Why Write?
Three of my Sunday Blog entries from August 2022
Why write? Everyday when I wake up I write a page in my A5 size daily journal. It‘s something I started in 2004 when I did Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way as a task called ‘the morning pages’. This practice has been with me as a reflective process for nearly 20 years.
The purpose of this writing is to ‘right’ yourself into the day. It’s sort of part dream journal, part diary and part daily list making. I find it invaluable as a method of connecting with myself and my thoughts. It helps me to work through any problems I am having as well as remember things I have to do that day. Without this practice I can start to feel a bit unanchored.
My ‘morning pages’ writing is completely different from my ‘serious’ writing which I reserve for my blog. I used to write poetry as a ‘serious’ writing practice. But this seemed to dry up when I switched to visual art. Then I discovered blogging which I’ve been doing for quite a few years now.
Why blog? I started my blog in 2010 through a free Google product called Blogger. I would upload a little 10 x 10 collage accompanied by a few lines on what happened that day and what the title of the artwork was. When I created little monthly hard copy books for each month to accompany my A Stitch in Time exhibition, I realised that three lines fitted best into the text block.
So the following year I switched to writing haikus to accompany the artworks. These were not very zen but I found them quite easy to do and a succinct way of encapsulating what I wanted to communicate. I turned 50 of these into a little Haiku book, fifty.
Then in 2016, I wrote a blog exclusively to track my university honours research about sound vibrations in the paper making process. My university supervisors thought it a great idea. However when my work was independently assessed at the end of the year, the blog book was dismissed as irrelevant.
But through this project, I found that I liked blog writing. My blog is the place where I am able to pursue a line of thinking and write about it, which keeps my writing practice alive and helps me to stay accountable to myself.
When I needed to simplify and update my website to a Squarespace account, it came with its own blog page. That’s when I started writing about my travels in 2018 and enjoyed it so much I began my Sunday blogpost in 2019 and have kept up with it since.
These blogposts document my life as an artist and as an art mentor. They have provided really useful resources for me on topics ranging from having a daily practice, to artist residencies and how to turn procrastination into productivity. I especially like my Year in Review practice I have been doing for the past couple of years. When you think nothing much has happened in a month, that review shows you just how much you have achieved.
Now as I prepare to undertake my Masters of Visual Arts program in the UK, they ask that students write a regular blog about their work. When I had my entry interview (via zoom), I was able to tell my supervisor that I already had a blog writing practice. I know all that writing will stand me in good stead for the next leg of learning I will undertake.
It’s going to be exciting to be exposed to new ideas, new ways of creative expression, installations and collaborative projects. Stay tuned for some writing about art, place and spiritual ecology as I delve into this new leg of research and its application in my artistic practice.
Dancing Shoes collage (detail) 11-11-2010 - one of 365 collages from A Stitch in Time exhibition and the writing about it in the November Stitch in Time book.
Newgrange postcard (detail) 2019 and the blog post, Transmitters that I wrote about it.
