Making Marks and It's OK
I have been away from a good place for so long. Now as I make amends and try to reconnect, I find that I have brought my fear into my studio. The result is that tentative efforts to work have been woefully far from the free and expressive place that I remembered could fire and consume me. I try too hard, forcing minute concentrations of detail into a twisted tight fist of constraint and control. This is not working and this is not helping. Me. To be free and unselfconscious is the thing. And so today, with graphite blocks and paper of different weight and texture and with anxious brain ignored, I managed to begin again. Let go and make marks. Graphite on paper. Graphite on grainy paper. And wondrously (how could I have forgotten?), graphite on beautiful, old coarse linen. Now I think I might just be able to carry on.