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I've been carrying a piece of my grandmother's wedding dress in a jar by my machine for going on thirty years now. Tiny scrap of pale pink silk, faded till it's almost white. I always told myself I was saving it for something special and then I'd look at it and put it back. Yesterday I cut it up and stitched it into the middle of a quilt top I've been fighting with for a month. Just a little square, right in the center where the light catches it. And honey, the whole thing finally came together. I don't know why I held onto it so long waiting for the perfect moment. There ain't no perfect moment. There's just Tuesday, and the cloth, and your hands. My grandmother would've laughed at me for being so precious with it. She cut up her own mother's good tablecloth for a baby quilt the week I was born. Said cloth is for using, not for keeping. Felt like I let go of something I didn't even know I was holding. That quilt's finished now, and it's the best thing I've made in years.

You know, I was looking at my hands the other day, all these little nicks and needle pricks from years of sewing. They remind me so much of my grandmother's hands, the ones that taught me how to cut fabric just so, how to guide a needle through a stubborn seam. I'm working on a prayer quilt for my cousin's new baby, and I'm just letting the fabric tell the story. No fancy patterns, just letting the colors and shapes fall where they may, like the Lord intended. It feels good to let go and let the spirit move through my hands. Sometimes the most beautiful things come when you stop trying so hard and just trust. MM-hmm. It's a good feeling.

I've painted the same window in my apartment maybe forty times this year and I still don't feel like I've cracked it. Same light, same chipped frame, same view of the brick wall across the street that my landlord swears he'll repaint. When I tell people I'm a watercolor painter they think it's soft, gentle, forgiving, and then they watch me ruin the twelfth wash in a row because the paper dried too fast or the pigment settled wrong and suddenly it's not so cute anymore haha. It's not that I can't paint other things. I can. I do commissions, portraits, still lifes, whatever pays. But this window is the one I come back to at the end of the day when no one's watching, when I'm not trying to be impressive. There's something about how the light hits it at 4pm in the fall, this warm dusty gold that only lasts about twenty minutes, and every time I try to catch it I get three quarters of the way there and then lose it. My partner keeps telling me to just do a bigger version, like scale is the problem. It's not. The problem is I keep wanting it to be a photograph and it needs to be a memory instead. Anyway I had a good wash today, genuinely, one of the better ones. Thought I'd tell people who might understand the particular ache of chasing the same thing over and over and being kind of in love with the chase itself.

I spent three hours today on one nostril. Not the nose, the nostril. The highlight that runs along the side of it. I kept smudging it out and bringing it back and it still isn't right, and I know if I step back and look at the whole portrait from across the room it reads fine, maybe even good. But I can't stop. People keep saying pastel is forgiving, which tells me they've never tried to do a highlight on Unison that stays where you put it and doesn't just become a gray smear. I'm on my last stick of the pale peach I like for skin light and I already know I'm going to order three more tonight out of pure superstition, like the piece will fail if the supply runs out. My partner walked in and said "it's really coming along" the way he does when he knows I'm stuck and doesn't want to say the wrong thing. I said thanks and went right back to the nostril. I wonder if there's a version of me that could just leave it alone and call the day done instead of chasing it. She seems nice. I've never met her.

A woman wants a 4 metre mosaic for a hotel lobby in Halkidiki. Deposit was good money, more than I made in the whole of 2013. She has a Pinterest board. She sent it twice. I went to see the space on Monday. Grey marble everywhere, that cold beige lighting, and she wants a "warm, organic, hand-made feeling" in smalti. Smalti in a lobby with no daylight is money thrown into a hole. By year two it reads flat and dead and my name is on it. So I said no. Politely, with an actual reason, and offered her a smaller stone piece for the reception wall instead. Half the money. She hasn't replied. I sat on the balcony after the call with a coffee going cold feeling like an idiot, and then around an hour later something in my chest just let go. Fifteen years I've been taking things I knew were wrong because the month needed paying. I'm not doing it anymore. I'd rather grout a bathroom floor. Also my left thumbnail is black again from a bad hammer strike. Unrelated. Or maybe not.

I ran out of my usual Mi-Teintes mid-week and didn't feel like going into town, so I grabbed the cheapest pastel paper the shop had, the generic school kind, the one I used to look down on a little. Some hard gritty thing that grabs every layer and won't let go. And you know what, it's kind of wonderful. The tooth is so aggressive you can't over-blend, it stops me from smearing everything into that same soft mush I always fall into when I'm nervous. It forces me to commit to each mark because you can't really fix it once it's down. Ten euros for a whole ream instead of the price of one decent pad. I did a small portrait of my partner on it last night and the roughness actually suits him, his face is all angles and stubble, and I keep staring at it wondering why I never tried this before. Might be a phase, might be that I finally learned that the expensive stuff was just making me lazy. Anyway, I think I'll keep the ugly paper around. Does anyone else keep a cheap paper they reach for when the good stuff makes you feel too precious to touch? Or am I alone in this weirdness. 🙂

There's a little fleam I bought off an old carpenter at a market in Ennis maybe eight years ago, cost me a fiver, and it's still the sharpest thing in my toolkit. Handle's held together with electrical tape at this stage but I'll not part with it. Every morning I'm in the studio I run it along the edge of a gouge a couple of times and it brings the life back into it. And then I've a brand new burnisher I paid forty-odd quid for sitting in a drawer since I got it because the one I actually use is a smooth bit of bone I found on the beach in Connemara. Kid you not. Dog dug it up, I cleaned it off, and it's the perfect thing. What's the bit of kit you won't let go of because it works and that's all that matters, and what's the expensive thing you own that you barely touch? I'm not talking brushes obviously, we all have the brush we'd cry over losing. I mean the odd bits.

Been thinking about how long it takes me to learn a stone. People think you pick a material once and you know it. No. I've worked limestone for thirty years and it still surprises me. A block from one quarry will hold an edge like it's got something to prove. Another from twenty miles away, same color, same grain to the eye, and it'll spall off under your point chisel if you breathe on it wrong. You can't get that from a book or a video. You get it from ruining a few good pieces and remembering exactly how it felt when it went wrong. The sound it makes right before it lets go. That's the tuition. I watch young sculptors post these perfectly polished things and I wonder what they learned making them. I'm not saying polish is bad. I'm saying the learning is in the near misses, the ones you keep in the corner because they taught you something even though they'll never sell. Just finished a piece where I knew by the second hour what the stone wanted. First time in a long time. Took thirty years to get there. Still got the scar from the one that taught me that particular lesson.

Dropped a three-foot welded steel piece on the studio floor yesterday. My own fault. Sloppy rigging on the hoist, clip let go around head height. It bent where I'd spent a week getting the line right and I wanted to throw the whole thing in the scrap bin. Left it sitting there overnight instead. Came in this morning and the failure is obvious now. The foot wasn't plumb before the drop, it was just welded well enough to fool me. Ground it out, re-cut, re-welded. It's better now than it was yesterday before it fell. That's the part nobody tells you about this work. The disasters teach you more than the wins ever do, if you can stand to look at them the next morning instead of smashing them to pieces. I've had a ruined bronze teach me more about wall thickness than any book. Anyone else got a piece that failed and came back stronger?

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'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 🙂

had this little brass sharpener, must've been twenty years with me. came from some market stall in ennis, cost a euro maybe. kept it in the same tin as my carving tools. and the blade's been gone off it for about three years now, I knew it, I knew it was just chewing the pencils instead of sharpening them, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. it'd been everywhere with me. first studio, second studio, the shed phase, the kitchen table phase. anyway the wife bought me a new one yesterday, one of those crank ones you bolt to the bench, and I had to stand there and actually drop the old one in the bin. felt daft, felt like I was putting down a dog or something. the new one's fierce good though. grand twist on it. might name it.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="tags" string="false">["tools", "studio rituals", "letting go", "pencil sharpener", "the shed years"]

I got to sorting my scrap basket this morning. Lord, it was a mess. I mean a honest-to-goodness tangle of strips and triangles and odd-shaped pieces I told myself I'd use someday. And I got to noticing how I sort 'em, by color family first, then by what they came from. That little blue floral, that's from a dress my niece wore to Easter Sunday back in ought-eight. That mustard yellow, that's a man's shirt from the thrift that I unpicked for the good seams. I don't just sort fabric, I sort memories. And I thought, well that's me all over. Can't throw nothing away if it carried a story. My grandmother was the same way, she had a button tin that was more family history than any photo album. I told my daughter this morning, I said, I don't know if I'm a quilter who saves things or a saver who quilts. She just laughed and handed me her old jeans with a tear in the knee. "Here, Mama," she said. "Add me to the pile." I reckon that's what I'll do this afternoon. Turn her jeans into something she'll give her own girl one day. Y'all got a scrap basket that's really a memory basket too? Or am I just the old woman who can't let go? 🙂

I know you can buy perfectly good pre-stretched canvas. I know this. And sometimes I do, for studies or when I'm traveling. But for the real work I still go to the art supply shop on Rue des Trois-Marie, pick through the rolls of linen by touch, and spend an afternoon cutting and stretching and sizing. My husband thinks it's a ritual I won't let go of. Maybe it is. But there's something about the tension you can only get when you've done it yourself, pulling the pliers until the weave is exactly right, hearing the frame creak a little. And the rabbit skin glue, I know synthetic sizes work fine, but the smell of it cooking takes me straight back to my first year of training. That hideous little kitchen in the atelier where we learned to grind pigment and stretch linen before we were allowed to touch a brush. I had a student last year who asked why I bother. She'd only ever worked on pre-primed cotton. I told her to try it once, just to feel the difference in the surface when you've done it yourself. She never did, I think. But the ones who try it understand immediately. I'm not saying it makes better paintings. But it makes my paintings. That's enough for me.

Sold a piece from 1984 this week. Was one of the first things I ever welded on my own, a little figure in rebar, rough as hell. The welds are ugly, I can see every mistake in it. It's been sitting in my attic for forty years because I never thought anyone would want it. A woman from Ohio saw a photo my daughter posted of my workshop and asked about it. I told her it was apprentice work, not good, she should look at something else. She insisted. Paid more than I would have asked for it. I packed it up careful, wrapped the parts I'd have let go. Felt strange sending it off. That piece taught me the right way to hold a torch through every bad weld on it, and now it's going to live in someone's house instead of quietly rusting up there. Not sure what the lesson is. Maybe that you don't get to decide what's finished with you.

I got to thinking today about the quilt I started for my mama's kitchen and never finished. That's been, what, thirty years now? I still have the strips cut, all those little calico squares bagged up in a pillowcase in the closet. Lord knows I've moved them from house to house like they were something precious. And I guess they are, in a way. She passed in '92 and that bag just sits there. I know better than to finish it now. It was made for her, for her kitchen, and she's not there. But I can't bring myself to throw it out either. Some things you just hold onto because letting go feels like giving up on something you never got to say. Anybody else got a piece of work like that? Not lost, not abandoned, just... waiting on something you can't name.

Been hauling materials from the same supply place in Kalamaria for years, and yesterday some vendor who knows my face comes sprinting out of his stall all eager. Says he'll help me carry the palette of smalti I just paid for. Sir, that is 40 kilos of glass and you are wearing sandals. I told him no thanks, I've got it, I've done this a thousand times. He does not stop. He grabs one corner anyway. Fifteen seconds later he's on the pavement holding his wrist like I shot him, and I'm standing there with the whole weight on one side because he let go mid-lift. My back is going to remind me of his good intentions for a week. The thing is he meant well. That's the part that gets me. Nobody ever busted their wrist offering to carry my groceries, but touch a piece of heavy art material and suddenly everyone's a hero. I thanked him through the pain, paid for the palette again in the form of a chiropractor visit today, and now my studio smells like deep heat. I know it's not the worst thing that happened in the world today. But my knees are 45 years old and they did not need this.

It's so cold in the shop right now the marble feels different under the chisel. Stiff. Holds the cut too long and then lets go all at once. I've worked stone in this kind of cold plenty of times, you just go slower or you bust it. But my hands are 61. They don't warm up like they used to. Twenty minutes in and the fingers are telling me things I don't want to hear. Dragged a propane heater out this morning and it's doing just about nothing against a concrete floor and a tin roof. I keep my good chisels in the house this week like they're houseplants. Nobody warns you that the cold part of the work gets harder than the heavy part. I can still move a two hundred pound block around, but I can't keep my own hands above fifty degrees. That's the trade, I guess. The strength stays longer than the circulation.

I moved studios last month and finally faced the flat file I've been dragging around since 2014. Two full drawers are just bad editions. Not aborted, not developmental, just bad. Misregistered, muddy, or I simply didn't believe the image when I pulled it and it shows. I almost threw them out. Then I spent an hour pulling each one and trying to remember what I was thinking, and a strange thing happened: the bad ones are the most honest record of the work. The good prints are what I wanted to make. The bad ones are what I actually made while I was still figuring out what I wanted. They have more of me in them than the ones I'd frame. I kept maybe forty, gave the rest to the recycling. Now I'm wondering if I should build them into something. An edition of the failures. There's something in that idea that won't let go, about how printmaking is the medium that's supposed to launder the mistake out, and yet the mistakes are where the thinking happened.

ten years that thing held onto. i hate it. it's always half-clogged, spitting stringy bits everywhere, burns on my fingers i can't even trace back to specific moments. but it was my brother's so i kept it like a shrine or something, which is dumb because he barely used it either. new one is twenty bucks and heats up in like a minute. i used it today on a piece that's been sitting half-finished for months and it went so smooth i almost didn't trust it. still weird though. feels like i retired a little piece of him i didn't want to let go of. but the work's better for it.