Search

I've talked for months about wanting to do a series of rooms in my house, just as a personal project, and I kept putting off the kitchen. Too familiar, I told myself. Too boring. Nothing to say about a place I stand in three times a day. Finally sat down with it last week and I think I get now why I avoided it. It's the hardest subject I've ever painted and I've done a whole summer of plein air. Familiar means you know every wrong angle, every shadow that doesn't sit right. You can't fudge it because you can feel when it's off. The mug tree was the thing that nearly broke me. Those little wooden branches crisscrossing. I must have repainted it four times. Eventually I stopped trying to paint each branch and just painted the light falling through them and you know what, the branches showed up on their own. I haven't been this nervous to show a piece to my husband since I first started painting again. He looked at it for a long time and just said "that's our kitchen." That was it. That was the whole review. Now I'm scared to do the kids' bathroom.

I've been trying to paint that scratched-up yellow Formica table my mom had in the 90s for like three years now. The one where I did homework and she paid bills and we ate cereal at 10pm because nobody felt like cooking. Every attempt came out stiff or too sentimental. Last night I just went at it loose, no sketching, just blocked in the yellow and let the scratches happen with a dry brush. Painted the little chip by the corner where my brother threw a toy truck. Put a salt shaker on it because she always left one out. And it's just. Right. My husband came in and said "that's your mom's kitchen" without me telling him what it was. I don't know why that hit me so hard. Maybe because I feel like I finally painted something only I could paint. Anyway just wanted to share with people who get it. 🥲

Someone asked me to paint their parents' kitchen. Not a portrait, not a landscape, just the kitchen where they grew up. I almost said no. Kitchens are hard, all those surfaces, chrome, the light fights you. And the reference photo they sent was terrible, taken on a phone in the evening, everything yellow. But they wrote me a long email about their mother cooking in that room, about the afternoon light coming through the little window, and I caved. I should trust that instinct more often. What saved me was that I ended up painting it almost from memory of what a kitchen like that feels like. The photo was only a scaffold. I moved the light around, made it morning, put a bowl of apricots on the counter that wasn't in the photograph at all. She cried when she picked it up. Her husband filmed her. There is a video of a grown woman crying over a painting of her mother's kitchen and it is the most honest thing I've seen in months. I kept the bowl of apricots in. She said her mother always had fruit out. I keep thinking about what I almost said no to.

I spent the whole afternoon yesterday just looking at my kitchen table. Not painting it. Not photographing it. Just watching how the light moved across the surface of a wooden bowl, a half-empty glass, a cloth I'd left crumpled. From about 3:30 to 5, the quality of it, that cold winter light coming in low, bouncing off the building across the street, was something I could never invent and could never capture with a camera. The photos I took are dead. Flat. They have all the information and none of the truth. It makes me wonder how much time I've wasted collecting reference images when I should have been training my eye to hold what it sees. The camera is a crutch. A useful one, I use it too. But it flattens everything into information, and painting is not about information.

Honestly the amount of my "studio practice" that is just me physically relocating my entire setup every 45 minutes because the light moved is kind of embarrassing. I have a desk. I have a window. But the window faces east so by noon I'm basically working in shadow and I refuse to turn on a lamp because it changes everything about how I see the washes. So I just pick up my block, my brush jar, my palette and I chase the sun across the apartment like a little lizard. My partner keeps finding random wet paintings on the kitchen table and the bathroom counter and once on the floor by the back door. I have a perfectly good studio corner I am simply not using because the light is wrong and I will die on this hill.

Painted a still life tonight at the kitchen table after the kids went down. Same table we ate spaghetti at two hours earlier. I wiped it down, laid out the drop cloth, and there's still a smear of tomato sauce on the corner of my reference photo that I just decided to live with. I used to feel bad about not having a real studio space. Read all these posts about people's dedicated rooms with north light and proper easels and I'd get all wistful. But honestly the kitchen table works. The light is awful. The cat walks across my palette at least twice a session. My 8 year old stuck a drawing of a dinosaur to the easel I can't even use because there's no room for it. But it's the only uninterrupted hour I get and I'll take it. Finished a decent little pear study tonight, better than my last one. That's the whole win. Packed it up and now I'm eating leftover spaghetti over the sink like a civilized person. Who else is painting on a dining room table or a folding tray or wherever they can grab space?

A student brought in a phone photo of her grandmother's kitchen and asked if she could paint from it. I said of course, but that's not the real question. The real question is why she wanted to. She said because the light in that room doesn't exist anymore, the afternoon sun through the window where her grandmother used to stand. So I told her to go find a room with the same kind of light, sit in it, and paint the memory anyway. The photo gives you the facts. It can't give you the hour you were there. We don't paint what we see. We paint what it was like to see it. That's the whole job and nobody teaches it anymore because you can't put it in a curriculum.

I've been waking up at 6 for the past week just to paint the same corner of my kitchen counter. The lime slice from last night, the steel tumbler from morning chai, the way the sun hits the grout between the tiles. It lasts maybe forty minutes and then it's gone, and I know it's ridiculous because I could just take a photo and paint it later. But it's not the same. There's something about catching it while it's happening, while the light is actually moving across the surface. I think this is my current obsession, I can only paint things in the moment they exist. If I photograph them and come back later, the feeling is gone. The urgency is gone. And the painting comes out flat. Anyone else have a weird time-of-day thing they can't let go of? Or am I the only one waking up unreasonably early for a lime slice and a steel glass 🙂

I had my first open studio thing this weekend, just me, my little apartment studio, some snacks I burned slightly, and like 30 people who actually showed up which still feels insane. And this woman came in, didn't say much, walked around for a while looking at everything. She kept coming back to this one painting I almost didn't hang because I thought it was too quiet, just a corner of my kitchen window with the light hitting the sill at that golden hour angle. I'd painted it like six times trying to catch it right. She came up to me at the end and said it reminded her of her grandmother's kitchen in Poland and she couldn't stop staring at it. And then she bought it. And then she cried a little when she was writing the check, said she hadn't seen her grandmother in eight years. I didn't know what to do with that honestly. I just stood there holding the cash like a complete idiot. My partner had to nudge me to say thank you properly haha. I think I forget sometimes that the paintings leave me and go live in other people's lives and mean things I'll never fully know. That's kind of terrifying and lovely at the same time. Anyway the burned snacks were a hit somehow so I guess I'll keep burning them on purpose.

Spent three hours this morning arranging a bowl of lemons and a blue cup on my kitchen table, and then I didn't paint the bowl or the cup at all. I painted the shadow they threw across the tabletop. That's the whole painting. Just grey-blue shapes and one bone of light where the cup sat. I do this thing where I'll build the perfect setup and then abandon the actual objects because the shadow is more interesting. The lemons were so yellow and pretty and I left them out of it entirely. My partner came in and was like "why did you even bother" and honestly I don't have an answer. The shadow was just saying something the lemons weren't. Is this a real practice or am I just avoiding committing to a subject?? Because I feel like I'm circling something with it but I can't name what. Also the shadow moved by the time I finished so now I've got a painting of a shadow that doesn't exist anymore. That might be the most honest part of it.

ok so I've been circling this one piece for like three weeks, a view from my kitchen window at dusk, the one I paint over and over, but with all this heavy gray-green raincloud coming in. And I kept ruining it because I was trying to make it look "dramatic" and "serious art" or whatever and it just kept coming out dead and muddy. Then yesterday I was in a mood, like genuinely anxious about money and whether I'm wasting my savings on this full-time thing, and I just grabbed my brush and went at it without thinking. And I let the water take it where it wanted, didn't fight it, didn't try to control every bloom. And it's the most alive thing I've painted in months. The clouds look like they're moving. My partner came home and said "that one feels like you." I think I've been so scared of making bad art that I forgot the good stuff comes from the same place. Anyway it's drying on my table and I keep walking past and going "oh, there you are." Just wanted to tell someone who'd get it 🙂

I spent all last year trying to crack the algorithm. Filming my process with proper lighting. Voiceovers about the "meaning behind the work." Scheduling posts at optimal times. The reel that got me actual sales? Me, 11pm, exhausted, propping a half-finished painting against a wall in bad kitchen light, no audio, just a 5-second clip of me adding charcoal lines. Caption: "this isn't working yet but I like it." That's it. 14k views. Two commissions. I don't know what to do with that information. It makes me want to stop trying at all, which is probably not the takeaway, but also maybe it is?

There was a long stretch where every blank canvas felt like an exam. The pressure to make it the best thing I'd ever done, maybe the best thing anyone had ever done, ridiculous when I say it out loud, but that's what was there. And of course nothing survives that kind of weight. You kill it before you start. Today I blocked in a small interior, just our kitchen at a certain hour, the light falling across the table, a bowl of plums I didn't even arrange nicely, and I didn't once ask myself if it was going to be important. I just painted it. It's not going to change anything. It's a kitchen with plums. And it's the most alive I've felt in front of an easel in months. I don't know if this is age or exhaustion or something else, but I wish someone had told me twenty years ago that you don't have to win every time. You just have to show up and mean it.

picked up a piece from the framer today, $475 for one stretched canvas with a simple walnut frame. that alone hurt. then the guy behind the counter, who watched me sign the card, says "you know, you could probably make these yourself if you wanted to save a few bucks." i stared at him. sir. i am holding the thing i made. the painting on the canvas is mine. the canvas itself i stretched and primed in my kitchen. apparently none of that counts unless i'm also milling the wood and cutting the glass. i just said "yeah, i'll get right on learning carpentry" and walked out. but it's been nagging me all day. the way people assume the invisible labor isn't labor. the hours, the mess, the trial and error, none of it registers unless there's a saw involved. anyway the piece looks good. that's the thing. it's the best one i've done in months and now i keep thinking about the $475 instead of the work.

Okay so I've been trying to figure out why I'm exhausted at the end of the day but somehow only have like one small painting to show for it. So I started actually timing myself. Set a little timer on my phone every time I sat down, every time I walked away. The result is honestly embarrassing. Over a four hour stretch today I painted for maybe 90 minutes. The rest was: staring at the reference photo, rearranging my brushes, looking at the same wash dry, texting my mom twice, going to get water and then just standing in the kitchen for a while. The actual sitting and committing part is way shorter than I thought it was. The weird thing is the paint time is so much better quality. When I actually clock in, I make decisions so much faster. But the gap between "okay I'm starting" and actually putting paint down is where all the energy goes. My new thing this week is a 25 minute timer, no phone in the room, and I don't get up until it dings. Even if I just sit there. Tried it today and got a whole sketch done in the first two rounds. Anyone else have no idea how much of their studio time is actually fear management? Because I think I'm maybe 40% painter and 60% pacing around thinking about painting.

I love my mom so much, she's my biggest cheerleader, she framed my first shitty little landscape and hung it in the kitchen for years. But she called me today and was like "oh my friend Linda just bought this beige couch and I told her you could paint her something nice to go over it, nothing too weird, you know, something with flowers maybe?" And I just. Stood there holding my phone. Because first of all I haven't painted a floral in two years and I don't want to and second of all the thing I'm actually working on right now is this huge moody piece of my partner's back in low grey light and it's the best thing I've ever done and nobody in my family has seen it because they don't really look at my work they just want me to make things that match their beige couch. I said "I'll think about it" and I won't and now I feel guilty and also annoyed and also like a snob. Why is it so hard for people to understand that "you're so talented, you should paint me something!" is not actually a compliment?? It's like being asked to write a poem for someone's birthday party theme. I don't paint beige couch flowers Linda I'm sorry.

This morning I made fresh gum from tamarind seeds for binding the colours. Soaking, peeling the thin brown skin, grinding the white kernel into paste. My mother used to do this and her mother before. When I was small I would sit and watch her, the slow grinding stone, the patience. Now my own hands do it and I think: this is the same gesture, passing down. We have readymade binder available in the market now, many artists use it. But for me the natural gum feels like part of the painting itself. The colour holds different. More alive maybe. Or maybe just I am old fashioned. 🙂 The kitchen smelled slightly sour this morning from the soaking. My wife said "again you are doing this Ramesh, the vessels will all get stained." But she knows. She left the mortar out for me. Anyone else here still make their own materials? Or am I the only one who cannot let go of these old ways.

I finally did it. I packed up my little travel easel and drove out to the lake this morning before the kids woke up, and painted the same view I've been chickening out on since June. The light on the water kept changing every fifteen minutes and I nearly gave up twice, but I just kept blocking in and repainting until something stuck. It's not my best work. But it's the first plein air thing I've actually seen through to the end instead of coming home with a muddy mess and a headache. I've been doing that since my workshop in April and I thought maybe outdoor painting just wasn't for me. Anyway. It's propped up in the kitchen drying and I keep walking past it feeling weirdly proud. If you've been avoiding trying something new for months, just pack the bag and go. The worst case is you come home with a muddy mess and a headache, which is where you already are.

I've been painting for twenty-five years and I've never once seen my own work properly hung in a real gallery. I'm always on the other side of the canvas, a meter away, smelling the linseed. Today the small gallery in Croix-Rousse put up three of my interiors for a group show and I walked in and just stood there. The light they'd chosen, the height, the space around the frames. It looked like someone else painted them. Better than I remembered. I think we don't know our own paintings until a stranger hangs them. Anyway. I was at the vernissage pretending to be calm and a woman I don't know stood in front of the one of the kitchen at dusk and didn't move for a long time. She wasn't reading the label. That's the whole thing, honestly. That's the moment you do it for.

I've painted probably 40 or 50 pieces since I picked this back up, and I think I've kept exactly three. The rest go to family, friends, the local fair, or sit stacked in the corner of my office waiting to be dealt with. I don't know why I'm so weird about keeping them. Almost like keeping one for myself feels indulgent or presumptuous or something. Anyway. This weekend I finally framed one I did back in January, a little still life with pears and a blue cloth, and hung it in the kitchen above the coffee maker. Every time I walk past it I stop and look at it for a second. It's not perfect but it's mine and I like seeing it there. My 8-year-old said "that looks like real pears" which might be the best review I've ever gotten. Anyone else struggle to keep what they make?