, when things happen almost by themselves, when it becomes like unconscious muscle memory. Seeing the work build up through me: big, fleshy female bodies, appearing through brushstrokes of destruction and care. Looking at the work of others, becoming so consumed by it it makes my own work crumble.

I take notes in the studio, on the train, in bed, at exhibitions, abroad, when talking with friends, when I am frustrated, inspired, searching for something, when I grieve.

These notes are scripts for new works, and for works that never came to exist. They are purely about painting, diary entries, reflections, transcribed dreams. Some words and ideas repeat endlessly, while others come and go, only to be forgotten almost immediately.
I approach writing as I approach sketching and painting: constantly oscillating between the defined and the less defined. The texts exist at various stages of reworking—some entirely raw, others developed through layers of aestheticization.

They are texts about not being able to start painting. The more I try to begin, the more the process opens up and delays itself. There is no clear beginning or end, no linearity, because thinking and feeling are not linear.
Each text flows into the next, impossible to isolate—just as it’s impossible to isolate the organs of the body. The process, like the body, is fragmented—an ungraspable entirety, yet all its parts correlate to create a complex organism.
Imagine these writings as tracing the contours of a figure—an expanding, breathing text. Ultimately, the process moves through the body.

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