Dear diary
Starting something can be hard. When faced with a task that feels impossibly large sometimes the best first thing you can do is know it. Size it up. See what is there. Measure, record, document. Data seems to mean so much to us these days, and I suppose it does begin to tell a picture. Today I’m writing my first entry into a studio journal and thus I have started to document my arts practice, ultimately to fulfil the requirements for a MPhil – to record my thinking, methodologies and research in order to analyse my process and make connections that otherwise might go overlooked or discounted.
Artist practitioners who can write have been a focus of my reading lately. Anne Truitt’s Day Book is a celebrated diary that thoughtfully tells the story of Truitt’s life in art. Reading about her struggles, her reflections on childhood and family has made me realise just how much who we are as a person, our life experience, and our circumstances drive how we make art. Until now I suppose I’ve discounted the significance of this. Which is why I’ve decided to include personal anecdotes in my journal alongside the studio notes and more practical experiences.
Diaries are tricky though. Emily my daughter has little stashes of them around the house, a fluffy pink one with a strawberry on the front, a tiny blue one with a matching blue texta. They mostly contain drawings of turtles and lists of ‘ideas for parties’. My aunt wrote a hilarious account of her travels in Europe we all loved reading that. The challenge is to face up to the fear of sharing one’s vulnerability. To push through the embarrassment of oversharing while remembering that in all likelihood, not many people will be reading along anyway.
Starting well means carving out a space in time to work. A time for painting, and a time for writing. Keeping a basic schedule, dedicating time to each and not wavering means revisiting things that may have grown stale. Lately I’ve found there’s value in picking those stale things up, airing them out like they’re a pile of dirty linen and ploughing on.
