External monologue

1. I like to make more of the location – show the trees outside of the window and the block of flats across the road.
2. I want to draw some other people’s plants after this.
3. Can I make it Albert’s flat to draw his dwarf orchids before they stop blooming?
4. Houseplants are weird. Here is this thing that is supposed to grow outside and is instead is growing inside and is thriving on it.
5. He keeps them in his bathroom and I like the idea of showing different kinds of places
7. A series of drawings about houseplants? I could go to Charlotte, definitely my mums
8. But I’m not sure of the pencil
9. I like the silvery quality, but not the smudginess
10. Maybe if I changed the paper…

I find it hard not to attach my work to some idea outside of itself. Very quickly, within minutes of making anything, I start to think about how it might be connected to some truth that is or might be revelatory in some sort of way. And then before I’m half way into the start, I’m racing to find out how it will all end.

Gosh. It sounds dreadful when I put it that way.

Following my residency last year, I have started on a project that I’ve been thinking about ever since, about houseplants. This is a bit of Goose foot, the 3ft houseplant that is growing on my windowsill. I am drawing it fairly life size. At some point, I will put all the different drawings of this one plant together. Until that happens, I am going to try to shut the inner me up.