As I finish up work for an upcoming exhibition, I find myself reflecting on the past ten months. I have spread various paintings across my floor and leaned them up against walls in my studio, grouping them to see what looks good together, noting which still need hanging hardware or their sides painted. It’s interesting to note what I painted and when, to take a moment to step back and study how the year unfolded - not in the news, or in social media, but in my studio.
I painted the piece above last spring shortly after we went into quarantine. The title Arrêtez means “stop” in French, but it wasn’t related to the pandemic or anything socio-political that was happening. It was, rather, a note to myself - an observation and a request of sorts. Stop here. Stop now. Don’t go any further. This might be enough.
I have always built up layers in my work and usually part of the underpainting is still visible in some form later on, but as I worked last March and April and May alone in my studio for days on end, a few of these pieces seemed to me to be finished paintings on their own. I gave Arrêtez its title because it felt like it was asking me to stand back, to study what was happening, and to let it be. There was looseness here and a delicate interplay of brushstrokes that almost seemed to throw it off balance, but not quite. It’s one of my favorite paintings from 2020.
In conversations I’ve been having lately with friends and students and family, I see threads of our shared experience this year of slowing down. I remember as one plan after another was cancelled, as workshops and exhibitions and trips were postponed, as I watched my tightly jam-packed schedule suddenly open up in front of me, I felt a sort of letting go occur. And in its place was this new empty space, unfilled, and utterly mine (albeit in a limited way). I got to choose what I put in it.
As many others did, I chose gardening and yard work, tackled home improvement projects and those other nagging projects that involve sorting and downsizing stuff or fixing things that needed fixing. I felt re-directed and though aspects of this were frustrating or limiting, I also appreciated the collective pause I was experiencing along with everyone else. Slowing down, I had the time to ask myself if I was making the kind of work I wanted to make and also how was it evolving? What did it need?
There is a lovely book that came out a few years back by two women in Maine titled Stop Here. This is the Place. It’s about motherhood, but it’s also about slowing time down. I kept hearing the title of this book whenever I looked at this painting. That’s what I mean when I talk about being in conversation with my work.
Arrêtez is one of two dozen paintings of mine that will be on view this month at Portland Art Gallery. If you are in Maine, please do drop by. Steep yourself in some beauty and feel time slow down just a bit.