Notes for a Painting is the part 2 of my solo exhibition The Sea is Never Full, and is a post-exhibition addendum excavating the anthropology of its Part 1— the studio, the tools, the process, the inspiration, and the work.
I already had only 3 weeks to prepare for Part 1, creating a whole new body of work under extreme timelines has proven to me that there is nothing like a deadline to propel your practice forward. A week is something else entirely. It is setting yourself up for failure, risking an infinite fall for a single blazing step upwards. The artist that was originally going to be in the Ola Na Iwi gallery asked if they could push their show back, so I replaced them with the Part 1 of my Solo Exhibition. This same artist, at the last second, had cancelled outright by the time my exhibition was closing, leaving my curator dead in the water. I offered to not only extend my show, but to adapt it into a Part 2, outfitting the old work into new forms and creating a handful of new pieces to recontextualize the old ones for this new perspective.
I will never say no to an opportunity. Sometimes, saying "no" to an opportunity feels like a death sentence, as someone who prioritizes work over the things an artist today must take charge of, especially as someone who doesn't come from money, who doesn't live in a cultural center, and who still has great ambition and eyes for the world. You have to radically say yes to everything and believe in your vision enough to know that no matter how base the opportunity, through your own talent you can either elevate the space or stand singularly amongst the crowd.
All this to say: I'm going to use this blog to write about The Work, The Studio, The Tools, The Process, and The Inspiration