Last time I wrote that there is little going on aboveground; this remains true. I don’t have new projects and ideas to report about each month. Sometimes I am just staying afloat, doing my best to show up. Sometimes I am staying in and staying home.
Before the COVID pandemic, I spent about six years working seasonal or impermanent jobs, subletting, and travelling. I never lived in an apartment longer than 10 months. When circumstances allowed me to find a more permanent home in 2020, it changed everything for me and my relationship to art - I had a dedicated room for my studio, with space to unpack all the books I had collected. I could hang art on the walls. I set up a chair for reading, next to a window where I could see snow falling through a birch forest. The house has been a great privilege of peace and stability, and it’s allowed me to treat my art practice with a new kind of devotion.
Here’s the writer Olivia Laing (whose books I love, especially The Lonely City) on how her house nourishes her and her writing:
The things we collect, the way we decorate a room, the rhythms of our kitchen meal preparations - these are the pillars of our days, which become our whole lives. Ordinary things and home routines tell us who we are. At school, one of my painting teachers gave us an assignment to take an unstaged aerial photo of our kitchen table and make a painting from it. My painting showed a mess of overlapping books, pens, a plates full of crumbs, groceries yet to be put away - a reflection of anxious student days trying to manage schoolwork and daily life tasks. In our class critique my teacher looked at it and said, “you can tell this person has a lot going on.” She didn’t need to read my diary to have it spelled out; the kitchen table said enough.
Throughout time, artists have insisted that the small things closest to home deserve a closer look. When we look at their work, we might learn to discover pleasure in the places, rituals, and comforts we already have nearby. We might remember that the ordinary things in our home contain rich stories and tell us about our inner lives. Mamma Andersson makes us feel things from looking at a kitchen table:
An arrangement of simple objects brings up many questions: Who has just left the scene? Why were they dining alone? What is behind the pale pink curtain? And what’s that dark spot we can’t ignore, a stain upon an otherwise tranquil scene?
Many of Mary Pratt’s paintings centred around the everyday objects and routine tasks of the kitchen, reflective of the roles she tried to balance as a homemaker and artist. She worked with light and scale to bring a spiritual significance to ovens, microwaves, bowls of fruits and jars of jam:
Salman Toor paints interior spaces where home is a place of safety, relaxation, and queer joy:
Through art we can create imagined home places, the ones we hope to see. Toor says:
“I like the idea of the public and the private in paintings…and how the public can invade the private. I love creating interior spaces that are very private and cozy and domestic, because I grew up in a homophobic culture. I feel the need to create safe spaces and I do that through paintings. A lot of the plushness of it, the comfort level of these interior spaces, it excites me as I paint them. I want more. These are imaginary spaces and I am just trying to imagine what I would like to have in them.
(10/10 recommend learning more about Salman Toor: read his New Yorker profile! Listen to him talk and watch him paint in luscious shades of green. Gaze upon his wonderful paintings. I hope to see his work in person one day.)
Home might be the place where we can relax as our truest selves. A place for leisure and play, supported by family:
Perhaps it’s a place to rest and leave the lids off without cleaning up right away:
Sometimes home might feel lonely and isolated, like a trap. Edward Hopper often painted interiors that feel like fishbowls: figures press up against windows with no sign of a door for escape.
Any discussion of home is inseparable from social class; not everyone has access to a concrete “home,” yet everyone needs community and shelter. Here is Jeremy Herndl reflecting that contemporary reality on Lekwungen Territory (Victoria, BC):
I could go on and on; home is an enormous topic and artists will always engage with it. What does home mean to you? Some mini art tasks for taking a closer look:
Take an unstaged photo of your kitchen table (right after a meal, during morning coffee, etc) and draw/paint the scene.
Inspired by Mary Pratt: Draw your most prized possession, large and close-up to make it feel iconic.
Lie in your bed (maybe take a nap) and draw everything you see in your bedroom.
And please, tell me all your favourite paintings, books, movies, etc about home (and the pleasures/horrors therein).
Nice things:
It took me almost 3 months to finish Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (it’s both 500+ pages and at times devastatingly sad), but it was so so good. In the witty voice of a teenage boy, BK writes with a fierce love for her home place (southern Appalachia). Read to re-arrange your brain re: addictions, rural folk, small towns, teenagers, systemic poverty, etc.
Tore through Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Roaming in one sitting. Now I need to look at all the images again slowly; Jillian Tamaki can work emotional wonders with her wobbly line and two colours.
I love handwriting and notebooks and I loved seeing Eminem’s boxes of notes.
I watched all 3 seasons of Ramy, which is hilarious and awkward and the soundtrack is full of absolute bangers. More ‘70s Egyptian pop/funk please:
I designed a poster for my friend Maggie who is a co-producer of the Women’s Day Cabaret, happening tomorrow evening (Tuesday, March 5th!) at the Knox Performance Centre here in Prince George.
Proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to Phoenix Transition Society, who offer programs and supports in our community to work towards eliminating violence against women and children. I’ll be set up at the show with some illustrated goods for sale, alongside a whole evening’s program of artists and entertainers.
Best wishes from my home to yours. In March we let the light in: