Our coffee machine is in our basement and I go down there to make a coffee for each of us at around 10am each day. It’s a ritual that stabilizes and warms.
Our shared art making space is also in the basement. We both make things elsewhere but most of my drawings happen a few feet away from the coffee machine. I have never been as good at instilling the same ritual and rhythm into my making. I will have periods where I make something everyday and then I stop and it takes some intention and even effort to start again.
I’ve been in one of those “dry” periods for a while. We were caring for Molly and then we lost her and in that I couldn’t find what was useful or important about making drawings.
Most of my drawings don’t go anywhere. They stay in the basement. Many may travel digitally to screens here and there and I don’t discount what that can mean. I have benefited and connected with many artists’ work solely through a computer or phone screen. I don’t want to engage in denigrating or negating my work simply because the majority of it stays physically here with me.
The lines, marks, shapes, and words I make stay with me but also move away from me. Art making is sometimes about pushing things away and sometimes about pulling things back in.
Over the last few days, while making coffee, I have gone over to my art table and made a few lines or dragged some paint around on a single drawing in my “red book” project book. For many people, visiting and revisiting a single drawing in process would be normal but for me, I tend to finish drawings in single sittings.
But right now I find that my capacity tells me that the way back is to just start a line on one day and continue it on the next. I need to take the time to breathe and feel and cry and know and the lines don’t care when they start and end.
The heart beats second to second and the days continue one to the next. We can’t tell the heart how to beat and our days are just shaped out of light and dark each one different in a similar box.
I made a coffee. I drew lines with red pencil and pasted down a scrap of gridded paper. I spoke with my partner. I wrote these words on my phone.
Life continues sadly and wonderfully with grief and joy in ebbs and flows.