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For years I had to have something on, podcasts, playlists, the radio, whatever. Fill the silence. I thought it helped me concentrate. Then about three months ago my headphones broke and I was too lazy to replace them, so I just worked without. First week felt naked, like something was missing. Second week I started noticing the sound of the brush. That little wet drag across the panel, the tick of the ferrule against the easel, the way linseed oil makes a certain quiet suction sound when you wipe a brush on a rag. Now I can't go back. The silence isn't empty, it's full of information about what I'm doing. I hear when I'm forcing the paint versus letting it glide. I hear hesitation in the pause before a stroke. My husband thinks I've become a monk. Maybe. But I've been painting better these three months than I have in years, and I think part of it is just finally listening.

used to always have something on, podcasts, playlists, the same few albums on rotation. then about six months ago i just stopped. didn't plan it. one day i realized i'd been working in silence for a week straight. at first i thought something was wrong with me. like i couldn't focus. but turns out i was just hearing the work for the first time. the paper moving. the brush clicking against the jar. my own breathing. now when i try to put something on it feels like someone talking over a conversation i was already having. weird how long it took me to notice.

I cannot paint in silence. It feels like the room is waiting for something. And I cannot paint with music that has words I understand, my brain grabs onto them and I'm lost. For years it was Radiohead on repeat, which my husband found inexplicable. Now it's the same five playlists of baroque chamber music, mostly Couperin and Rameau, nothing dramatic. The rhythm of it gets into my hand somehow. If the tempo changes too much I notice. Today I tried to work without anything playing and I spent twenty minutes mixing a colour I already had right on the palette. Just staring. So I put the headphones on and the painting started behaving. What do you listen to that you'd be embarrassed to admit? I'll start: I know every word of Kid A and I don't even like it anymore. It's just what the paint wants.

ok so i spent three days on this little sculptural vase, handbuilt, textured surface, this glaze combo i've been testing for weeks. really proud of it. posted a reel of the process, lighting nice, good music, the whole thing. got maybe 300 views. then yesterday i posted a story of my cat sitting in a bisqueware bowl i forgot to trim down. phone footage, bad lighting, my thumb in the corner for half of it. 4.2k views. 14 dms asking if the bowl is for sale. i don't know what the game is anymore. i'm not even mad, just... confused. like the algorithm has decided my cat is the artist now and i'm just the assistant who cleans the kiln.

Lord have mercy. I'm still chewing on this one. We had the annual church social Saturday, good food, good fellowship, and they asked me to bring a few quilts to hang up in the fellowship hall. So I brought three. One of 'em's a piece I've been working on slow for months, greens and browns and a strip of my mama's old housedress I been saving since she passed. Improvisational piecing, the way my grandmother taught me. Nothing in it is supposed to line up like a grid. That's the whole point. This man, I've known him forty years, he knows better, he stands there with his cup of punch and he says, "Now Gloria, this one right here... you know if you just squared those blocks up, it'd really be something." Just like that. Like I'd been trying my best and come up short. I said, "It already is something, Leonard. It's a Gloria Mae original. That's worth more than a perfect seam and you know it." He laughed it off but I was hot about it the rest of the evening. My granddaughter said I should've charged him admission for the art lesson. She's not wrong. Y'all. The squares aren't supposed to line up. That's the music in it. That's the breath. My grandmother's quilts never lined up a day in her life and they're in books now. So I guess Leonard can keep his opinions to himself or I'll start charging.

I've been fighting against reels for like two years now. Kept posting finished paintings, good photos, decent lighting, the whole thing. Getting maybe 40 likes and a sale every other month. Last week I was in a rush and just propped my phone up and filmed myself blocking in a sky for about 90 seconds. No editing, no music, just the sound of brush on canvas and me muttering "that's not gonna work" under my breath. Threw it up with a one-line caption. It's at 12k views. I got three commission inquiries. I don't know whether to be thrilled or annoyed that the thing that finally works is me looking like a mess in real time instead of the polished photos I spent actual hours on. But I guess I'm making more videos now.

I'm so mad about this. Spent $18 on a new block of compressed charcoal from Blick and it just... crumbles. Like disintegrates. Leaves this weak gray dust that won't grab the tooth no matter how hard I press. I switched back to an old nub of Generals and suddenly my drawing has life again. I know rationally it's just a bad batch or whatever but I can't shake the feeling that the universe is personally messing with my studio time today. I had the whole afternoon blocked out, music on, ready to GO, and instead I spent 45 minutes fighting a stick of garbage while my reference photo just sat there judging me. What's the thing that derailed your whole day recently? Not looking for solutions just want to know I'm not alone in getting genuinely upset about stupid materials lol

just spent 20 minutes scraping dried acrylic off my glass palette with a razor blade and honestly that's where i do my best thinking. no music, no podcast, just the scrape-scrape-scrape and my brain finally shutting up for once. i used to be precious about cleaning between sessions. thought it meant i was organized. now i just let it build until i physically can't tell what color anything is anymore and then i have a little ritual about it. feels like progress even when nothing else is. anyway my palette currently looks like a dried blood splatter exhibit. very on brand for the colors i'm using rn lol

You know, in our tradition, when we paint the wedding scene, the bride and groom, the mandap, the procession, we always include the musicians. Dholak, shehnai, sometimes a harmonium. It is part of the story. It is how you know there is celebration happening. Last week I was working on a piece for a young couple from Darbhanga. Big order, they wanted the full wedding narrative around the border. So I am painting, I am painting, all the figures are coming nicely, the bride under her veil, the groom with his sehra, the women carrying diyas. Then I finish and I look and I realise: nobody is playing the dholak. There is a gap in the procession where the drummer should be. I forgot him completely. My wife looked at it and said "Where is the music, Ramesh ji?" I had to take a fresh paper and start that section again. Thirty years of this work and still I am leaving out the drummer. This is what I am thinking today: that the old stories, they have their own order. If the dholak player is missing, the wedding is not complete. You cannot skip him just because you are in a hurry or you forget. The painting will know.🙂

had a piece sitting half-done on my easel for three weeks because i was convinced i'd ruin it. client wanted something outside my usual thing, more muted, less of the loud color i do. kept finding reasons to avoid the studio. finally just sat down yesterday morning and hammered it out in like six hours straight. no music. just me and the dread. and it's... good? i think it's good. they're gonna like it. i don't hate it. anyway that feeling of something you've been avoiding turning out fine is genuinely one of the best. felt like i could breathe again after.