The Lap desk Series
Back in December, I decided to make three resolutions (let’s call them goals) for myself. They were:
Make 90% of my wardrobe myself using my sewing and knitting knowledge
Sing more
Create a painting a week
The first one use starting off pretty well (check out my post on making a handmade wardrobe here). The second has been fulfilled by joining a local choir and singing with friends (such as our blue grass musician friend and cultural geographer, Dr. Adam Morse, who has a great podcast series on his musical inspiration, Pete Seeger, here). And then there was that last one “Create a painting a week.”
In truth, I have never been good about any type of ritualistic art production. In fact, my personality doesn’t really do well with consistency. My creative tendency lies in moving from medium to medium, exploring new ideas, and allowing creativity to guide my intuition. I have never been successful at a sketchbook process, keeping a journal, or any sort of notebook keeping. In fact, I probably have dozens of half-filled, half-hearted notebook attempts all over my apartment. But the truth is, I really would love to put together a children’s book some day, and I’d like to hone my folk art painting skills with a new to me medium: gouache. so practice makes perfect and a painting a week means a year gives me 52 illustrations. The rule is simple: a painting a week about something I love. I do it in the early morning hours - my favorite part of the day. I drink my coffee, I paint, and for a couple of hours I sort of live inside my imagination, exploring the world’s unseen, yet felt, magic. I have been committed to this practice now for 6 weeks, enough time to actually call this a habit, a ritual, a part of my routine. It even dawned on me that this is an actual practice of mindfulness - I’m totally existing in the present during my painting time. I even have to practice that pesky thing of detachment - like when I get stuck on something in the painting and I just need to let it go for a while.
The other thing that I do differently, is that I don’t paint these 9”x12” paintings at my studio bench. Instead, I have been taping them to a lap desk my husband built for my 35th birthday 4 years ago modeled off of a 19th century one owned by the poet William Cullen Bryant. (You can imagine how happy he was to see the thing pulled out after collecting dust for a few years because honestly I wasn’t quite sure what I would use it for.) The lap desk, however, has come to its purpose. I can paint on the couch, with my paints on the coffee table and my steaming hot cup of coffee next to me, the early sunlight just starting to pour in. It’s just perfect and I don’t feel like I’m working. It’s been fun and I have been pointing these images to Instagram and they have been met with a lot of enthusiasm!
So I thought - why not write a blog post each week about each painting. Maybe you’re interested in it, maybe you’re not - but I think this type of writing and explanation of the work might be fun and at least a good way to sum up how I have been tackling the work, what I’m thinking through and how I came to choose the subject, etc. Don’t expect good writing here. No great grammar, no proofreading is going to happen. “Jot” more than “Write” is the name of the game here.
Since I have already done 6 paintings, I think I’ll need to play some catch up. So I’ll start with last week’s painting for this week and then I’ll post about this week’s tomorrow or Sunday when it’s finished. I’ll do a recap of the others in a separate post and then I’ll be on track with this new added element. So without further adieu, check out the next post and we’ll dive into “Afternoon Sewing.”
-Andrea