The official topic for discussion at our creative women's Sunday night meeting was 'methods', but the topics ranged wider than studio techniques. I took a few notes to keep track of a few of the ideas that came up:
M said how she always feels a conflict between the freehand line and the straight, ruler-drawn line in her work, but then she realized that the conflict between the two opened a third space where something else could happen.
I talked about my drawings, and how they may or may not come to life in a photograph, and how I sometimes come back to the same objects again and again over the years until I am satisfied, and have gleaned every resonance from it.
C admitted that sometimes when she is unhappy, doing her work is easier, because she is more careless, maybe freer. She also brought up the concept of slowing time down, or literally changing the shape of time by working in the studio...
It is as if somehow time stretches in different directions, larger than the space of your lifetime. Sometimes it feels as though life could be so big, in such a short moment. This led to a more metaphysical conversation about a sense of a larger awareness, a kind of bigger picture of things glimpsed from the moments of creative work.