We deeply connect with this commentary.After 5 years of study I found my solace this year in growing tomatoes with my grandson and joining an online community supported by Cas Holmes and Fiber Arts Takes Two. For the first time I feel happy to be enough in my own practice. I have been “caught” stitching on the porch by our two young bucks as I relax in the afternoon. I hope the wheel continues to turn and as you settle into your new space the two elements of gardening and studio support you
Your pantry sounds incredible - nice growing! I love this idea of 'harvesting' in a different way from your garden and working these 'crops' into your art practice. I am very experimental and free with my garden (heck yea I'm growing lemons in Massachusetts!) and would definitely benefit from the feelings of abundance, joy and wonder behind my lens as a photographer as well.
Thanks Diana. Do you manage to harvest lemons? I have three large fig trees that are beautiful trees in themselves but we don’t get long enough summers in Seattle for the fruit to ripen. I’m sure there’s an analogy here with creative practice: if the practice is beautiful and important in our lives, does it matter if the art it bears isn’t “successful”?
Yes I do harvest lemons! I'll show you in a note - big harvest this year and they are starting to turn yellow! The tree comes into the house around first frost and grows under lights in the winter and will go back outside when it warms up reliably in the spring. Such a fun crop to grow. Figs really don't want to be here but I force them to in pots - ours are ripening now finally... I recommend Lee Reich's book "Growing Figs in Cold Climates"! I definitely grow lots of things unsuccessfully but still get a lot out of the process of growing - I planted chickpeas (ate no chickpeas) but learned that I love the beauty of the plant itself. There are all kinds of gardening successes even within the failures. And yes, we must apply this analogy to our creative practices.
I have an unfinished acrylic painting hanging on my wall easel that is unfinished. It’s a paint over (because that’s how much I felt rejected by it—long story, I’ll spare you) and I just can’t seem to get back to it. I have no trouble with my creative writing and I’m dabbling in watercolours but this is proving too hard to even get started. I have a big dollhouse refurb project in my studio at the moment so maybe once that’s been built there is room … and maybe this is just the regenerative stage of my creative painter cycle?
Resonates—I know that feeling. Are you the type that has to finish a book when you start it? I’ve given myself permission to not finish a class or a book or a tv series that doesn’t engage me, yet I can’t seem to do the same with my art. I’ll struggle with a canvas until it’s so heavy with paint I can barely lift it🤣
I think of painting as a what if proposition that will answer questions I have for myself. For example, what if I use this cerulean instead of indanthrone blue? What can I learn about boneset if I draw it over and over again? Sometimes I get an answer. Other times it's like what happens when I grow calendula among the carrots and the carrot crop is a bust because carrots don't like to be crowded. Assuming there are some successful paintings, then how can I share them? I like your questioning about social media and the capitalist art world. This is where my work is right now, and I thank you for leading the way with garden metaphors.
I love a good gardening metaphor! My carrots are crowded out with summer squash that I didn’t plant but a stray seed got into the raised bed. Sometimes stray seed grows better than the stuff we planned to grow, doesn’t it? I’m using that metaphor for both inside and outside the studio🙃
Mmm I love the analogy! Lots to think about here. I was cogitating the differences in a more positive attitude to the art. We have many failures in the garden; maybe the tomato plant that got a touch of blight, the cabbages nibbled by cabbage whites, nasturtiums eaten by blackfly and some slug damaged hostas don’t worry so much; they get composted or simply disappear. Blighty tomatoes and potatoes get burned. Perhaps more of our drawings are just part of a process like this, not for the gaze of others. Then there are the choice plants - served up for visitors to dinner, entered in a horticultural local show or filmed for instagram. They are equivalent to our art pieces framed, shown or displayed on a shelf.
Either way both plants and art-making results are part of the cycle of creation. All relevant and all part of our own creativity. Let’s love it all ; wonky veg, holey leaves, rejected paintings and test pieces. We have to feed and water regularly and see it all as process with some stunners!!
Love this as a metaphor/toolset for thinking about creative practice. As the partner of a writer and artist who has written about connecting to and learning from ourselves as we are in the garden/nature, this resonates a lot. She and I made a whole book called Grow Curious about that relationship.
One of the things I love about gardens/nature is that there is no completed state. We don’t get to a point in gardening and say that it is “done”. While art making has its milestones I like to think of it in the same way. Each of my drawings is just positioned somewhere on my continuum and they don’t have to have the weight of finality resting on them.
Gardening with a plan reminds me of the gorgeous arboretums in UK so popular in late 1800s (maybe still) with potted palms and exotic tropicals. You'd be surrounded by all those beautiful plants!
We deeply connect with this commentary.After 5 years of study I found my solace this year in growing tomatoes with my grandson and joining an online community supported by Cas Holmes and Fiber Arts Takes Two. For the first time I feel happy to be enough in my own practice. I have been “caught” stitching on the porch by our two young bucks as I relax in the afternoon. I hope the wheel continues to turn and as you settle into your new space the two elements of gardening and studio support you
Your pantry sounds incredible - nice growing! I love this idea of 'harvesting' in a different way from your garden and working these 'crops' into your art practice. I am very experimental and free with my garden (heck yea I'm growing lemons in Massachusetts!) and would definitely benefit from the feelings of abundance, joy and wonder behind my lens as a photographer as well.
Thanks Diana. Do you manage to harvest lemons? I have three large fig trees that are beautiful trees in themselves but we don’t get long enough summers in Seattle for the fruit to ripen. I’m sure there’s an analogy here with creative practice: if the practice is beautiful and important in our lives, does it matter if the art it bears isn’t “successful”?
Yes I do harvest lemons! I'll show you in a note - big harvest this year and they are starting to turn yellow! The tree comes into the house around first frost and grows under lights in the winter and will go back outside when it warms up reliably in the spring. Such a fun crop to grow. Figs really don't want to be here but I force them to in pots - ours are ripening now finally... I recommend Lee Reich's book "Growing Figs in Cold Climates"! I definitely grow lots of things unsuccessfully but still get a lot out of the process of growing - I planted chickpeas (ate no chickpeas) but learned that I love the beauty of the plant itself. There are all kinds of gardening successes even within the failures. And yes, we must apply this analogy to our creative practices.
Chickpeas?! Oh, I like the sound of that. So fun to try stuff we know may not thrive but are interesting anyway.
I have an unfinished acrylic painting hanging on my wall easel that is unfinished. It’s a paint over (because that’s how much I felt rejected by it—long story, I’ll spare you) and I just can’t seem to get back to it. I have no trouble with my creative writing and I’m dabbling in watercolours but this is proving too hard to even get started. I have a big dollhouse refurb project in my studio at the moment so maybe once that’s been built there is room … and maybe this is just the regenerative stage of my creative painter cycle?
Resonates—I know that feeling. Are you the type that has to finish a book when you start it? I’ve given myself permission to not finish a class or a book or a tv series that doesn’t engage me, yet I can’t seem to do the same with my art. I’ll struggle with a canvas until it’s so heavy with paint I can barely lift it🤣
Um, yes. It’s rare that I DNF a book.
I think of painting as a what if proposition that will answer questions I have for myself. For example, what if I use this cerulean instead of indanthrone blue? What can I learn about boneset if I draw it over and over again? Sometimes I get an answer. Other times it's like what happens when I grow calendula among the carrots and the carrot crop is a bust because carrots don't like to be crowded. Assuming there are some successful paintings, then how can I share them? I like your questioning about social media and the capitalist art world. This is where my work is right now, and I thank you for leading the way with garden metaphors.
I love a good gardening metaphor! My carrots are crowded out with summer squash that I didn’t plant but a stray seed got into the raised bed. Sometimes stray seed grows better than the stuff we planned to grow, doesn’t it? I’m using that metaphor for both inside and outside the studio🙃
Mmm I love the analogy! Lots to think about here. I was cogitating the differences in a more positive attitude to the art. We have many failures in the garden; maybe the tomato plant that got a touch of blight, the cabbages nibbled by cabbage whites, nasturtiums eaten by blackfly and some slug damaged hostas don’t worry so much; they get composted or simply disappear. Blighty tomatoes and potatoes get burned. Perhaps more of our drawings are just part of a process like this, not for the gaze of others. Then there are the choice plants - served up for visitors to dinner, entered in a horticultural local show or filmed for instagram. They are equivalent to our art pieces framed, shown or displayed on a shelf.
Either way both plants and art-making results are part of the cycle of creation. All relevant and all part of our own creativity. Let’s love it all ; wonky veg, holey leaves, rejected paintings and test pieces. We have to feed and water regularly and see it all as process with some stunners!!
Love this as a metaphor/toolset for thinking about creative practice. As the partner of a writer and artist who has written about connecting to and learning from ourselves as we are in the garden/nature, this resonates a lot. She and I made a whole book called Grow Curious about that relationship.
One of the things I love about gardens/nature is that there is no completed state. We don’t get to a point in gardening and say that it is “done”. While art making has its milestones I like to think of it in the same way. Each of my drawings is just positioned somewhere on my continuum and they don’t have to have the weight of finality resting on them.
Gardening with a plan reminds me of the gorgeous arboretums in UK so popular in late 1800s (maybe still) with potted palms and exotic tropicals. You'd be surrounded by all those beautiful plants!