Paris and practice

Dear All

I am going to Paris today, so I am feeling quite excited, and a little anxious. I am going gto stay with a friend I haven't seen in about four years. I stayed with her when I was in Budapest on exchange, and she is now on exchange in paris, so it's the perfect opportunity to get away, to be somewhere new and exciting..... being away from all things familiar seems to open up my headspace in a way that I don't seem to be able to do otherwise....like being away feels like an adventure, where I create teh possibilities, rather than waiting to see what is on offer and playing on the side of precaution.

I know I keep coming back to this idea about habit in an artist's practice, but it seems to be how I think about my practice, or just an enry to how to talk about it. A couple of weekends ago I was sat at my desk on the sunday evening looking at photos and images that I have been wedging in the back of an empty sketchbook over the past year. I have seen all the images before, they are mostly my own, but playing with them, cutting them up, I felt excited about them all over again. One of the photos on teh mentoring website- a black and white one in which I have my head covered or partially covered with black..... I was cutting up some of these photos and they felt so precious. Not precious in the sense that they are objects, actual tangible things, but I felt precious about the images in themselves.... a hand cupping a breast. I have seen this image, I know it, yet I feel like it was like a new relationship.... when I went to bed I was conscious of how important that was- the activity, the time spent just me and the work. It was like having a lover and being really aware of how beautiful it was and how much of myself I had embedded into teh images, but them still feeling outside of me. It's difficult to describe, but it is so vital to my being an artist. Feeling like I can spend time with the work on my own and find it beautiful and precious and interesting. So often that transition into a public space feels diluted in comparison.... the relationship I have with the work is most important, even if no one else sees it or knows about it. Does this kind of cutting and sticking activity that allows me to spend time with the work exist as a habit? Maybe it does, maybe that it what my sense of habit is, and by that I mean an activity tat allows me time with the work- it is that time, time to do , make and think through th ework. Doing the work, being with it allows you to open up a thinking space that is otherwise more difficult to get into.

I hope some of this makes sense. I have been meaning to write about it here on the blog, but I feel like it's slightly exposing...talking about the work like a lover sounds so easy to write, and so easily sounds trite and obvious, but I really felt that. I felt excited and engaged...it gave me satisfaction that I don't think I often recognise in my work in that way. And it's just me at home with it, not being shown in a gallery or exhibited or getting it out there...just me being with it.

I hope everyone is well. I am looking forward to Monday....paris until Monday and thenh the FB mentoring scheme....yes, I am excited and I feel happy I think.....

With much love, Katherine.