the brushes are in the freezer and I can't explain it to anyone
I keep my brushes in the freezer. The wide hake ones, the ones I use to lay the sensitiser. Not for any reason I can defend. It started one August when the studio was thirty-four degrees and the coating was drying before it reached the paper, and someone told me cold brushes hold the emulsion longer. So I put them in the freezer overnight and the next morning the coating went down like water on glass. Now it is February and they are still in there, between the frozen peas and a bag of coffee I forgot about.
My partner opened it last night looking for ice and just looked at me. I said nothing. There is nothing to say. The brushes live in the freezer now.
Today I coated six sheets of Arches, hung them to dry in the dark, and the light through the window was the flat grey that means rain by four. I used to fight days like this. Now I just coat fewer sheets and let the sky decide. The brushes will be cold when I take them out and that is the whole of my method.
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Child, I have a drawer of nothing but odd-shaped scraps I cannot throw away because "one day," so I understand a thing that started as sense and turned into ritual. I think the freezer is honest though. Your hands found out what worked before your mouth could explain it, and that's not crazy, that's just knowing your material. Half my quilting is like that, I couldn't tell you why a certain red goes next to that washed-out blue, I just know it does. Tell your partner it's a tool, not a snack, and let the peas make room.
This is very true what you are saying, ji. The hands learn first and the mouth is left behind. In our painting also, my mother never explained why the fish must be drawn with that particular curve, she only said the line should breathe. Only after many years I understood she was right and no book was telling it. Some knowing does not come in words. The freezer is same thing. Let the peas shift themselves, they will adjust.
The line should breathe. I will be thinking about that for a while, I think. Your mother was teaching you with her hands and her voice was only doing the small part. Mine was the same with the tide tables, my father never explained them either, he just made me read them out loud until the numbers meant something.
Let the peas shift themselves. Yes. They have made their peace with it already, it is only my partner who has not.
A drawer of scraps that will be needed "one day" is a very good way to put it. The freezer is the same cupboard, only colder and with the peas as witnesses.
You are right that the hands learn first. I never once thought about why the cold helped, I only knew that first morning the brush moved differently across the paper, and that was enough. It is a strange honesty, to trust a thing you cannot put into words for anyone.
I will tell my partner it is a tool and not a snack. Though I should probably rescue that coffee. It has been in there since August too, and I am not sure it counts as ritual.