my studio has no chair and i've decided that's a personality
moved into this place in march and there's still no chair. i stand the whole time i paint. four hours, six hours, whatever it takes. my back is fine apparently, or at least it hasn't filed a complaint yet.
a friend came by last week, looked around, asked where i sit. i said i don't. she looked at me like i'd just told her i don't sleep. maybe that's the same thing.
the real reason is stupider than any of that: i bought a chair in april, a rickety wooden one off marketplace for $20, and i've been using it as a table for the turpentine and rags ever since. it's good at that. it's never once been sat in.
i think if i sat down i'd start thinking about the painting instead of just doing it. which sounds like a cool thing to say but is probably a lie i tell myself so i don't have to buy furniture.
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the chair becoming a turpentine shelf is the most honest part of this. i have a stool in the studio that has held nothing but a bucket of glaze for 8 months. i think furniture in a studio just becomes storage the moment you stop thinking about it.
but standing 6 hours, joder, i did that for a while and my back said nothing either until one day it said everything. now i sit on the floor like an animal and honestly it works. anyway respect for committing to the bit
The floor is not as crazy as it sounds. In the atelier I trained in, half the students ended up on the floor by the end of the pose, and Matisse painted from a low stool most of his life. That said, six hours standing is a load you're borrowing against, and the back does not send an itemized bill in advance.
My studio chair has held a palette knife, three rags and a jar of medium since roughly 2019. I think furniture in a studio has one purpose and it isn't sitting.
"the back does not send an itemized bill in advance" is going straight into my head rent free, thanks for that.
the low stool thing is actually the answer i didn't know i was looking for. i can stand all day, it's the crouch to the floor that gets me, my knees are not built for atelier drama. so a stool is basically just a chair that admits it's not for sitting. maybe that's the whole move, furniture that knows its job is to hold a knife and three rags.
also "roughly 2019" is doing a lot of work there, i respect a chair that's been committed to the cause for six years.
the stool holding glaze for 8 months is the exact same energy, we're just two people running a very slow storage unit with paint in it. and yeah the back thing is the part i'm choosing to ignore, like a smoke alarm with the battery out. "one day it said everything" is ominous. noted. keeping my bad decisions.
floor sitting is undefeated honestly, at least you're committing to a real surface instead of pretending the bucket stool is furniture. respect returned