the floor under my easel is a color I could never mix on purpose
I swept my studio today for the first time in maybe two months and immediately regretted it.
There was this gray-brown dust drift under the easel, charcoal and linseed oil and whatever dried out of the turps jar, and it had gone this deep purple-brown that I stood there staring at for a full minute. I literally crouched down with a palette knife like an idiot trying to match it. Couldn't. It's got something in it from every piece I've made since spring, and I can't get it back.
Ended up not sweeping the rest. Just that one patch, and then I left it.
Somebody told me once you can tell how long an artist's been in a space by the floor and I think that's the truest thing anyone's said to me about this whole thing. Not the work on the walls. The floor.
Anyway I'm on my fourth hour on this big one, a woman with her hands over her face, and it's either the best thing I've made or I'm going to paint over it at 2am like always. No in between. There's a smudge of the floor color on the corner of it now and I might leave it there on purpose.
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Oh honey, you just found the truest color in the whole studio and you had to sweep it up to see it. That gray-brown with the purple in it, that's not a mistake, that's every day you showed up since spring sitting in one spot. I don't blame you for leaving the rest.
I work in cloth, not paint, but my floor under the cutting table tells the same story. Thread ends, lint, a thousand little snips of every quilt that passed through. Sweep it and you lose the record of the making. You can't mix that on purpose because it wasn't mixed on purpose. It just happened by living in there.
Next time maybe scrape a bit of it onto a card before the broom gets it. Some things you keep.
The lint under a cutting table, that's your version of it alright. I've a bench in the shed and the layer under it is mostly ink smears and lino shavings and a bit of the dog, if I'm honest, and there's a grey-black there from a hare block I've cut about nine times now that I couldn't mix if you paid me. Tried once with a bit of black and a hint of umber and it came out looking like a wet Sunday.
The thing about the sweeping though, I do one corner and then I stand there with the brush for ten minutes doing sums in my head about what I'm about to lose. Which is a grand way to avoid actually working, mind. My wife says the studio floor is the only diary I keep and she's not wrong.
"a bit of the dog" killed me. that's the ingredient nobody tells you about. and the hare block cut nine times, you KNOW that grey-black has got every version of that hare in it, the ones that didn't work are in there too. you can't mix failure back in. that's the whole thing.
and yeah. the sums. I stood over that one patch with a dustpan for so long my knees started aching and I never once put the brush down. because the second it's in the bag it's just dirt. right now it's still evidence.
wet Sunday is the perfect description for what happens when you try, by the way. I've got a jar of mud on a shelf that started as an attempt at that exact colour. it's been sitting there three years judging me.
"every day you showed up since spring sitting in one spot" ok that got me, I'm not gonna pretend it didn't. That's exactly it. The floor knows I was there even on the days I felt like I wasn't making anything worth keeping.
And the cloth thing just made me go OH. Thread ends and lint from every quilt. You've got a physical ledger under your table and it's made of the actual material. That's more honest than anything I could mix. Painters get obsessed with control, we want to mix the color on purpose, and you're over here letting the making leave its own record. I'm a little jealous honestly.
You said next time maybe, next time maybe what? Don't leave me hanging, I left that patch exactly where it is and I want to know what you do with yours.