Oops I forgot to send out my newsletter | #11
A day late - but better than never!
Hey friends, it finally happened.
My plan was to send a newsletter out every fortnight on a Wednesday, and yesterday I didn’t. It wasn’t that I ran out of time or got stuck, I simply hadn’t put it in my calendar and forgot!
In the past, I’d have flagellated myself for this but today when I realised this, I thought ‘Why not get around it it at some point today?’
Before diving in, here are my latest works (last one is unfinished):
This week I wanted to share musings I have across art and living:
On Art
Last week I went to four exhibitions! That is a lot of art in one week. On Tuesday, my friend Max and I saw Life Is More Important Than Art at the Whitechapel Gallery. It was a group show exploring the ‘intersection of art and everyday life and the role of the contemporary art institution at a time of uncertainty and change.’ My favourite was a series of paintings called Interiors from Matthew Krishanu exploring the life and death of his partner. It evoked a lot of emotions in me to see the impermanence of our lives and the inevitability of ageing.
My oil painting teacher, Clare Haward, had her works up at the New English Art Club Annual Exhibition at Mall Galleries amongst 400 paintings. I went with a few friends and at one point we played a game where we could choose to buy a number of paintings with a £2000 budget. We all loved the middle one below! I think it was something about the orange and the composition that drew us in:
An artist I know, Eddie had his graduate show at City and Guilds where his main piece was a blue tiger done in egg tempera:
I also went to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibit where my friend Rosa and I saw over 1500 different art pieces — a bit exhausting! Some of the ones that caught my eye:
The reflection I had from this week of seeing art is this: when I was at business school, we were taught to assess the landscape and look for the opportunity e.g. a gap in the market, an underserved geography etc. We were taught, in essence, to optimise based on supply and demand.
Being immersed in art and having an appreciation for art is to learn to sense into our intuition, and our gut instinct. It is not about serving what is underserved, it is about tapping into each of our very own unique humanity and to put an expression of that out into the world. This is how people create their own true fans, their own ‘market’ for things that may not have been needed. Art is about not only accepting our unique quirks, it is about celebrating that.
On Living
My musings on living actually ties really closely to my reflection on art. I have been thinking lately about what it means to play the very long term game. The reason this has been on my mind is because painting and drawing are very energy-intensive activities. I am painting at least four days a week and drawing for up to two more. And I feel wholesome yet depleted at the end of each day.
As such, it has made me think about how to conserve energy, how to reduce distractions and if I want to keep painting for the rest of my life, what conditions do I need to put in place to do that. Some things I am thinking about are: being very selective with what activities I take on, being aware of how I feel energetically around people, learning to relax and find time to do nothing! I am getting my calendar to a stage where it is simply stretches of painting, seeing art, going to therapy, seeing friends, and lots of blank spaces to just ‘be’.
With love,
Caryn