Thinking on paper
A studio notebook
I love writing my thoughts down on paper. Catching a fleeting thought and writing it down helps it to crystallise. Writing gives form to something vague and allows the thought to have somewhere to live.
Keeping a studio notebook has become an important part of my art practice. I write things down as they occur to me: thoughts about process, mindset, colour, marks, and subjects; how I am feeling. Things I've noticed. Things I want to look-up or remember from my art-making.
An inherited love of notebooks
I inherited my love of notebooks from my father.
He died ten years ago today, and I've been thinking about him and his love of notebooks.
When I was a child, my Dad always had a notebook and pencil nearby. He favoured cheap orange Rhodia notebooks with squared paper, which he would buy when we were on holiday in France.
Every trip to the hypermarché involved a magical visit to the stationery aisle. He would buy a small stack of notebooks and I could choose some lovely drawing paper and a pack of coloured pens or pencils.
He wrote with a pencil and his handwriting was wonderfully weird, he was naturally left handed, but came from an era when that was actively discouraged, so he wrote with his right hand and his writing always looked like it took exceptional concentration and effort.
Going for walk with my Dad
My Dad’s notebook
Holiday stationery
Learning to look
His notebooks were full of lists, diagrams and calculations for things he was making in his woodworking corner of the garage: shelves, beds, wardrobes. Plant names for specific areas of the garden, books to read, places to go and random thoughts that had occurred to him.
His way of thinking on paper.
After he died, we found solace in his notebook. Shortly before, he had copied out some old graffiti from the year 1500 which he had seen quoted in a Patrick Leigh Fermor book:
“Live, don’t know how long.
And die, don’t know when.
Must go, don’t know where.
I am astonished I am so cheerful.”
That note made me smile then, and it makes me smile now. A cheerful step into the unknown. Something he had read and thought important enough to copy out, write down and remember in the days before he died.
Thoughts into focus
My own studio notebooks are full of thoughts about colour, things I want to try, notes about paintings, things I've noticed or want to remember, artists I am interested in, the why and what of my art. Often, I write because I don't really know what I think yet.
I don't always do anything with these notes. Sometimes just writing something down is enough to bring a thought into focus. My way of thinking on paper, my way of uncovering things about my art practice.
I find a studio notebook so helpful.
